She did not venture, however, to carry Marc off again. But she did

confide to him what she had heard in her séances; and it was very

difficult to prevent their meetings, which Marc distrustfully kept as

secret as his aunt. Sylvie told Marc that Odette spoke of him. It was

this that bound her to the young boy: Odette had bequeathed him to her.

She transmitted messages between the two children. Marc did not really

believe in all this; the critical sense of his grandfather defended him

against these absurdities, but his imagination was stirred. He listened,

interested, repelled. Even while he lent himself to this unwholesome

game, he condemned Sylvie severely; and he extended his condemnation to

women in general. But this atmosphere of the grave was poisonous for a

boy of his age. The horrible buffoonery of life and death gave him a

precocious, haunting obsession. He felt surrounded by an odor of decayed

flesh. He had moments of suffocation; and, as his mind was not yet

strong enough to defend him, his feverish, preadolescent vitality

reacted by taking refuge in his troubled instincts, which roved about

like animals in the night. A redoubtable flock they were! It seems as

if, by a sort of embryogenesis, the psychic organism passes in its

evolution through the whole series of animal forms--has to pass through

the most bestial stages before it reaches the point where they can be

sublimated by intelligence and human will. Fortunately, this return to

our savage origins is brief; it is a procession of spectres, and the

best thing is to stand aside and let them pass as quickly as possible,

doing nothing to arouse their shadowy consciousness. But this hour is

not without its dangers, and the most loving watchfulness cannot protect

the child from them. For this little Macbeth is the only one who sees

the spectres. For the others, those who are closest to him, Banquo's

seat remains empty; they perceive the fresh voice, the pure features of

the child, but they do not see the formidable shadows that pass in the

depths of its limpid eyes. The curious spectator himself hardly sees

them. How can he recognize them, since they issue from a world in which

he was not born, these instincts of possession, violence and even crime?

There is no perverse thought that he does not touch, that he does not

taste with the tip of his tongue. Neither of the two women who petted

Marc dreamed what a little monster it was they held so close to them.

Little by little Sylvie grew calm. The accounts of her séances ceased

to have a mysterious character; she spoke of them unfeelingly,

hurriedly. She did not care to dwell on them. Soon she even ceased to

mention them except with a certain constraint. And suddenly she stopped

speaking of them altogether; she no longer replied to questions. Had she

met with some disillusionment she did not wish to acknowledge? Or was

she tired of them? She told no one. But in the long conversations she

continued to have with Marc the occult world held less and less of a

place, and it ended by disappearing. She seemed to have recovered her

equilibrium. The passing of the ordeal was only evident to those about

her by the appearance of a slight change in her age, an expression that

was not more refined through suffering, but rather more material, by

features that were a little heavier and a somewhat fuller figure. She

still had the same grace, and she was brighter than ever. The powerful

need to live avenges itself for the agony that has been endured. And new

pains and new pleasures, the leaves of the falling days, the dust of the

road, little by little covered the grave in her heart.

XXXI

A deceptive appearance.

Life began again in the Rivière household. But the catastrophe had made

a breach in their souls.

The disappearance of a child is a very small event in the general order

of things. We are surrounded by death; it should never surprise us. From

the moment when we begin to look about us, we see it at work and grow

accustomed to it. We think we grow accustomed to it. We know that some

day it will come and work its will in our own homes, and we foresee our

misery. But there is so much more than misery! Let each one look into

his own heart! There are few who will not recognize the revolution that

a death has produced in their whole existence. It marks a change of

eras . . . _Ante, Post Mortem_. . . . A being has disappeared. Life

in its entirety is affected, a whole kingdom of beings, yesterday the

kingdom of the day and to-day that of the shadow. If this little stone,

this one stone, falls from the vault, the whole vault falls. Nothingness

has no measure. If this little I is nothing, no I is anything. What I love

is nothing; I who love am nothing. For I only exist because I love. The

unreality of everything that breathes becomes suddenly apparent. And

everyone is aware of this, though not in the same fashion, everyone,

with all his organs, his instinct, his intelligence, whether he faces it

directly or averts his eyes and flees from it.

On the family tree from which the little branch of Odette had been

broken off the other branches continued to grow. But the development of

three at least of the four was altered.

The least affected was the father. On the day of the funeral his grief

was painful; his throat and his chest panted like those of a fallen

horse. But a fortnight later he was already caught up again by his

business and the powerful demands of his physical life; he was working,

eating twice as much as ever, travelling, forgetting.

Of the two women Annette seemed to be the real mother. She could not be

consoled. Her grief became all the more bitter the more the traces of

the little girl were obliterated. Odette for her was like a chosen

child, a child created not of her flesh, but of her need of affection,

more hers than Sylvie's, more hers than her son. She accused herself of

not having loved her enough, of having begrudged the caresses of which

this eager little heart had never had enough. And she persuaded herself

that she alone preserved the memory of the child to which the others

were false.

Sylvie exhibited now a strange, busy, agitated gaiety. She talked in a

high voice, with a wearisome flow of words, flashes of jocularity, harsh

tittle-tattle that made her little group of workers burst out laughing.

Marc quietly drank it all in when he happened to be there and heard it

flying about him. He too had relaxed; he was working less, loafing,

running about the streets, always looking for opportunities to do

nothing and laugh. His organism was shielding itself against the terror

within. . . . What outsider could have suspected it? We are impenetrable

to one another; we seem indifferent; we want to unbosom ourselves and we

cannot do so. . . . "There is no communion possible in suffering."

But Annette, whose intense devotion to the dead child made her unjust to

the living, saw only their egoism. In every way it was trying to return

to life and let the stone of memory drop to the bottom; and she was

angry with them.

One day, however, one Sunday when Marc had gone out with Leopold to a

ball-game, Annette, arriving at Sylvie's, found the door of the

apartment open. She went in and heard a long, heavy groan. Sylvie, alone

in her closed room, was talking and moaning. Annette withdrew on tiptoe;

she reclosed the door on the landing and rang. Sylvie came and opened

it; her eyes were red; she said it was a cold and talked with a noisy,

rather vulgar animation. She began to tell one of those eternal indecent

stories of which she seemed to have an endless supply. Annette's heart

sank. Was it possible she was pretending? She was only half pretending.

It was herself, far more than others, whom she wished to deceive. An

utter despair, without a gleam or an outlet, had brought her to a sort

of jocose contempt for life. If she did not want to die, there was no

other alternative but forgetfulness and this mask of careless cynicism

which had ended by replacing the features of the true face. Nothing

meant anything. Nothing was worth the trouble. Propriety, honor, were

all humbug! Nothing was worth taking seriously. Laugh at life! Enjoy

yourself! Work alone continued to exist, for work was a necessity, and

one couldn't get along without it.

Many other things continued to exist beneath all this devastation.

Instinct in Sylvie was sounder than thought, and when she threw away

everything else Annette and her son remained in her flesh and blood.

They were only one person, these three! But this instinctive, almost

material, love did not prevent her from cherishing bad feeling. Sylvie

had no more tenderness for Annette than she had for herself. She was

aggressive and full of mockery in her attitude to her sister, whose

earnestness and silent sadness, heavy with memories, irritated her like

an unspoken reproach.

A reproach indeed. Annette did not have the charity to spare her. She

saw clearly, however, that Sylvie was fleeing from her misery as a

hunted animal flees from a dog, and she pitied her. She pitied the

misery of human nature, but she despised it for seeking safety at the

expense of its dearest treasures, for being always ready to betray its

sacred affections in order to elude the savage pursuit of suffering. She

was embittered by this; for in her own heart she heard the call of this

cowardice in the presence of life, and she scourged it.

Consequently, during these months that followed the disaster, she

imposed upon herself an austere discipline of the heart, a proud,

pessimistic restraint that concealed her wounded love.

After the dark winter Easter had come. That Sunday morning Annette was

wandering about Paris. The sky had blossomed again; the air was

motionless. With her soul wrapped in its mourning, she heard the

nostalgic calls of the church-bells; and their sonorous net caught her

up in its meshes, drew her outside the flood of this indifferent age to

the beach where the dead God lay. She entered a church. She had scarcely

taken two or three steps before she was stifled by her tears; she had

repressed them so long, and they were flowing again. On her knees, with

bowed head, in a corner of a chapel, she let them flow. Never had she

felt as now the tragedy of this day. She listened to the organ, to the

hymns, the hymns of joy. . . . Joy! . . . Sylvie's laughter, with her

soul weeping in its depths. . . . Ah, she realized it so clearly to-day:

there was no resurrection for the poor dead! And the despairing love

for one's own, that age-old love, wearing itself out denying their

death. . . . How much more grand and religious this poignant verity was

than an illusory resurrection! That passionate self-deception, that

heart-breaking self-deception, which could not consent to losing one's

beloved ones.

She could not share her thoughts with anyone. Shut up in herself, with

the little dead girl, she defended her against the second, the most

terrible, of deaths, oblivion. She reacted harshly against herself and

against the others. And as every reaction against a way of thinking

leads by its recoil to a contrary reaction, her attitude of reproach

provoked those who felt themselves hurt by it to exaggerate their own.

And the breach widened.

It became almost complete between the mother and the son. Marc grew

further and further away from Annette. For years the antagonism had been

growing more evident, but until these latter days it had remained, on

the child's side, veiled, hidden, cautious. During the long period when

he had lived so intimately with Annette, he had been very careful not to

fall into any argument with her; he would have been no match for her,

and above everything else he wanted peace. He let his mother talk. Thus,

one by one, she revealed her weaknesses to him, while he revealed

nothing. But now that he had found an ally in his aunt, he no longer

concealed his hand. How many times in the past his mother, losing

patience with this little mollusc, who drew his mind back into his shell

when she wanted to reach it, had said to him, "Come out of your hole!

Let's have a glimpse of your head. Don't you know how to talk?"

He knew, Annette could have her satisfaction. He talked now. . . . It

would have been better if he had continued to be silent! . . . What a

little wrangler! Ah, he no longer hesitated to contradict her. He

allowed nothing to pass from his mother's mouth without obstinately

cavilling at it. And in what an impertinent tone!

This had happened all of a sudden; and no doubt Sylvie, by maliciously

encouraging this warfare, was partly responsible for it. But the real

cause lay deeper. This change of attitude corresponded with a change of

nature, for the crisis of puberty was approaching. The child was

transformed. In a few months he had assumed another character, and his

rude and crotchety ways were interspersed with returns of his old

taciturnity. There was nothing left of the polite, conciliatory, rather

crafty silence of the child who wanted to give pleasure; one felt now

something hostile and bristling in him. . . . His brusque, off-hand

manner, his flagrant impoliteness, the inexplicable harshness with which

he responded to affectionate advances, made Annette's sensibility bleed.

Sufficiently armed against the world, she was not at all so against

those whom she loved; a single rude word from her son wounded her to

tears. She did not show this, but he was not unaware of it. He went on;

he seemed to be seeking for things that might be unpleasant to his

mother.

He would have been ashamed to behave so with people for whom he cared

nothing. But to her he was certainly not indifferent. He clung to her.

How? Like the living fruit which, when the hour has come, breaks away

from the mother's womb. He was made of her flesh, and to make this flesh

his own he tore it.

Marc had many elements that belonged by nature to another race than his

mother's. But, strangely enough, it was not through these different

elements that he most came into conflict with his mother: it was through

those he had in common with her. For his jealous desire for independence

was not yet in possession of a personality that properly belonged to

him, and every resemblance to his mother seemed to him a sort of threat

of annexation. So, to defend himself, he tried to be different. Whatever

she said, whatever she did, he was the opposite. Because she was loving,

he was insensible; because she was confiding, he shut himself up;

because she was passionate, he was cold and cutting. And everything that

she fought, everything that was repugnant to Annette's nature--ah, how

well he knew these things!--became attractive to him, and he made haste

to let Annette know it. Because she cared about her morality, the wilful

child considered it the proper thing to regard himself as unmoral and

made a point of proclaiming, "Morality is all fiction."

