_30th. July 189-_
Yes, my dear brother, _of course, as you supposed, Michel has confided
in us. Here is his story. You asked me to let you have it and I
promised to; but now at the last moment I hesitate to send it and the
oftener I re-read it the more dreadful it seems. Oh, what, I wonder,
will you think of our friend? What, for that matter, do I think of him
myself?... Are we simply to reprobate him and deny the possibility of
turning to good account faculties so manifestly cruel? But I fear there
are not a few among us today who would be bold enough to recognise
their own features in this tale. Will it be possible to invent some
way of employing all this intelligence and strength? Or must they be
altogether outlawed?_
_In what way can Michel serve society? I admit I cannot guess.... He
must have some occupation. Will the position and the power you have so
deservedly attained enable you to find one? Make haste. Michel is still
capable of devotion. Yes, he is so still. But it will soon be only to
himself._
_I am writing to you under a sky of flawless blue; during the twelve
days that Denis, Daniel and myself have been here, there has not been a
single cloud nor the slightest diminution of sunshine. Michel says the
weather has been of crystalline clearness for the last two months._
_I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills one with a kind of
vague excitement and induces a state as far removed from cheerfulness
as it is from sorrow; perhaps it is happiness._
_We are staying with Michel; we are anxious not to leave him; you will
understand why when you have read these pages; so we shall await your
reply here, in his house; lose no time about it._
_You know what ties of friendship bound Michel, Denis, Daniel and
myself together--a friendship which was strong even in our school
days, but which every year grew stronger. A kind of pact was concluded
between us four--at the first summons of any one of us the other three
were to hasten. So when I received that mysterious signal of alarm
from Michel, I immediately informed Daniel and Denis, and we all three
let everything go and set out._
_It is three years since we last saw Michel. He had married and gone
travelling with his wife, and at the time of his last stay in Paris,
Denis was in Greece, Daniel in Russia and I, as you know, looking after
our sick father. We were not, however, without news, though the account
given of him by Silas and Will, who saw him at that time, was, to say
the least, surprising. He was no longer the learned Puritan of old
days, whose behaviour was made awkward by his very earnestness, whose
clear and simple gaze had so often checked the looseness of our talk.
He was ... but why forestall what his story will tell you?_
_Here is his story then, just as Denis, Daniel and I heard it. Michel
told it us on his terrace, as we were lying beside him in the dark and
the starlight. At the end of his tale we saw day rising over the plain.
Michel’s house looks down on it and on the village which is not far
off. In the hot weather and with all its crops reaped, this plain looks
like the desert._
_Michel’s house, though poor and quaint-looking, is charming. In winter
it would be cold, for there is no glass in the windows--or rather,
there are no windows, but huge holes in the walls. It is so fine that
we sleep out of doors on mats._
_Let me add that we had a good journey out. We arrived here one
evening, gasping with heat, intoxicated with novelty, after having
barely stopped on the way, first at Algiers and then at Constantine. At
Constantine we took a second train to Sidi B. M., where a little cart
was waiting for us. The road comes to an end some way from the village,
which is perched on the top of a rock, like certain little hill-towns
in Umbria. We climbed up on foot; two mules took our luggage.
Approached by the road, Michel’s house is the first in the village. It
is surrounded by the low walls of a garden--or rather, an enclosure, in
which there grow three stunted pomegranate-trees and a superb oleander.
A little Kabyle boy ran away at sight of us and scrambled over the wall
without more ado._
_Michel showed no signs of pleasure as he welcomed us; he was very
simple and seemed afraid of any demonstrations of tenderness; but on
the threshold, he stopped and kissed each one of us gravely._
_Until night came we barely exchanged a dozen words. An almost
excessively frugal dinner was laid for us in a drawing room where the
decorations were so sumptuous that we were astonished by them, though
they were afterwards explained by Michel’s story. Then he served us
coffee, which he made a point of preparing himself; and afterwards we
went up on to the terrace, where the view stretched away into infinity,
and all three of us, like Job’s comforters, sat down and waited,
watching and admiring the day’s abrupt decline over the incandescent
plain._
_When it was night Michel said:_