So he declared to his mother, and the credulous Annette took it

seriously. She attributed it to the deplorable influence of Sylvie, who

amused herself by casting disorder into the little soberly cultivated

brain. . . . There they go into the flower-beds, a handful of wild

seeds! And she raked the smooth paths the wrong way. She had plenty of

good reasons for persuading herself that she was acting in the interest

of the child. "That poor little fellow, shut up in a greenhouse, kept

locked up in a box! We're going to take him out of his flower-pot!" Even

while she loved her sister, she took a lively and cruel pleasure in

stealing away from her this heart that was a slip of her own.

The shrewd self-interest of the child in everything that concerned him

had perceived the duel that was being waged between the two sisters, and

naturally he exploited it. He cunningly kept his favors for Sylvie, and

he was much pleased by the jealousy which he aroused in his mother.

Annette no longer concealed this. She justified it, with more reason

than Sylvie, as being in Marc's interest. Sylvie loved the child and she

had plenty of common sense. Her light wisdom was just as good as the

weightier wisdom of some other people, but it was not suitable for a boy

of thirteen, and the good he got from it was dangerous. If she sharpened

in him the appetite for life, she did not give him respect for it; and

when respect vanishes too early, look out for a smash! Sylvie was no

person to form Marc's taste, except in the matter of clothes. She took

him to silly movies and music-halls from which he brought back

bewildering songs and images that left little room for serious thoughts,

and his work showed the effects of it. Annette was angry and forbade

Sylvie to take Marc out. This was a good way of sealing the alliance of

the nephew and the aunt. Marc felt that he was persecuted; he discovered

that, in our time, the profession of being an oppressed people is

remunerative; and Annette learned, to her cost, that of the

oppressor is not all tranquillity.

On every occasion Marc now made her feel that he was a victim and that

she abused her strength. Well, so be it! She would abuse it to keep him

in line. She would not tolerate the frivolity of his language, the

unseemly habit he had picked up of making fun of everything, his

impertinent blague. To subdue it she opposed him with her severe

principles. He had a fine blow to give her in return. For a long time he

had been waiting for the chance.

One day when he was finding support in his aunt's words against some

prohibition of his mother's, Annette impatiently told him that Sylvie

had the right to say and do what she wanted; one couldn't condemn her,

but what was good for her was not good for him. He was not to take her

as a model. "She is not to be imitated in everything."

Marc listened to the tirade and said carelessly, "Yes, but she has a

husband."

Annette could not reply at first; she did not want to understand. What

had he said? No, it wasn't possible! And then a blush spread over her

forehead. Sitting there, with her hands motionless over her work, she

did not stir. Nor did he make any further movement. He was not very

proud of what he had said, of what was about to happen. The silence

continued a long time. A flood of anger rose in Annette's vehement

heart. She let it pass. Pity, irony, took its place. She sighed

contemptuously. "Little wretch!" she thought. And at last, as her

fingers resumed their task, she said, "And no doubt you consider that a

woman without a husband who works to support her child is less worthy of

respect?"

Marc lost his poise. He did not reply. He did not excuse himself. He was

mortified.

That night Annette did not sleep. So she had sacrificed herself in vain!

That the world should blame her was in the order of things. But he to

whom she had given everything! How had he known? Who had breathed this

thought into his ear? She could not be angry with him, but she was

overwhelmed.

Marc slept peacefully. He was not free from remorse, but the sleep was

stronger than the remorse. After a good night he would have forgotten it

if he had not encountered it again in his mother's anxious look. It

annoyed him that his mother had not forgotten as he had. He was sorry,

but he could not make up his mind to say so; and, since he was

uncomfortable, his childish logic made him angry with his mother.

They did not allude to the scene. But after it things were no longer as

they had been before. They were constrained when they kissed each other.

Annette no longer treated him wholly as a child.

How had he known? Conversations at school had made him reflect on the

name he bore, which was that of his mother. Old allusions, picked up as

they had passed in old days in the workshop, which he had not

understood, became clear now. Some imprudent words of Sylvie to her

sister, in the child's presence. And the enigma this mother was for him,

at once irritating and fascinating him, through the aura of passions

which, without the power to discern them, his puppy-instinct had

scented. Over it all he had built a strange, vague fairy-tale which did

not hang together very closely. His birth puzzled him. How could he find

out about it? The reply that hurt his mother was partly a trap he was

setting for her. In his heart there was a mingled curiosity and

bitterness in regard to what had happened, about which he knew nothing.

He had never dared to question Sylvie on the subject, for he was proud

on his mother's behalf and he suspected that she had been wronged. But

he thought he had the right to be angry with her because of the

important secret she was hiding from him. This secret stood like a

stranger between herself and him.

A stranger indeed. Marc never suspected that at moments he invoked

before his mother's eyes the stranger, his father, and, even worse, the

other Brissots. For in the secret warfare that went on henceforth

between the mother and the young boy the latter instinctively armed

himself with everything he could find, in his own nature, that was

opposed to Annette. Thus, without knowing it, he sometimes disinterred

and used against her various traits he had inherited from his Brissot

ancestry: the famous condescending smile, the self-satisfaction, the

waggish philistinism the hostile certitude of which nothing could shake.

A shadow, a reflexion on the water. Annette recognized them and thought,

"They have caught me!"

Was he really a stranger? No, he was not. The weapon, the inherited

traits, yes; but the hand that held it was of Annette's substance. And

that rebellious hand was clenched in that opposition between two beings

who were too closely related, too much akin, which was only one of the

thousand tricks of Love and Destiny.

XXXII

He had no friends. This boy of thirteen, who spent every morning and

afternoon in a class with thirty other children, was isolated from his

comrades. When he was smaller, he had enjoyed chattering, playing,

running, shouting. For a year or two now, he had had fits of

speechlessness, a sudden hunger for solitude. This did not mean that he

had ceased to feel the need of companions. He may even have needed them

more than before. Exactly! He needed them too much; he expected too much

and he had too much to give. And there were bristles everywhere in this

spring thicket. A bridling self-esteem. A mere nothing wounded it, and

he was afraid of being wounded and especially of showing it. That was a

weakness, and he had to take care not to give the enemy a hold over him.

(There is an enemy in every friend.)

What he had grasped, or rather imagined, regarding his civil status, his

mother's past, kept him in an absurd, ridiculous, towering state of

torment. His reading contributed to this; he was convinced that he was a

"natural" child. (His romantic books called him by a harsher name.) He

found a way of taking pride in this. He almost went so far as to catch

in the archaic insult the wild, musty scent of nobility. He considered

himself interesting, different from other people, solitary, just a

little damned. It would not have displeased him to find himself among

the Satanic bastards of Schiller and Shakespeare. This would have given

him the right to despise the world, with lofty tirades--in secret.

But when he found himself in the world again--in his class at school,

among his comrades--he was intimidated, weighed down by his secret,

suspicious that they might guess it. His strange ways, his fated look,

the thin voice that was beginning to break, his pretty girlishness,

blushing, yet insolent as a young cock, excited the attention and the

ill-will of his companions and even exposed him to the shameful advances

of one of those little scamps who persecuted him with his half-comic,

half-serious, proposals. He was completely upset by this; that night he

was sick with revolt and disgust. He did not want to go back to school

again, and he could not tell his mother the reasons; he had to win

respect for himself unaided. He said to himself, "I shall kill him."

His riotous mind was excited by a deep ground-swell.

He had reached the time when the reproductive forces awaken. They

fascinated him and terrified him. The strange innocence of his mother

existed there beside him without seeing or suspecting anything. He would

have died of shame if she had seen or suspected. And alone, despising

himself, he surrendered frantically to the terrible solicitations of the

degrading instinct. . . . But what could the child do, a poor child

delivered over to these mad forces? This monstrous nature puts into a

thirteen-year-old body the brutal fire which for want of nourishment

devours it. There are natures which find salvation in throwing

themselves wholly, through a contrary excess, into an ascetic exaltation

of the spirit which often entails physical ruin. The young people of our

time, more fortunate than their elders, have begun to practise the

virile discipline of athletics. Marc would have asked nothing better than

this, but there again nature was against him. He was not strong enough.

Ah, how he envied the strong! How jealously he loved their beauty! . . .

So much that he hated it. . . . He would never be like them.

Desires, all the desires, pure, impure, a chaos! . . . All the hostile

demons! He would have been the plaything of chance--nothing could have

helped him--had it not been for a basis of moral health and

decency--rather, the grandeur that is unaware of its own capabilities,

that divine something, the result of the sufferings, the valor, and the

long patience of the best of the race, which will not endure the shame

of defilement, the disgrace of falling, which has an anxious instinct

for what is vile and cowardly, which follows its trail inward, into all

the sinuosities of one's thought, which does not always escape stains,

but never fails to condemn them, to condemn oneself, to brand oneself

and punish oneself.

Pride! All praise to pride! _Sanctus_ . . . In childish natures like

this pride is health. It is the affirmation of the divine in the mire,

the principle of salvation. In a solitude without love who would

struggle without pride? Why struggle, if one does not believe one has

supreme blessings to defend, and that for them one must conquer

or die! . . .

Marc was determined to conquer. Conquer what he understood and what he

did not understand. Conquer what he was ignorant of and what was

repugnant to him. Conquer the enigma of the world and his own baseness.

Ah, here as elsewhere, he was incessantly conquered. In his effort to

work, to read, to concentrate, he slipped beyond his own control, he

found himself out of hand. He always lacked the strength. . . . It was

there, but it was hardly formed, unequal to the task and the demands of

the will. He was devoured by desires and curiosities, healthy,

unhealthy, that plagued him on all sides, weltering as he was in torpor,

incapable of doing anything or determining anything. He wasted his time,

and he was always in a hurry. Already his future filled his mind, the

choice of a career; for he knew that it would be necessary for him to

decide early, and he had no grounds for deciding; he floated through

everything, equally interested and indifferent, attracted and disgusted.

He wanted and he did not want; he was not even capable of wishing or of

not wishing. The machine was not running aright. It would bound forward

and suddenly stop, and he would find himself sprawling on the ground.

Then he looked around him. And this child who was suffering and

devouring himself was quicker than anyone else to perceive the emptiness

and the ennui of an age that had begun its journey to destruction. He

had a keen sense of the abyss.

But his mother saw none of all this. She saw a sulky, overweening,

rebellious, childish boy, morbidly susceptible, grandiloquent, always

making trouble, who sometimes took delight in uttering obscenities, and

at other moments was shocked at a mere free expression. Above all, she

was irritated by his sneers. She had no suspicion of his feeling of

bitterness, still less of his defiance of an evil fate. He felt cruelly

the injustice of his lot; he was (or thought himself) without strength,

without beauty, without talent, good for nothing; he ended by swamping

himself, adding to his real defects others that he imagined; he conspired

with all the outward signs that were able to humiliate him. . . . Those

two little working-girls who laughed as they passed him were

laughing, he thought, at him; he did not suspect that they were laughing

just to arouse his interest, that they rather liked his blushing, shyly

girlish air. He thought he saw in the eyes of his teachers a

contemptuous pity for his mediocrity. He thought his more robust

comrades despised his weakness and were showing up his cowardice; for

since he was excessively nervous, he had his moments of pusillanimity;

and, as he was sincere, he confessed this to himself and felt that he

was dishonored. As a means of self-punishment, he secretly compelled

himself to commit dangerously imprudent acts that brought the cold sweat

to his brow and rehabilitated him a little--so little!--in his own eyes.

It was at himself, often, that this little Nicodemus was sneering, at

himself and his own weaknesses. But he was angry with the world that had

made him what he was, and especially with his mother.

She did not understand his hostile air. . . . What an egoist he was! He

thought only of himself.

He thought only of himself? What would have become of him if he had not

thought of himself? If he had not helped himself, who would have helped

him?

They remained alone, walled up, side by side. The day of confidences was

past. Annette was beginning to repeat the lamentation of mothers, "How

much more loving he was when he was younger!"

And he was saying to himself that mothers only love their children for

their own amusement. No one loves anyone but himself.

No, everyone wants to love the other person. But when one is in danger

one must think of oneself. One will think of the other afterward. How

can one save the other if one hasn't saved oneself? And how can one save

oneself if one lets the other hang about one's neck?

XXXIII

Annette, pushed aside by her son, became as hard as he. When the heart

is deliberately closed to love, the mind, freed by the absence of the

object that nourishes its affection, is driven to satisfy its

intellectual hunger and its need of action. She worked all day, read in

the evening, and at night slept soundly. Marc spitefully envied and

despised the health of this vigorous woman, the faculty she seemed to

have for escaping self-torment.

Annette, however, suffered from the privation of not being able to share

her thoughts with a companion. She filled the void by work, by actively

forgetting. . . . But work for work's sake is itself so empty! . . . And

upon whom can one spend those unused forces one feels in oneself?

Sacrifice! . . . That need of sacrifice! . . . Annette found it

everywhere about her, often pathetic, sometimes absurd. For as a good

observer she incessantly explored faces and souls every day and all day

long; she distracted herself from her own troubles by throwing herself

into those of others. Perhaps curiosity prevailed over pity during this

period when her heart was petrified (as she thought) by the spectacle of

so much suffering, and especially so many defeats and abdications.

Among women who are struggling as she was to wrest from society the

means of existence, how many are broken, far less by the harshness of

things than by their own weakness and abnegation! Almost all are

exploited by some affection and cannot exist without being exploited.

One would say that this is their only reason for living--the reason for

which they die. . . .

One of them sacrifices herself to an old mother or an egotistical

father. Another, to a vulgar husband or some man who deceives her.

Another, another--myself!--to a child who does not love her, who will

forget her, who will betray her to-morrow perhaps. . . . Well, what does

it matter? If I find a joy in being betrayed by him, imposed upon,

forgotten? "If it pleases me to be beaten!" Ah, derision, trickery! . . .

And the others envy you, those who have no one to whom to sacrifice

themselves! They marry a dog, a cat, a bird. Each one has her idol. If

you must have one at any price, God would serve better. He, at least,

amounts to something. . . . I too have my God, my unknown God, my hidden

truth, and this passion that drives me on to seek it. . . . Deceptive,

perhaps, like the others. But I shall not know it till I have reached

it. And if this is deceptive, at least it is elevated and worth the

trouble.

Annette revolted against the absurdity of some sacrifices. No, nature

does not wish the best to be sacrificed to the most unworthy. And if she

did wish it, why should I submit to it? But she does not wish it! She

wishes one to sacrifice oneself to the best, to the grandest, to the

strongest.

Sacrifice at any price, to the worst as to the best, perhaps even to the

worst by preference, because the sacrifice is thus most complete,

sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice--yes, that is conformable enough to

the idea people have of God . . . _Credo quia absurdum_ . . . Like

master, like man! This God is indeed he who rests on the Seventh Day,

finding that which he has made is well made. If one had listened to him,

the chariot of man would have stopped at the first turn of the wheel.

All the progress of the world is made against his will . . . _Fiat_! We

shall drive the chariot on. It may crush us, but at least we wish it to

go forward.

XXXIV

A tragic incident increased Annette's aversion to these immolations that

seemed to her so pointless--immolations of those who were worth more to

those who were worthless.

She had recently been in competition, for a course for foreigners at an

institution at Neuilly, with a young woman whose strong-willed rustic

face had attracted her. She tried to strike up a conversation with her.

But she was suspicious and could think of nothing but getting Annette

out of the way. At that time Annette, who was still unused to these

struggles that repelled her, had held up her own end badly; indeed,

through her desire to make a friend, she had withdrawn in the interest

of her rival. The latter had shown her no gratitude for this. Nothing

counted for her but her own advantage. An ant eagerly hastening to heap

up her gains. Annette did not interest her.

Annette had lost sight of her, and when, six years later, chance brought

them again into one another's presence, they had both changed. Annette

was no longer disposed to be generous, or rather fastidious. . . . Life

is as it is. . . . I am not able to modify it. I want to live. You must

take second place.

The struggle began. It did not last long. At the first blow the rival

was knocked out. How she had aged! Annette was struck by her ravaged

look. She had remembered her as a brunette with ruddy cheeks marked with

two or three little black dots like raisins in bread, a solid peasant

girl, short-waisted, thick-set, a face with fine, dry features, which,

if it had not been so sullen, would not have lacked a certain grace--a

stubborn brow, abrupt, always hurried movements. She saw now a thin,

shrivelled face, a hard glance, a bitter mouth, hollow cheeks, young but

blighted like scorched grass.

The disputed situation was that of secretary to an engineer: it required

only two mornings of attendance each week to go through the business

correspondence and receive visitors. Annette encountered Ruth Guillon in

the antechamber, and their hostile eyes met.

"You have come for this place," said Ruth Guillon. "It has been promised

to me."

"It has not been promised to me," said Annette. "But I have come for

this place."

"No use, it's going to be given to me."

"Whether it's useless or not, I've come. It belongs to the one who gets

it."

A moment later Annette was called into the engineer's office and chosen.

She was known as an accurate, intelligent worker.

As she came out she ran into Ruth and passed her coldly. Ruth stopped

her and asked, "You are going to have it?"

"I have it."

She saw the other's forehead redden strangely. She was expecting some

violent remark, but Ruth said nothing. Annette continued on her way, and

the other followed her. They descended the stairs. As she reached the

street, Annette, turning round, threw a rapid glance towards her

defeated rival, and Ruth's dejected air touched her. In spite of her

resolution to be hard, she went back and said to her, "I'm sorry. One

has to live."

"Oh, I'm quite aware of that," said the other. "Some have all the luck.

I never have any."

Her tone had entirely changed. Dejection without animosity. Annette made

a movement to take her hand, but Ruth drew back her own.

"Come, don't feel badly! One day one of us loses; another day it will be

the other."

"It's every day with me."

Annette recalled their first encounter when Ruth had succeeded in

getting the place. Ruth did not reply and walked along dejectedly beside

Annette.

"Couldn't I help you?" said Annette.

The blush overspread her forehead again. Wounded pride, emotion? Ruth

said dryly, "No!"

"It would give me pleasure to do so," Annette insisted.

And with a familiar gesture she seized her arm. Ruth was surprised and

pressed Annette's hand nervously under her arm, and, turning her head,

she bit her lip. Then she tore herself away in irritation and walked

off.

Annette let her go, following her with her eyes. She understood her:

yes, one has no right to offer one's pity to one who does not ask for

it.

A few days later, entering a dairy, she saw Ruth making some purchases.

She held out her hand to her. This time Ruth took it, but with an icy

air. She made an effort, however, to appear less sullen; she uttered a

few common-place words, and Annette, satisfied with this ungenerous

advance, replied. The two women discussed the prices of the things they

had bought. Annette, though she did not show it, was astonished that

Ruth spent more than she on fresh eggs and special milk. Ruth was a

little ostentatious in paying in front of her. As they went out, Annette

said, "How much it costs to live!" She almost excused herself for the

eggs she had bought, saying, "They're for my child."

Ruth, with a lofty air, remarked, "Mine are for my husband."

Annette knew nothing about the other's life. "Is he ill?" she asked.

"No, but he is very delicate."

She spoke proudly of the care that his health required. Annette, who

knew how touchy Ruth was, did not ask her any questions, but waited for

her to speak. Ruth said nothing more and they were about to separate

when Annette remembered. . . . She offered Ruth a job--the revision of

some work by a foreigner--which had been offered to her and which she

did not have time to undertake. Ruth at once showed the liveliest

gratitude: money played in her life a capital rôle. Annette asked for

her address in case she had other orders to pass on to her. Ruth

hesitated and replied evasively.

"It's only to be of service to you," said Annette impatiently. "In any

case, I live myself--" And she gave her address.

Ruth reluctantly gave her own. Annette felt rebuffed and decided to

think no more about her.

But Ruth came and looked her up a few weeks later. She excused herself

for having seemed so unfriendly. And this time she confided to her a

little, not much, about her life. Born of a family of rich farmers, she

had quarrelled with her father because she had wanted to come to Paris

and teach. Her father had wounded her pride and she had sworn never to

accept anything from him. She wanted to earn her own living. She had

worn herself out. In spite of her energy, thinking was too much for her;

she labored at her books like an animal at the plough; the blood swelled

her temples; she was obliged to stop in a state of congestion. An

incipient neurasthenia forced her to give up the examinations she was

just ready to pass. She fell back upon giving private lessons. She was

succeeding, with difficulty, in earning her living when she fell in love

with a man whom she married and who became simply one burden the more.

But this she did not say; Annette learned it elsewhere. She was acute

enough to divine a part of the truth in the course of the discreet

questions she asked her new friend. She saw that the husband had no

occupation: he was an "intellectual," an "artist," a "writer." And she

did not have to go very far to find what he wrote. Verses! . . .

Ruth had no more taste than any other little provincial soul. But the

poetry overawed her.

She was in no haste to introduce her "artist." She kept him at home. But

from this time forward she saw Annette more often--too often. She ended

by overwhelming her with testimonials of friendship, flowers, attentions

that were seldom very well inspired and only irritated Annette. She had

no middle way: it was all or nothing with this passionate soul. She had

never had a woman friend; she had never confided in anyone. From the

moment when she made up her mind to like Annette she monopolized her.

Annette was bored to death by this affection, and she realized that the

husband would not find it easy to bear.

At last she succeeded in surprising and catching a glimpse of the

precious bird: a dull, insignificant man with vague blue eyes who gave

the impression that he was a secret devotee of absinthe. Very vain and

far from sure of himself, utterly mediocre, he was anxious for Annette's

good opinion. He did not love his wife, but he found it convenient to be

pampered by her and assumed languishing, piteous, sad airs in the name

of his health, his unrecognized talents and the envy of his

fellow-writers. Annette pierced him through and through with her clear

eyes. He was cautious with her and moderated the jeremiads for which the

silent irony of his listener was waiting. But Ruth swallowed everything

whole; she was incapable of judging and as proud as Artaban. . . . "Let

her keep her illusions. She needs some one to love, a man to protect.

She has a passionately domestic soul. She would lie down under his

feet. . . ." But sometimes she quarrelled with him bitterly. Once, as

Annette was climbing the stairs, she heard the "poet" bawling and whining.

Ruth was slapping her husband.

Annette no longer had any doubt that the best part of Ruth's money was

spent for José's loafing and absinthe. He played the races also. Ruth

never complained: she struggled to save up enough for him to publish a

volume of his poems. But he was in no hurry to write them. And when, one

day, she went over her accounts she discovered that he had stolen

three-quarters of the money: he had robbed himself!

That day, with her pride utterly broken, she confessed her misery to

Annette. She would not have spoken if it had concerned herself alone.

But for years she had been wearing herself out for him--"for his glory,"

as she said. And he had destroyed it himself!

One confidence leads to another. Annette ended by learning almost all of

Ruth's sufferings. Her health was ruined. She was growing weaker every

day and less able to restrain her thoughts. As death approached her eyes

were opened and she realized the inanity of this man and his lack of

affection. José was hardly ever at home any more. He would steal away,

finding no pleasure in the society of a sick, disappointed wife.

When her last days came, Ruth had no illusions left. She declared,

however, with sincere pride, that she regretted nothing and that she

would do it all over again.

"_That_ has killed me. But I have lived by it."

She did not believe in anything; she expected nothing, either in this

world or in the other. . . .

Annette was alone with her when she lay on her deathbed. A hemorrhage of

the brain had struck her down.

José, who had fled at the approach of death, showed his timorous face a

few moments afterwards. He had a brief moment of feeling. After he had

wept, his first words were, "But what in heaven's name is to become of

me?"

"You'll find someone else to support you," said Annette.

He threw her a spiteful glance. And he let Annette pay the funeral

expenses.

"There you are!" Annette thought, by the bedside of the dead woman. "She

was a tower of pride, will, ascetic devotion. . . . What good did it all

do? What a mess! Giving oneself to a dog! Poor Ruth was hard. She was

not hard enough. One must be harder still."

XXXV

Reaction against the deception of the heart--my accursed heart which is

only there to delude me. My head and my senses will and know. My heart

is blind. It is my business to direct it. Reaction against love, and

against sacrifice, and against goodness.

In everyone's life, as in the life of society, there are phases of

feeling that succeed one another without resembling one another. Their

first law, indeed, is not to resemble one another. While one phase is in

the ascendant, everyone shares in it with complete seriousness, feeling

nothing but contempt for the ridiculousness of the phases that have

passed out of date and convinced that his phase is and will always be

the best. . . . Annette passed in this way through a phase of hardness.

But whatever one's garment may be, the human being remains the same. One

cannot get along without others. The proudest needs his share of

affection; and the more circumstances oblige one to shut oneself in, the

more one's treacherous mind conspires to betray one.

Annette felt very strong. Strong in her experience and her intelligence,

firm, practical, disillusioned. She was sure now that she could live by

her will--of course, by working, but the work too was her will. She did

not fear any lack of this. She did not need anyone's help. Nor was she

going to put herself out either to please or to displease.

She had found herself in competition lately with a new kind of rival,

men. She gave lessons to boys to prepare them for school and

examinations. She was successful, but along with her success came the

increasing animosity of those to whom she was preferred. They considered

themselves thwarted. There was no question of gallantry any more. The

most destitute of consideration were the married men: their wives

spurred them on. They slandered Annette: what would they not insinuate

in regard to the means by which she managed to reach the best places?

Annette, with her hard, attractive smile on her lips, followed her own

road, scornful of public opinion.

At bottom, however, there was the invisible stamp of the wear and tear

exacted by these long years of merciless toil. Her fortieth year was

approaching. Life had passed and she had not realized it. An obscure

feeling of revolt was rising within her. All this lost life, this life

without love, without action, without luxury, without any rich

joy. . . . And all that she had missed she had been so completely

fitted to enjoy!

What was the use of thinking of it? It was too late now!

Too late?

_SUMMER_

PART THREE

XXXVI

Solange had the small, well-rounded, rustic face of a Gothic Madonna, an

oldish, infantile air, laughing, wrinkled eyes, a pretty nose, a

delicate mouth, a rather heavy chin, fine skin and a ruddy complexion.

She liked to discuss serious thoughts in a serious tone, very serious,

contrasting comically with her kind, humorous face, which tried hard not

to be so; but her words hurried along for fear of losing the thread of

her sober ideas; and sometimes she actually did stop in mid-course with

a void in her mind: "What was it I meant to say?"

Her auditors seldom whispered a reply, for they scarcely listened to

her. But she did not irritate them, for Solange was not one of those

people who hold forth and insist upon your following their insipid

discourse. She had no pride and was ready to apologize affectionately

for having bored you. But incapable as she was by nature of grasping an

idea, she had a naïve aspiration for thought and an immense good will.

Nothing very much came of it: her thoughts never quite arrived. The

grave books, Plato, Guyau, Fouillée, yawned at the same page for weeks

or months; and the great, beautiful projects, idealistic,

altruistic--works of social aid or new systems of education--were

intellectual toys that she soon forgot in their corners and under the

furniture till the next chance brought them to her attention again. A

good little bourgeoise, gentle, amiable, pretty, sensible,

well-balanced, with a dash of pedantry, unconstrained, droll, who,

without posing, imagined that she had intellectual needs and really had

to talk about the ideal and many other things, all on the same plane,

calm, tidy, well-dressed, polite, innocent and a nobody.

Younger than Annette by three or four years, she had once felt for her

one of those paradoxical attractions that harmless natures feel for

those that are dangerous. It is true that these phenomena usually

manifest themselves at a distance. In fact, she had approached Annette

very little at school, where they were in different classes. It was only

because she saw her as she came and went and had picked up some echoes

from the older girls that little Solange had conceived for her elder a

timid fascination. Annette had had no suspicion of it; and since then

Solange had completely forgotten her. She had married, and she was

happy. Not to have been happy, she would have had to have a monster for

a husband--or a passionate man. Victor Mouton-Chevallier was, heaven be

praised, neither one nor the other. A sculptor by vocation, he was not

tormented by inspiration, for he had an income and a rich placidity. He

had no lack of taste, but he felt no pressing need of translating into

his art anything different from what had already been done by this, that

or the other of his illustrious confrères of all ages. And as he was

innocent of ambition, as he was free from illiberal feelings (from

others too, perhaps), he enjoyed an unmixed satisfaction in finding

himself so well, so completely, expressed--at least, so he flattered

himself in believing--by Michael Angelo, by Rodin, by Bourdelle, or by

the smaller gentry; for he was eclectic and found his good things

everywhere. In this happy state he would certainly not have made the

effort to produce anything himself if this had not added to his pleasure

one savor the more: the flattering illusion that he belonged to the

family. He was willing to accept the tender respect that he felt called

upon to show for the heroes of art and their misfortunes. He shared in

these latter--from afar; and he forced his jovial face to assume an air

of austere melancholy as he listened to his wife discreetly playing the

Sonata Pathétique on the piano--for Beethoven also belonged to the

family. Solange had fully responded to his domestic needs. A tranquil

affection, an easy kindness, a gentle, uniform, complacent humor, an

indoor idealism that did not risk itself outside when it was windy or

muddy, a propensity for admiring that renders life so much more

comfortable!--in short, in a word that says everything, _security_ was

their true unconfessed ideal. Their circumstances, both of fortune and

of heart, permitted them to have this. They were sheltered from material

cares, and there was no fear that they would introduce trouble into

their household.

But they did introduce Annette. If they had known the elements this Frau

Sorge carried within her, they would have been dreadfully upset. But

they did not know. They were like innocent children playing with an

explosive; they would have had an attack of nerves if they had guessed

what they held in their hands. But guessing nothing, after having their

own sport, they went and laid it down gently, without intending any

harm, in the garden of a friend. . . . They laid Annette down in the

garden of the Villards.

XXXVII

When Solange discovered Annette again, she also discovered in herself

once more the old feeling she had had for her: she fell in love with

her. Like everyone else, she knew about Annette's "irregular" life. But

in her goodness--a goodness without depth, but also without prudery--she

did not think any the worse of her. It must be said that she did not

understand it very well. With her indulgent disposition, which was the

most sympathetic side of her amiable nature, she supposed that Annette

had undoubtedly been victimized, or perhaps that she had had her own

serious reason for acting as she had done. In any case, it concerned

only herself; and she was indignant at public opinion. After seeing her

friend again, she made inquiries about her and learned of her courage

and self-abnegation; she conceived the most exaggerated admiration for

her. This was one of those periodic infatuations that left her, for a

time, no room for any other feeling. Her husband, whom she fed with her

enthusiasms, found in this one an opportunity for melting over Annette's

nobility of heart, and that of his wife, and his own as well. (Is there

anything that enables us to enjoy our own moral beauty more than to be

stirred by that of a fellow-creature?) Husband and wife tried to outbid

each other in their noble intentions towards Annette. They could not

leave her alone, destitute of sympathy, that poor woman, the victim of

social injustice! The Mouton-Chevalliers set out to find Annette,

climbing all the way up to her fifth floor. They surprised her in the

act of doing her housework. This struck them as all the more touching;

and her coldness seemed to them an admirable dignity. They did not leave

till they had won Annette's promise to come and dine with them with her

little boy, _en famille_, the following evening.

Annette was not very much pleased by this renewed friendship. She saw

how insipid it was. Her years of moral solitude had given her a savage

instinct. It was not good to avoid people too much; one found it hard to

get into touch with them again; one became aware of an odor of

corruption under the flowers. In the quiet household of the

Mouton-Chevalliers, Annette was not at her ease; their conjugal

happiness did not make her envious. "Too mild, too mild, too mild!" as

somebody says in Molière. "No, thank you! Not for me!". . . She had

reached a time when she needed the harsh winds of life. . . .

Well, she ought to have been satisfied! The mild Solange was going to

see that she got them.

XXXVIII

Annette was dressing to go out to dinner. This evening she was to meet

at the Mouton-Chevalliers those friends of whom she was sick of hearing

from Solange--Doctor Villard, a fashionable surgeon with a rather garish

reputation, and his brilliant young wife. She was troubled. "What if I

shouldn't go?" She half thought of sending a line to excuse herself. But

Marc, who was bored with being alone with his mother, was delighted at

any pretext for going out. Annette did not want to deprive him of this

distraction. Besides, she knew she was absurd. "What's the matter?

What's troubling you?". . . It was like a presentiment of evil. . . .

Silly! The rational spirit that dwelt in her, side by side with the

instincts that took no account of it, made her shrug her shoulders. She

finished her toilet and, taking her son's arm, set out for Solange's.

The superstitious instinct was not long in taking its revenge. It is no

miracle, indeed, when a presentiment is realized. A presentiment is a

predisposition towards what one is afraid of feeling. Consequently, if

it comes to pass, there is nothing magical about it. It is a sort of

divining-rod; as it approaches a spring, a shiver warns it that the

water is eating its way under the surface.

On the threshold of the drawing-room, Annette felt the warning; but she

knit her brows, and as soon as she entered the room she was reassured.

Even before Solange had presented him to her, she had made up her mind

at a glance about Philippe Villard: he was antipathetic to her. She had

a feeling of relief.

Philippe was not handsome. He was small, thick-set, with a brow that

bulged above the eyes, a strong jaw, a short, pointed beard, a steely

blue glance. Very much master of himself, he was cold in a courteous,

commanding way. Seated beside Annette at table, he followed two

conversations: the general discussion that Solange was carrying on in

her desultory manner and that which, in the intervals, he held with his

neighbor. In both he had the same brief, precise, trenchant way of

talking. Never a hesitation, either for a word or an idea. The more

Annette listened, the more hostile she felt towards him. She replied,

concealing herself under a rather dry and distant indifference. He did

not seem to attach great importance to what she said. No doubt he was

judging her from the silly eulogies he had heard from Solange. He was

barely polite. This did not surprise anyone: they were used to his

abrupt ways. But it irritated Annette to have to endure them. She

observed him beside her, without appearing to see him, feature by

feature; and she could find nothing about him that pleased her. But the

total impression was not the total of her impressions of details; and

when, without difficulty, she reached the end of her examination, she

felt uneasy again. A movement of the hand, a wrinkling of the face. . . .

She was afraid of him. And she thought, "Above everything in the

world, he mustn't see into me!"

Solange spoke of an author who, she said, had the gift of tears.

"A pretty gift!" said Philippe. "Tears in life are not worth much. But

in art I know nothing more disgusting than to collect them in a bottle."

The ladies cried out at this. Madame Villard said that tears were one of

the pleasures of life, and Solange said they were an ornament of the

soul.

"Well, how about you, don't you protest?" he asked Annette. "Do you too

get your supplies from the property-man?"

"I have enough of my own," she said. "I have no need of other people's."

"You live on your capital?"

"Can you suggest any way for me to get rid of them?"

"Be hard!"

"I'm learning," she replied.

He threw her a brief sidelong glance.

The others continued to unbosom themselves.

"Look over there," said Philippe to Annette. "There's a good chap who

ought to be taught it."

With a corner of his eye he indicated Marc, whose mobile face was

naïvely betraying the various emotions which the pretty Madame Villard,

sitting beside him, stirred in him.

"I'm afraid," said Annette, "that he already has too much of a tendency

that way."

"All the better!"

"All the better for those who meet him along the way?"

"Let him walk over them!"

"That's easy for you to say."

"You have only to step aside yourself."

"That would be against nature."

"Oh, no, the thing that's against nature is to love too much."

"One's own child?"

"Anyone, one's own child especially."

"He needs me."

"Look at him! Is he thinking of you? He would disown you for a crumb

from my wife's hand."

Annette's fingers clenched on the tablecloth. . . . Ah, how she hated

him! . . . He had seen her fingers. "I didn't create him just to give

him up."

"You didn't create him at all," he replied. "Nature created him. She

uses you and casts you aside afterward."

"I shall not let myself be cast aside."

"A battle, then?"

"A battle!"

He looked her in the face, "You will be beaten," he said.

"I know it. One always is. But what's the difference? One fights just

the same."

Under the cold mask her eyes smiled defiantly. But the blue gaze of the

other penetrated her like a stab. She had given herself away.

Philippe was a forceful man. His force was part of his genius. He

carried it as much into his clinic, in his terrible diagnostics and the

sureness of his hand, into the operating-room, as into the acts of his

life and his decisions. Accustomed to reading at a glance the depths of

human bodies, he had understood Annette completely at once--Annette, her

passions, her pride and her troubles, her temperament and her strong

nature. And Annette felt that she had been caught. With her helmet

fallen so soon, her visor broken, furiously angry, she betrayed

henceforth to the eyes of her adversary only an icy armor. In the

constriction at her heart, she knew now that the enemy had come. The

enemy? Yes, love. . . . (Ah, that insipid word, so far from the cruel

force itself! . . .) To the sudden awakening of interest which she had

perceived in him, she opposed an ironical inflexibility that very

inadequately concealed the hostility she felt. It only completed her

self-betrayal. She was too genuine, too passionate. She could not

pretend. Her very animosity revealed the depths of her being. Philippe

was the only one to see this. He did not attempt to revive the

conversation again; he had learned enough, and, with a detached air,

recounting to the company one of those bitter, amusing stories that were

stamped with his own harsh experience, he measured with his eye the

woman he intended to capture.

None of the others who were present had observed anything. The

Mouton-Chevalliers were regretfully convinced that Annette and Philippe

were unsympathetic to each other: between their two characters there was

nothing in common. However, in bringing Annette and the Villards

together, they had hoped that Annette and Mme. Villard would become

friends. "They were made for each other." And so far as that was

concerned, they had the pleasure of seeing that they were not mistaken.

Noémi Villard was a delightful Creole, with small bones, plump flesh

gilded like a roast pigeon, the eyes of a roe, a fine nose, spare

cheeks, a prominent little mouth that always seemed to be ready to snap

something up; round, innocent, youthful breasts, generously revealed,

frail arms, a slender waist, small feet, delicate legs. She played the

part of a child-woman, with her infatuations, her languors, her

enthusiasms, her laughs and tears and lisping words. She seemed to be a

fragile creature, expansive, sensitive, not too intelligent. In reality

she was just the opposite. With plenty of brains, sensual, dry and

passionate, observing everything, calculating everything, unweariable,

unbreakable, fragile, yes, like a willow that bends and--bing!--comes

lashing back, made of solid cement under the friable enamel. She alone

could have told how much energy this delicate enamel cost. As for

intelligence, she had enough of it and to spare: she kept it in the

bank, but she utilized it only for the object that interested her, her

husband, whom she held jealously. Theirs had been, on both sides, a

passionate marriage of the head and the senses--passionate in its

pleasures and its vanity. Noémi's decision had long preceded Philippe's

choice, and even his attention. This man who, after the example of his

illustrious Parisian confrères, carried on with equal ardor his

crushing professional activity and a ceaseless social life, had found

the time to indulge in many love affairs. His triumphant reputation had

had a good deal to do with Noémi's mad love and her determined desire

to capture him, for herself alone, and keep him. Philippe cared nothing

about intelligence in women. He wanted them to be well-made, healthy,

elegant and stupid. He went so far as to say that a woman could never be

stupid enough. Noémi certainly was not, but that made no difference. A

woman who desires a man can assume, before her mirror, the mind as well

as the eyes that he likes. She intoxicated Philippe with her youthful

body and her idolatry. She absorbed him greedily.

But the career of a mistress is not a sinecure. It requires the

expenditure of a kind of genius. And there is never a moment of rest!

After a long period of mutual amorous servitude Philippe was beginning

to grow weary. Noémi, marvellously prompt in perceiving in the heart of

her husband-lover the least signs of a veering of the wind, slept with

one eye open; always jealously on the watch, while Philippe was unaware

of it, she was able to turn danger aside with one stroke and entrap

again, by the allurement of the senses and her subtle wit, the man who

was about to escape her. It was a game at first, but not for long. Still

more than Philippe she had to watch herself, to be always attentive,

always ready to ward off the unexpected ravages of the perfidious

minutes, the infallible ravages of the days and the years. Noémi no

longer had all her first freshness; her complexion was mottled; the

fineness of her face was turning to dryness, her throat was growing

heavy, and the pure cords of her neck were menaced. Art flew to the aid

of the endangered masterpiece and even added a few additional charms.

But what tension this always meant! The least moment of abandon would

have betrayed the secret to the keen eye of the master, who would not

have forgotten it. Never to allow oneself to be taken unawares! . . .

What a tragedy one morning when one of the little upper incisors broke!

Noémi had remained half the day invisible at the dentist's, for if, on

her return, Philippe had not seen her exhibit her impeccable smile, he

would have had suspicions into which jealousy did not enter. (Though

even jealousy is less terrible than a broken tooth!) She had to play a

fast game. Philippe was not one of those husbands whom one can easily

deceive in regard to the quality of one's physical wares. He belonged to

that trade himself. Noémi always felt her heart beat a little when he

turned on her one of those "X-Ray" glances (as she called them,

laughing, to put him on the wrong scent) with which he made her undergo

a visit of inspection. "Does he see?" she would, wonder. He saw, but he

did not show it. Noémi's art seemed to him a part of nature; and so

long as the effect pleased him everything went well. But look out for

the day when the effect might fail! . . . She could not sleep two nights

running on her laurels. She had to win them anew every morrow morning.

And she was not permitted to appear anxious. To please the master she

had to seem always gay, young, radiant. It was crushing at times. In

moments of weariness, when she knew she was not being seen, she slid

down in the hollow of a divan, with a hard wrinkle between her eyes, a

shrivelled smile, her carmine lips bleeding. . . . But the attack of

weakness never lasted more than a minute or two. She had to set out

again. And she did set out. Young, gay, radiant. . . . Why not? She was

so. And she did not slacken. . . . Besides, there are ways of avenging

oneself against, a tyrant whom one cannot do without and who abuses one.

Enough! She had her secrets. . . . We shall speak of them presently if

she is willing. For the moment she laughs, not merely with her lips; she

is satisfied with herself and with him, she is sure, she has kept

him! . . . And naturally this is the hour when he escapes from her. . . .

In vain all her talent! All this trouble in vain! There always comes a

moment when the attention is relaxed. Even Argus slept. And the caged

animal, the heart of the chambered lover, regains its liberty.

Through one of those aberrations to which nature is accustomed, which

the good mediator finds to her advantage, Noémi, for once, saw a woman

without distrust. And that woman was Annette.

She was relying on the deceptive assurance that Philippe abhorred

intellectual women. Annette was the last one to cause her any

uneasiness. From the physical portrait of her rivals in the past, from

her own portrait, Noémi had made an image of the woman who might steal

her husband away from her. She saw her as small, like herself, rather

dark, pretty, of course, delicately made, coquettish, knowing how to

make the best of her advantages. Philippe professed the humorous opinion

that woman, being exclusively made for the service of man, should, in

modern life, be an extremely finished drawing-room trinket, but one that

was easy to handle--that, without taking up too much space, she should

agreeably furnish the drawing-room and bedroom. He did not like large

women and valued grace more highly than beauty. As for the qualities of

the mind, he said that, when he needed them, he found them in men, and

that the only mind he demanded of a woman was the "mind of the body."

Noémi did not contradict him in this: she corresponded with the

portrait. Annette did not correspond with it at all. Large and strong,

with a heavy beauty, in repose, when nothing animated her, and (when she

did not wish to have it) without grace. A Juno-heifer slumbering in a

meadow--so Noémi judged her reassuringly; and the fact that Annette

appeared so frigid with Philippe made her attractive. On her side,

Annette, who was very susceptible to prettiness in women, and inclined

to like what did not resemble herself, was charmed by Noémi; in talking

with her she showed that she too, when she wished, had an enchanting

smile. Philippe lost nothing of this; and his new-born flame blazed up

for this Annette with her two masks, one of which was not for him.

(Wasn't it for him? The love one repulses has such clever ways of

re-entering the place from which it has been expelled!) At the same time

that Annette was preventing Philippe from scrutinizing her mind and

intrenching herself behind her most unattractive manner, she was not

displeased that he should see her most captivating expression over the

wall. . . . Yes, he had seen it clearly. From the opposite corner of the

drawing-room, as he was describing to his hosts some recent experience,

he observed his wife, who was working for him unawares. Annette and

Noémi were lavishing on each other all the little graces with which

Noémi was always well supplied, inspiring in Annette a complex feeling

from which the uneasy thought of Philippe was not absent. And her ear

followed, from the opposite corner of the room, the derisive voice that

knew it was being listened to.

She hated him, she hated him. . . . He represented the deepest part of

her repressed nature, the nature she wished to repress, the good and the

bad, the hard, commanding pride, the need of dominating, the demands of

the will, those of the intelligence, of a sensual, violent body, passion

without love, stronger than love. And as she hated this faun of the

soul, hated it in herself, she hated it in him. But this was to engage

in an unequal combat. There were two against her--he and her own self.

XXXIX

Philippe Villard came from the small, independent merchant class.

His father, a printer in a little town, active, bustling, bold, had at

once the energy and the freedom from scruple that are necessary for

success on a vaster scene; but he did not succeed, because for success

there is a line of audacity that one must be able to reach and not go

beyond, and he had always gone beyond it. Managing a local newspaper

that swam on the troubled waters of politics, a Gambettist republican, a

tireless anti-clerical, a great hand at elections, he once exceeded the

limits of libel and blackmailing that are authorized by the law (no, by

custom!) and was condemned and dropped by those whom he had served. Ill

in addition, he saw that he was ruined; his plant was sold and all the

local hatreds were unmuzzled, now that he no longer had the means to

make himself useful or feared. He fought furiously, like a wolf, against

illness, poverty and misfortune. The exasperation made his condition

worse, and he died, expressing with his last breath his implacable

bitterness against the treason of his old companions. The son was ten

years old; and none of these imprecations was lost on him.

His mother, a proud peasant woman from the slopes of the Jura mountains,

accustomed to struggling with an ungrateful soil that was bitten by a

harsh wind, went out by the day as a washerwoman in the canal and

undertook the roughest work. She was as strong as a Percheron mare,

attacking her work with her four limbs and her iron frame, greedy for

gain, but painstaking, honest, hard on herself and close-fisted; she was

feared and sought after; she had a redoubtable tongue, which she

restrained, and people knew that, through her husband's death, she was

the mistress of many family secrets. She made no use of these, but she

possessed them, and it was more prudent to pay for her services than to

do without them. She had no intellectual scruples and was rigorously

active, rather sombre (for in this race Spain has left its blood), with

a limitless passion of energy which, mingled with Gallic

disillusionment, believes in nothing and yet acts as if salvation or

damnation were awaiting it. She loved nothing but her son. She was

ferocious in her love. She did not conceal from him any of the things

about which she held her tongue with other people; she treated him as a

partner. Ambitious for him alone, she sacrificed herself, and he was

going to sacrifice himself--for whom? For _her_ revenge. (_Hers_? Yes,

her own, that of the son, that of the mother--all the same thing!) No

tenderness, no indulgence--above all, no whimpering. "Go without things!

You will gloat over it later." When he came home from school--heaven

knew by what efforts of work and diplomacy she obtained for him a

scholarship in the town grammar-school, then at the lycée in the

county-town!--when he came home, thrashed and humiliated by the little

bourgeois boys, the fool-hardy heirs of the hidden spite of their

fathers, she said to him, "You will be stronger than they are later.

They will kiss your feet. Rely on yourself! Don't rely on anyone else!"

He did not rely on anyone else, and he soon made it clear that they

would have to reckon with him. She succeeded in clinging to life until

her son's studies were brilliantly finished and he had taken his first

term in medicine in Paris. He was in the midst of an examination when

she had to take to her bed with an inflammation of the chest. She did

not want to disturb him before he had finished. She died without him. In

her rude handwriting, twisted like the claws of the vine in spring, with

all the dots and accents well marked and in their places, she wrote to

him on a blank sheet carefully cut from a letter from her son, who was

reckless with his paper, "I am going. My boy, keep strong. Do not give

way."

He had not given way. Returning to the country to bury his mother, he

found a small sum of money, collected from day to day, which enabled him

to pay his way for another year. Then, thrown upon himself, he spent

half his days and sometimes his nights earning what the other half

demanded for his subsistence. No task was too much for him. He worked at

natural history for a taxidermist, he served as a sculptor's model, as

an extra boy on Sundays in suburban cafés, or on Saturday nights at

wedding-parties in restaurants. In winter, when he was hungry one

morning, he even took a job under the sewerage commission in a gang of

snow-sweepers. He did not hesitate to have recourse to bold-faced

begging, to charity societies, to accepting humiliating loans which he

could not pay back and which gave mean souls the right to treat him

without consideration for a five-franc piece. . . . (The blackguards!

They didn't try it again after the look he gave them! But then, since

they could not repay themselves with scorn, they did so with hatred,

prudently behind his back: they slandered him.) During a few months of

desperate labor, he went so far as to accept the money that a girl of

the neighborhood offered him. He did not blush at this, for it was not

for himself (he was killing himself with privations), it was for his

success. Of course he had needs! He wanted to take everything, but he

repressed his desire. Later on! He must conquer first. And to conquer he

must live. Live by every means. Victory cleanses everything. And it was

his due. He felt he was a genius.

He attracted the attention of his masters, his comrades. He was given

work to do that was signed by men at the top after they had made a

pretence of touching it up a little. He allowed himself to be exploited

so as to acquire a hold over those who barred the gates to new-comers.

They were in no great hurry to let him in. They respected him, and

respect is a kind of money that enables one to dispense with other

kinds. They appreciated him, oh, yes. But he did not grow fat on this.

In spite of his native strength, the strength of his mother's Jura

mountains, he was on the point of going under from fatigue and

malnutrition when Solange happened upon him. It was at one of those many

charities which she patronized with a sincere though intermittent

generosity, with her heart and her money; a children's clinic. Solange

saw Philippe there, devoting himself with a rage--that rage he felt to

conquer, whenever there was the least chance of it--at the beds of the

little patients who were apparently doomed. He spent nights there and

came away from these battles looking worn and debilitated, but with eyes

flaming with fever and genius. When he had conquered he was almost

handsome and seemed more than good as he sat by the little sufferer whom

he had just saved. Did he love him? It was possible, not certain. But he

had got the best of the disease.

Solange, when she saw Philippe's situation, passed through one of those

periodical crises of "patheticness" in which her whole horizon was

filled by a single object. Whoever wished to profit by this had to lose

no time. Philippe did not lose it. This drowning man grasped the hand

that was held out to him. He even took the arm with it, and he would

have taken the rest if he had not perceived that Solange, in her

infatuation, had no thought of an amorous relation. She loved to feel

exalted, but this in no way disturbed her tranquillity. Philippe had

never seen a woman who was interested in him without being in pursuit of

some interest of her own. The good Solange found her pleasure in

herself. All she asked of others was that they should not gainsay the

image she had formed of them. At heart she did not really want to know

them. She took pains not to see anything in the other person that might

displease her, saying to herself that this was not his "real nature";

and she accepted as real only what resembled herself. Thus she succeeded

in creating in her own mind a whole universe composed of good,

comfortable souls after her own pattern. Philippe let her go her own way

with a little contempt and a little respect. He did not like stupid

people; and he regarded as such those who did not see the world as it

was; but a goodness that does the good of which it speaks was for him no

everyday spectacle. Whatever their value might be, moral or immoral, the

essential thing was that such people counted. Solange's goodness was not

fictitious. Since she had become aware of Philippe's destitution and

toil, she gave him a pension till he finished his years of study; she

provided him with leisure so that he might work in peace. She did more:

she made use of her extensive relations to interest one of the

influential masters of the Faculty in him, or rather, since this

cautious man had not failed to observe the restless power of the hungry

young wolf, to so arrange things that his interest should not remain

confined _intus et in cute_, but should show itself in the open. In the

end she brought him into touch with an American oil-king who wanted to

immortalize himself vicariously and opened for him a rapid path to fame.

He laid the foundation of this across the ocean by his audacious feats

of surgery in a palatial hospital founded by this Pharaoh.

During the course of these trying years, however, Solange would

sometimes totally forget her protégé for months, and as a result of

her carelessness the promised pension would cease to come. With all

their good will, the rich cannot understand that some people have to

think of money all the time. Money is a constant anxiety with the poor.

Solange would send Philippe tickets to concerts. Philippe had to swallow

all his pride to remind this charming woman, in her box at the theatre,

of the unpaid pension. He swallowed it. It was sometimes the only

nutriment he had taken during the day. On these occasions Solange would

open her big, surprised eyes: "What's that. . . . Ah, my dear friend,

how astonished I am! The moment I get home . . ."

She would promise, forget it again for a day or two and finally send it,

excusing herself as gracefully as possible. Philippe, maddened by the

delay and the humiliation, would swear that the next time he would die

rather than ask for it again. But dying is not good for people who feel

the necessity of living! And he felt this necessity. . . . He would ask

for it again as often as he was obliged to do so. . . . Solange was

never put out with him. If she often forgot--she had "so much to think

of!"--when he reminded her of it she always took the same pleasure in

giving.

How strange was the relation between this man, young, ardent, hungry for

all the good things of the earth, and this woman, scarcely older than

himself, elegant, pretty, gentle, good enough to eat, who, as the years

passed, were often alone together, without any hint of anything

equivocal in their friendship! The calm Solange maternally advised

Philippe about his clothes, about the little problems of society and the

practical life. Philippe's pride was not ashamed to accept this, to ask

advice and even make her his confidante, to tell her of his ambitions

and his disappointments. He could do so without fear. Solange would hear

nothing that was evil, nothing that was real. What did it matter? She

listened, and she said afterwards, with her kind smile, "You want to

frighten me, but I don't believe you."

For she only believed what was not true.

And this man, pitiless to everything that was mediocre, made only one

exception in life: for Solange. He abstained from judging her.

Preceded by a reputation of the American kind, flashy, but substantial,

and based on indisputable realities, he had come back to Paris seven or

eight years before. The support of his patron, bringing official favor

with it in the wake of his insolent dollars, had opened a way for him in

spite of the triple barriers piled up by routine, jealousy and the just

rights of those who had been long awaiting their turn to enter. Whether

it was just or not, he was advanced over them all. Philippe had not

permitted himself to accept any honors or advantages he had not

deserved; but, knowing that he deserved them, he did not trouble himself

about the means by which he got them. He despised men too much not to

borrow their own contemptible weapons, when it was necessary, in order

to get the better of them. He did not despise a newspaper puff that

pierced people's ears like the brass instruments that used to accompany

the village tooth-pullers on their platforms. He was a great man for

fashionable exhibitions, first nights, varnishing-days, official galas.

He lent himself to sensational interviews. He himself wrote--one is

never served better than by oneself--and, through one or two examples,

showed those who contradicted him that he could handle the pen as well

as the knife. A counsel for amateurs! . . . Never be ambiguous! His way

of holding out his hand meant, "Alliance or war?" He allowed no means to

escape him by being neutral.

At the same time, a habit of working desperately, with no more

consideration for himself than he had for others, an indifference to

risks, brilliant results that could not be denied, made the internes in

the hospital he directed his enthusiastic partisans. He indulged in rash

communications to the Academy that aroused the exasperated incredulity

of comfortably settled souls who did not like to be turned upside down:

Homeric jousts from which he almost always emerged with the decisive

word and always with the last one.

He terrified the timid. He had no regard for individuals when the

interests of science or humanity seemed to him at stake. He would have

liked to experiment on criminals, destroy monsters, sterilize the

abnormal, undertake heroic operations on living subjects. He loathed

sentimentality. He did not give way to sympathy with his patients, and

he did not allow them to pity themselves. Their groans had no interest

for him. But when he was able to save them he did save them--harshly; he

cut down to the quick to cure the living man. He was hard of heart, but

his hands were gentle. People were afraid of him and they pursued him.

He fleeced the rich and asked nothing of the poor.

He lived in a large way, for he had acquired the taste for luxury. He

could give it up, however, on a day's notice; but, leading this life, he

led it whole-heartedly. His wife was part of his luxury. He enjoyed them

both and he never demanded of them anything they could not give. He did

not ask Noémi to share in his intellectual life; he did not give her a

chance to do so. Noémi did not care; if she had the rest, she had, as

she thought, the important part. He had made up his mind that in any

case this was all that women ought to have. A woman who thought was a

cumbersome bit of furniture.

Why, then, was he so immediately captivated by Annette?

Through that which resembled himself. Through the quality in the Annette

of this period that was like himself, the quality he alone could

perceive. At the first crossing of their glances, as their first

responses struck, steel against steel, he said to himself, "She sees

these people as I see them. She's one of my kind."

Of his kind? It scarcely seemed so, to judge by the facts. Annette had

fallen out of the social sphere into which Philippe had succeeded in

elbowing himself, and they had met each other, in passing, on one of the

rungs of the ladder. But at this particular moment they were on an equal

footing, they both felt that they were strangers in this world,

adversaries of this world, that they both really belonged to another

race, once mistress of the soil, but now dispossessed, scattered over

the earth and almost vanished. After all, who knows the mysteries of

races and their vicissitudes, that mingling of all, in the ultimate

future towards which, as it seems, humanity is moving for the final

triumph of mediocrity? . . . But it has its unexpected resurgences, and

sometimes the former master of the soil resumes his estate for a day.

Whether it was his estate or not, Philippe claimed it as his own. And in

this way he had just appropriated Annette.

XL

When Annette returned to her apartment again, with lowered head, heavy

with thought, she went to bed without speaking. She tried to make her

mind a blank, but she could not sleep. She had to struggle to escape

from a certain mental picture, for the moment she became drowsy the

picture appeared at the door of her imagination. To forget it she tried

to fix her mind on her everyday affairs: they did not interest her. Then

she appealed against the threatening invasion to an ally whom she

usually feared to invoke, because by doing so she ran the ride of

stirring up too many past troubles: Julien and the world of thoughts,

more fictitious than real, which her regrets and dreams had grouped

about the beloved name. They returned for a moment and fell back again,

frozen. She persisted in trying to grasp them by force. She held in her

arms only withered sheaves. A hot sun had dried up their sap. In her

desire to revive them Annette, with her feverish hands, only burned them

up. She was agitated, turning and turning her pillow. But she had to

sleep for the sake of to-morrow's work. She took a sleeping-powder and

fell into oblivion. But when she awoke after three or four hours, her

anxiety was still there. It seemed to her that even during her sleep it

had not left her.

During the next day and the days that followed, her anxiety persisted.

She came and went, gave her lessons, talked, laughed as usual. The

well-equipped machine went on of itself. But her soul was troubled.

One grey day, as she was crossing Paris, everything suddenly became

bright. On the other side of the street Philippe Villard was passing.

She went home filled with joy.

When she made up her mind to get to the bottom of this joy she was

thunderstruck. It was as if she had discovered a cancer in herself. . . .

So once more she had been caught in the trap. Love? Love for a man who

could only be for her another cause for useless suffering, a man whom

she was sure was dangerous, heartless, a man who could not belong to

her, who belonged to someone else, a man she could not love because she

loved someone else. Someone else? Yes, yes, she still loved Julien.

Well, if she loved him, how was it possible for her to love another man?

She did love him. . . . But how, how could her heart give itself to two

persons at once? Give itself wholly to each without dividing itself? For

when she gave her heart Annette gave it completely. . . . She had a

feeling that she was prostituting herself. To be sure, to surrender her

body would have seemed to her less shameful than to surrender her heart

to two loves at once. Wasn't she sincere, loyal to herself? . . . Of

course she was. She did not know that she had more than one heart, that

she was more than one being. In the forest of a soul there co-exist

thickets of thoughts, jungles of desire, twenty different essences.

Ordinarily one does not distinguish them: they are asleep. But when the

wind passes over them their branches dash against one another. . . . The

clash of passions had long since stirred this multiplicity to life in

Annette. She was at once a dutiful and a passionately proud woman, a

passionate mother, a passionate mistress. Mistress? Mistresses? The

forest in the wind with its branches flung out toward all the points of

heaven. . . . Annette, humiliated by the oppression of the force that

was disposing of her without her consent, thought: "What is the use of

willing and struggling for years if one moment is enough to ruin

everything? Where does this force come from?"

For she repudiated it, furiously, as something alien. Didn't she

recognize it as of her own substance? Ah, that was even more

overwhelming. How escape from herself?

She was not the sort of woman who yields passively to an inner fatality

that she despised. She determined to stifle a feeling that mortified

her. And with the help of her work she would have succeeded had it not

been for Noémi.

She received a letter in the large handwriting of this little person

who, although she had made a study of worldly elegance, was unable to

disguise the cold resolution that lay behind it. A few friendly lines

inviting her to dinner. Annette excused herself because of her work.

Noémi repeated the invitation, expressing this time the warm desire she

felt to see her again and leaving her to choose the evening. Annette,

determined not to risk a danger of which she had become aware, declined

the invitation again, pleading her extreme fatigue at the end of her

days. She thought the matter was settled, but the little Pandarus, who,

when he is bored and malicious, is one of the thousand forms of love,

left Noémi no peace until she had introduced Annette into her

sheepfold. And one evening when Annette, returned from her lessons, was

preparing dinner--the hour that idle people always choose to make their

calls--who should appear but Noémi, chirping, assuring her of her

eternal friendship. While Annette, embarrassed at appearing at such a

disadvantage, was beguiled by the affectionate manner of this woman in

whom she unconsciously loved the reflection of "the other one," she held

her ground, in spite of Noémi's entreaties, and absolutely refused to

dine with her. But she could not do less than promise to return her

call, carefully making sure of the hours when she would be certain to

find Noémi alone. Noémi perceived how anxious Annette was to avoid

Philippe; she put it down to timidity and a lack of sympathy with him.

Her own sympathy increased. When she was at home again she indiscreetly

poured out to Philippe an account of her call, dwelling, with the

charming perfidy of the best of friends, upon everything which, to her

mind, might tend to depreciate a woman in Philippe's eyes: the poverty,

the disorder, the odor of ink and cooking--in a word, Annette in the

kitchen. Philippe, who knew all about Annette's gallant history and who

knew still better the odor of poverty, made other reflections than those

he was expected to make, but he kept them to himself.

It was not altogether by chance that Annette, a few days later, as she

was coming out of Noémi's house, met Philippe in the street on his way

home. As she had not expected to meet him, she felt she had a right not

to combat the secret joy that ran through her. They exchanged a few

words. While they stopped to talk, a young woman passed to whom Philippe

bowed. Annette recognized her. She was the intelligent actress who was

playing Maslova just then. Annette was attracted to her, and this

attraction was evident in her look. Philippe asked: "Do you know her?"

"I have seen her," she said, "in _Resurrection_."

"Ah," he replied, with a contemptuous curve of his mouth.

"Don't you like her acting?"

"Her acting isn't the point."

"Is it the play then? You don't like it?"

"No," said Philippe. And seeing that Annette was curious to know his

reasons, he added, "Let's walk a little way together, shall we? It's

rather unconventional, but conventions were not made for us."

They walked along together. Annette was embarrassed and flattered.

Philippe talked about the play with a mixture of hostility and humor

such as Tolstoy himself--it was a fair enough turn of the wheel--had

often employed in regard to people he did not like. He interrupted

himself, amused at his severity, "I am not fair. . . . When I see a play

I see those who are watching it. I see under their membranes, and the

spectacle is not beautiful."

"It is with some people," said Annette.

"Yes, there are some people who have the gift of making the misery of

the world seem beautiful. This saves them the trouble of remedying it.

These good idealists manage to have many a sweet hour with the

misfortunes of others. They serve them as a means for artistic or

charitable emotions of the most tranquillizing kind, but they are of

even more service to the villains who exploit them. Their sentimentality

flies its protecting flag over patriotic leagues, leagues for

repopulation, the founding of missions, colonial wars and other

philanthropies. . . . The epoch of the teary eye! . . . There is no eye

that is colder and more self-interested! The epoch of the kind

employer--you have read Pierre Hamp?--who builds a church, a

slaughter-house, a hospital and a brothel near his factory! Their lives

are divided into two parts: one consists of talking about civilization,

progress, democracy, the other of the sordid exploitation and

destruction of the whole future of the world, the corruption of the

race, the annihilation of the other races of Asia and Africa. . . .

After this they go and melt with emotion over Maslova and take their

afternoon nap to the soft harmonies of Debussy. . . . Look out when the

awakening comes! Ferocious hatreds are piling up. The catastrophe is

coming. . . . So much the better! All their dirty medicine does is to

keep diseases going. Some day they will have to come to surgery."

"Will the patient recover?"

"I take away the disease. The patient has to take his chance!"

A joke. Annette smiled. Philippe threw her a sidelong glance. "It

doesn't frighten you?"

"I am not ill," said Annette.

He stopped and looked at her. "No, you are not. In your presence one

breathes the fragrance of health. It frees me from my physical and moral

infections. The latter are the worst. Excuse my diatribe! But I've come

from a meeting, a dispute with a gang of hypocrites over the official

support of disease--that is, over hygiene. I was furious and suffocating

with disgust, and when I saw you with your clear eyes, walking along so

freely, with everything about you so proud and wholesome, I selfishly

drank in a whiff of your air. There! It's better now. Thank you."

"So I'm promoted to the rank of a doctor. And after what you have just

been saying about them?"

"Doctor, no. Medicine. Oxygen."

"You have a direct way with people!"

"This is the way I class them: inspiration, expiration, those who bring

you to life and those who kill you, whom you must kill."

"Whom do you want to kill now?"

"Now?" He took her up. "Don't you think I have enough to do with my

patients?"

"No, no, I couldn't help saying that," replied Annette, laughing. "It

was my old classic blood. . . . But may I ask you with whom you were

angry when I met you?"

"I should so much like to forget it, now that I'm with you. To put it

briefly, it was about a block of unsanitary houses that has been a

breeding-ground for cancer and tuberculosis ever since the time of Henry

IV. The finished product: eighty per cent infected during the last

twenty years. I had brought the matter before the sanitary board and

demanded radical measures, that the buildings should be expropriated and

torn down. They seemed to agree with me and asked me to draw up a

report. I drew up the report, went back and found that the oracles had

changed their minds. . . . An impressive report, dear and eminent

colleague, a fine document. We must think it over. We must look into

this. There is no doubt that these people have died, but were their

deaths really due to the houses they lived in? . . . One of them brings

me some certificates (manufactured how?) proving, with the complicity of

various families who had been bribed by the owner, that one man had

already bought his ticket to the cemetery when he came and settled in

the waiting-room, that in another case the cancer was the result of an

accident. Another contests the idea that old houses are less sanitary

than new ones and says they are larger and more airy; he gives his own

as an example. . . . We must make things sanitary, not destroy.

Moderation in all things. A good cleaning will be enough; the owner

promises to have them disinfected. . . . Besides, we are poor, our

pockets are empty, we haven't the money to expropriate them. . . . Ah!

if it were a question of making a new gun! . . . But, after all, cancer

kills more surely than a gun. . . . To finish the farce, one of the

augurs ended by talking about beauty. It seems that since these

buildings belonged to the period of Henry IV, they ought to be preserved

for the sake of history and art. . . . I am fond of art myself, and I

can show you some pictures in my own house, ancient and modern both; but

age (unless we are talking about beautiful Madame So-and-So) is not the

mark of beauty; and, beautiful or not, I shall never admit that the past

should poison the present. Of all hypocrisies, the aesthetic hypocrisy

revolts me the most, for it tries to create nobility out of its own

barrenness. So I said some pretty stiff things on that score. . . . In

the middle of the discussion a colleague motioned to me, drew me aside

and said, 'Don't you know that old beetle who feeds on the corpses

of his tenants is an intimate friend of the president of that great

committee of commerce and food-supply which brings about elections and

coalitions, one of those grizzled dignitaries who rule over our

democratic banquets and conventions, the invisible man out of whom the

rabble constructs the tottering masonry--freemasonry--of our Republic?

This friend of the people doesn't want to have the people turned out of

their tomb . . . because, and this is the best of all . . . because of

his philanthropy. . . .' At the end they hand me a petition from the

tenants, drawn up in fine style, protesting against this desire to turn

them out of their quarters! What do you expect me to do against all

these people? The augurs laugh, they say. So I laughed. But I added that

one shouldn't keep a good joke to oneself, that I was not an egoist, and

that I intended to share it to-morrow with the readers of the _Matin_.

They cried out at this, but I shall do as I said. I know what to expect;

every knife will be raised against me. . . . The disciples of

Hippocrates, to whom I've just given a good drubbing, will miss no

chance. They have their own way of getting back at me. But, as you say,

'War,' my Lady Warrior! How about the other evening at Solange's? All

this seems to amuse you?"

"Yes, it's splendid. I like this, fighting against injustice. I should

have liked to be a man."

"There is no need to be a man. You have done your share. . . ."

"I have never complained of my share in the struggle. It's only the

suffocation. Our lot is to fight in a cave, but you fight in the open

air, on a mountain-top."

"Ah! that quivering of the nostrils! A horse sniffing the powder. I've

seen that already. I noticed it the other evening."

"You laughed at me the other evening."

"Not at all. It was too much like myself for me to laugh."

"You harassed me; you started me off."

"Yes, I saw it at once. . . . I wasn't mistaken. . . ." "Just the same,

you were contemptuous enough in the beginning."

"How the devil could I have expected to find you, to find you at

Solange's house?"

"Well, but what about yourself? Why were you there?"

"It's another matter with me."

"A liking for sentimentality?"

"It's your turn to tease. . . . Poor Solange! . . . No, don't let's talk

about her. I know everything that can be said. But Solange is taboo."

She did not question him, but she looked at him.

"I'll tell you some other time. . . . Yes, I owe her a great deal."

They had come to a stop. They were about to separate. Annette smiled.

"You are not as bad as you seem."

"And perhaps you're not as good!"

"That makes an average."

He looked her directly in the eyes. "Will you?"

He was no longer joking. The blood streamed into Annette's cheeks, and

she could not find a way to reply. Philippe's eyes held her and would

not let her go. Was he saying something? Was he not saying anything? On

his lips she read, "I want you."

He bowed and went on.

XLI

Annette remained alone in a torrent of flame. She walked straight ahead

and ten minutes later she found herself at the point from which she had

started. Without realizing it, she had made the complete circuit of the

iron fence of the Luxembourg Gardens. She came to herself to find that

she was all on fire, with the three flaming words engraved on a black

background. She made an effort to efface them. Had he uttered them? . . .

She saw again the impassive face, she tried to disbelieve it. But the

imprint was there, and her resistance weakened and suddenly gave way.

Well, it was decreed. . . . She knew it in advance. . . Instead of

revolting, as she would have thought of doing an hour before, she felt

relieved. The die was cast. . . .

She went home with her mind clear, no longer feverish. She had decided.

She knew that whatever Philippe wished he would do, and what Philippe

wished she wished also. She was free, nothing held her back. . . . The

thought of Noémi? She owed her only one thing, the truth. She would not

lie. She would take what belonged to her. . . . What belonged to her?

The other woman's husband. . . . But blind passion whispered to her that

Noémi had stolen him from her.

She did nothing to hasten the inevitable. She was sure that Philippe

would come. She waited.

He came. He had chosen the hour when he knew that she would be alone.

As she went to open the door she was seized with terror. But it had to

be as it was. She opened the door, revealing nothing of what she felt,

unless her paleness did so. He entered the room. They remained standing

before each other, a few steps apart, their heads lowered; then he

looked at her with his serious eyes. After a silence he said, "I love

you, Rivière."

And this name of Rivière in his mouth brought up the image of a stream

of water.

Annette, trembling, motionless, replied, "I don't know whether I love

you. I don't think I do, but I know that I am yours."

The gleam of a smile passed over Philippe's grave face. "Good," he said.

"You don't lie. Neither do I."

He took a step towards her. She drew back instinctively and found

herself leaning against the wall of the room, defenceless, the palms of

her hands pressed out behind her, and her legs gave way beneath her. He

had stopped and he looked at her. "Don't be afraid," he said. There was

something tender in his hard look.

Like a captive who accepts her fate calmly, she said, with a shadow of

scorn, "What do you want of me? Is it my body you want? I will not

dispute with you over that. Is that the only thing you want?"

He took another step and sat down on a low chair at her feet. His cheek

brushed her dress. He took Annette's hand, which she limply abandoned to

him. He breathed in its fragrance, passed his lips over the fingertips

and, bending down, placed it on his head, on his eyes. "This is what I

want."

Under her fingers, Annette felt the rough, bushy hair, the swelling of

the forehead and the beating temples. This imperious man was placing

himself under her protection. She leaned towards him and he raised his

face. It was their first kiss.

His arms encircled Annette, who had dropped on her knees beside him and

no longer resisted, as if she had no breath left, and Philippe, violent

as he was, had no thought of taking advantage of his victory. "I want

everything," he said, "all of you, mistress, friend, companion--my woman

altogether."

Annette extricated herself. Noémi's image had risen before her. A

moment before it had been she who had driven her from her consciousness.

But that Philippe should do the same thing wounded her in a way, wounded

her in that instinctive freemasonry of women who, even as enemies, find

themselves leagued against the aggressiveness of man--one body in

common.

"You cannot," said Annette. "You belong to another."

He shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing of me that she possesses."

"She has your name and your faith."

"What does the name matter? You have the rest."

"I don't care about the name, but I must have your faith. I give it and

I ask for it."

"I am ready to give it to you."

But Annette, who had asked for it, felt a certain revolt when it was

offered to her. "No! no! Do you mean to take it away from her who has

shared your life for years and give it to me whom you have only seen

three times?"

"It has not required three times for me to see you."

"You don't know me."

"I do know you. I have learned to see into life quickly. Life goes by

and no moment ever appears twice. You must make up your mind on the spot

or you can never make it up. You are passing, Rivière, and if I do not

take you I lose you. I take you."

"You may be making a mistake."

"Perhaps. I know that when one makes a decision one often makes a

mistake. But in not deciding one always makes a mistake. I should never

forgive myself the error of having seen you without determining to

possess you."

"What do you know about me?"

"More than you think. I know that you have been rich and that you are

poor, that you had a youth filled with all the pleasures of wealth and

that you were ruined and cast out of your world, that you have struggled

and not weakened. I know what your struggle has been, for I underwent it

myself, every day, for thirty years of my life, a hand-to-hand struggle,

and twenty times I was on the point of giving in. You have held out. As

for me, I was used to it. I have known abject poverty from the cradle.

You had a thin skin, and you were pampered and made much of. You did not

yield. You have never accepted any shameful compromise. You never tried

to escape the struggle by any feminine means, seduction or the honest

expedient of a marriage for money."

"Do you imagine it has been offered to me so many times?"

"That is because they knew very well, even the meanest of them, that you

are not a person to be bought by contract."

"Inalienable, yes."

"I know that after having loved and had a child you refused to be the

wife of your child's father. I do not need to know the reasons of your

heart. But I do know that in the face of a cowardly society, you dared

to demand, not the right to enjoy, but the right to suffer, the right to

have a son and bring him up, in your poverty, alone. It was nothing to

have demanded this right, but you have exercised it, all by yourself,

for thirteen years. And knowing, through my own experience, what these

thirteen years mean in suffering and daily effort, I see you before me,

intact, straight, proud, without a trace of wear and tear. You have

escaped two defeats, that of failure and that of bitterness . . . I

myself have not escaped the mark of the latter. . . . I am a connoisseur

of the battle of life. I know what the quality of a character like yours

is worth. That serious smile, those clear eyes, the calm line of the

lids, the loyalty of those hands, that tranquil harmony--and, under it

all, the burning fire, the joyous thrill of the struggle, even if one is

beaten. (It doesn't seem to matter! One goes on fighting . . .) Do you

suppose that a man like myself does not know the value of a woman like

you? Or that, knowing it, he should not be ready for anything to win

it? . . . Rivière, I want you. I need you. Listen! I am not trying to

deceive you. Although I desire your good, I do not want you for your own

good, but for my own. I am not offering you any advantages, only more

ordeals. . . . You don't know about my life. . . . Sit down here beside

me, my beauty of the eyebrows!"

Seated on the floor, she raised her eyes to his. He held her two hands

in a firm clasp while he talked to her. "I have a name, I have success,

I have money and everything it gives. But you don't know how I got them

or how I keep them. I took them by force and I hold them by force. I

compelled my fate, if there is a fate. I succeeded in spite of things

and in spite of men. And I have never tried, or desired, to win

forgiveness for my success by bandaging the wounded self-esteem and the

interests that have been trampled upon as I passed. My dear colleagues

expect that success at least will have its narcotic effect upon me.

There hasn't been any such effect. They have tried in vain to flatter

me; they feel that I am not and never will be one of them. I can't

forget what I have seen on the other side of the fence, the innumerable

rascalities and iniquities. I have had time to meditate on the social

lies for which the best watchdog has always been the intellectual class,

in spite of what it pretends and what people expect from it. Apart from

a few knowing fellows who, where their art and thought are in question,

have the reputation of respecting nothing, but who, outside their own

bailiwick, tip their hats very politely to the reigning imbecility. I

have had the conspicuous folly never to pay court to it. At this very

moment I am planning an attack upon some of their sacred impostures,

impostures that condemn thousands of beings to poverty and endless

misery. I am going to make the three heads of Cerberus howl, the three

hypocrisies of morality, patriotism and religion. I shall tell you all

about it later. I shall be beaten, too, I know. But I shall fight on

just the same, for the joy of it, for the difficulty, and because it has

to be done. . . . You see why your words, the other evening, brought me

a message you never foresaw. Your words are mine. The mouth ought to be

mine."

Annette gave it to him. He took her forehead and her Cheeks tenderly in

his strong hands. "Rivière, I need you. I never expected to find you.

Now that I have you I shall hold you."

"Hold me firmly! I am afraid I may escape."

"I know how to keep you. I offer you my hard life, my enemies, my

dangers."

"Yes, you know me. But none of this can be mine. It is not yours to

dispose of. It belongs to your Noémi."

"What would she do with it? She doesn't want to know anything about it.

She ignores all truth, everything that is painful in life."

Annette looked at Philippe, and he read in her eyes the question she

withheld.

"You are thinking, 'Why did he marry her, then?' The woman lies, yes, I

know it. Her whole body is a lie, from the roots of her hair to the tips

of her nails. Well, the odd thing is that I took her for that very

reason. It is almost the reason why I love her. When falsehood is as

perfect an art as that it deserves a good theatre. . . . (Don't we know

that the theatre, that almost all art, lies, except in the case of a few

freaks who bewilder their confrères; then the confrères say that they

are not artists, that they ruin the trade.) If the world is a lie, at

least we have the right to demand that the lie shall be pleasant.

Everything considered, I prefer for my satisfaction and my society those

who lie prettily. They don't take me in. I see through them. Noémi's

grace is as artificial as her sentiments. But she makes a success of it.

She does me credit. I enjoy it when I come home in the evening with my

eyes befouled by the cutting up of spoiled meat. She is like laughing

water. I bathe in it. Let her lie! It is of no importance. If she spoke

the truth she would have nothing to say."

"You are hard. She loves you."

"No doubt, and I love her too."

"If you love her, why do you need me?"

"I love her in her own way."

"That's a great deal."

"A great deal for her, perhaps. It's not much for me."

"But can I give you what she gives you?"

"You are not a toy."

"I should like to be a toy, too. Life is a game."

"Yes, but you believe in it. You are one of those players who take the

game seriously."

"So are you."

"Because I wish to do so."

"How do you know that I too don't wish to do so?"

"Well, let's wish together!"

"I don't want a happiness that is built on ruins. I have suffered. I

don't want to cause suffering."

"All life is bought with suffering. Every happiness in nature is built

upon ruins. In the end everything is ruined. At least we can have built

something!"

"I can't make up my mind to sacrifice another person. Poor little

Noémi!"

"She would have less pity if she had you under her feet."

"I suppose so. But she loves you, and to me it is a crime to kill a

love."

"Whether you wished it or not, it's done now. Your presence has killed

it."

"You think of nothing but yourself."

"No one thinks of anything but himself in love."

"No, no, that's not true. I think of myself, of you, of the woman who

loves you, of everything that you love and everything that I love. I

should like my love to be good and full of joy for everyone."

"Love is a duel. If you look to the right or the left you are lost. Look

straight before you into your adversary's eyes."

"My adversary?"

"I."

"You are indeed, but I don't fear you. But Noémi is not my adversary.

She has done me no harm. Can I come into her life and destroy it?"

"Would it be better to lie to her?"

"Deceive her? Far better to destroy her! . . . Or destroy me. Renounce."

"You will not renounce."

"How do you know?"

"Women like you never renounce through weakness."

"Why shouldn't it be through strength?"

"I will not admit that there is any strength in abdicating. I love you

and you love me. I defy you to renounce."

"Don't defy me!"

"You love me."

"I love you."

"Well?"

"Well, what you say is true, I can't, I can't renounce."

"Then?"

"Then so be it!"

XLII

They had not yet said anything to the "other woman."

Annette had sworn to herself that she would not belong to Philippe till

he had spoken to Noémi. But the strength of passion had been too much

for her resolution. No one appoints the hour for passion. It seizes its

own. And now it was Annette who restrained Philippe. She dreaded his

implacability.

Philippe would not have scrupled to leave Noémi in ignorance. He did

not respect her enough to feel that he owed her the truth. But if he was

obliged to tell it, he meant to tell it without stopping to consider

her. He was a terrible man, terribly without kindness when a passion had

seized upon him. Nothing else existed. The love that he had felt for

Noémi was that of a master for a valuable slave, and indeed she had

never been anything more than this for him. Like many women she had

adapted herself to this; when the slave holds the master nothing exceeds

her power. She is everything until the day comes when she ceases to be

anything. Noémi knew this, but she felt confident in her youth and her

charm for many more years. After us the deluge! Besides, she had been on

the watch. She had known of Philippe's passing infidelities. She had not

attached much importance to them because she had wisely realized that

they were momentary. She simply consoled herself with the luxury of

small revenges of which she said nothing to him. She had deceived him in

a temper on one occasion, one sole occasion when Philippe's

unfaithfulness had stung her more than usual. She had enjoyed it very

little; she had even been rather disgusted. But no matter, they were

quits. Afterwards she had been more affectionate to her husband than

before. It gave her satisfaction to say to herself, as she embraced him,

"My dear, I am lying to you. This will teach you! You're it, this time!"

The fear she would have had of Philippe, if he had learned the truth,

added to the interest. Philippe knew nothing definite, no facts, but he

read the lie in her eyes. Whether Noémi had deceived him or not, he

knew she was thinking about it. And she saw a flash pass through his

eyes; his hands might have crushed her. But he knew nothing; he would

never know anything; she closed her eyes with the languorous air of a

dove.

He said brutally, "Look at me."