I remember a shrub some way off whose bark looked of such a curious
texture, that I felt obliged to go and feel it. My touch was a caress;
it gave me rapture. I remember.... Was that the morning that was at
last to give me birth?
I had forgotten I was alone, and sat on, expecting nothing, waiting
for no-one, forgetting the time. Up till that day, so it seemed to me,
I had felt so little and thought so much, that now I was astonished to
find my sensations had become as strong as my thoughts.
I say, “it _seemed_ to me,” for from the depths of my past childhood,
there now awoke in me the glimmerings of a thousand lost sensations.
The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give
them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now
remembered a whole ancient history of their own--recomposed for
themselves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never
ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious
years they had been living their own latent, cunning life.
I met no-one that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a
little Homer, which I had not opened since Marseilles, re-read three
lines of the Odyssey and learnt them by heart; then, finding in their
rhythm enough to satisfy me, I dwelt on them awhile with leisurely
delight, shut the book, and sat still, trembling, more alive than I had
thought it possible to be, my mind benumbed with happiness....
iv
In the meantime, Marceline, who saw with delight that my health was
at last improving, had lately begun telling me about the marvellous
orchards of the oasis. She was fond of the open air and outdoor
exercise. My illness left her enough spare time for long walks, from
which she returned glowing with enthusiasm; so far she had not said
much about them, as she did not dare invite me to go with her and was
afraid of depressing me by an account of delights I was not yet fit
to enjoy. But now that I was better, she counted on their attraction
to complete my recovery. The pleasure I was again beginning to take
in walking and looking about me tempted me to join her. And the next
morning we set out together.
She led the way along a path so odd that I have never in any country
seen its like. It meanders indolently between two fairly high mud
walls; the shape of the gardens they enclose directs its leisurely
course; sometimes it winds; sometimes it is broken; a sudden turning
as you enter it and you lose your bearings; you cease to know where
you came from or where you are going. The water of the river follows
the path faithfully and runs alongside one of the walls; the walls
are made of the same earth as the path--the same as that of the whole
oasis--a pinkish or soft grey clay, which is turned a little darker
by the water, which the burning sun crackles, which hardens in the
heat and softens with the first shower, so that it becomes a plastic
soil that keeps the imprint of every naked foot. Above the walls, show
palm-trees. Wood-pigeons went flying into them as we came up. Marceline
looked at me.
I forgot my discomfort and fatigue. I walked on in a sort of ecstasy,
of silent joy, of elation of the senses and the flesh. At that moment
there came a gentle breath of wind; all the palms waved and we saw the
tallest of the trees bending; then the whole air grew calm again, and I
distinctly heard, coming from behind the wall, the song of a flute. A
breach in the wall; we went in.
It was a place full of light and shade; tranquil; it seemed beyond the
touch of time; full of silence; full of rustlings--the soft noise of
running water that feeds the palms and slips from tree to tree, the
quiet call of the pigeons, the song of the flute the boy was playing.
He was sitting, almost naked, on the trunk of a fallen palm-tree,
watching a herd of goats; our coming did not disturb him; he did not
move--stopped playing only for a moment.
I noticed during this brief pause that another flute was answering in
the distance. We went on a little, then:
“It’s no use going any further,” said Marceline; “these orchards are
all alike; possibly at the other end of the oasis they may be a little
larger....”
She spread the shawl on the ground. “Sit down and rest,” she said.
How long did we stay there? I cannot tell. What mattered time?
Marceline was near me; I lay down and put my head on her knees. The
song of the flute flowed on, stopped from time to time, went on again;
the sound of the water ... From time to time a goat baa’ed. I shut my
eyes; I felt Marceline lay her cool hand on my forehead; I felt the
burning sun, gently shaded by the palm-trees; I thought of nothing;
what mattered thoughts? I _felt_ extraordinarily....
And from time to time there was another noise; I opened my eyes; a
little wind was blowing in the palm-trees; it did not come down low
enough to reach us--stirred only the highest branches.
* * * * *
The next morning, I returned to the same garden with Marceline; on the
evening of the same day, I went back to it alone. The goatherd that
played the flute was there. I went up to him; spoke to him. He was
called Lassif, was only twelve years old, was a handsome boy. He told
me the names of his goats, told me that the little canals are called
‘seghias’; they do not all run every day, he explained; the water,
wisely and parsimoniously distributed, satisfies the thirst of the
plants, and is then at once withdrawn. At the foot of each palm the
ground is hollowed out into a small cup which holds water enough for
the tree’s needs; an ingenious system of sluices, which the boy worked
for me to see, controls the water, conducts it wherever the ground is
thirstiest.
The next day I saw a brother of Lassif’s; he was a little older and not
so handsome; he was called Lachmi. By means of the kind of ladder made
in the trunk of the tree by the old stumps of excised palm leaves, he
climbed up to the top of a pollarded palm; then he came swiftly down
again, showing a golden nudity beneath his floating garment. He brought
down a little earthen gourd from the place where the head of the tree
had been severed; it had been hung up near the fresh cut in order to
collect the palm sap, from which the Arabs make a sweet wine they are
extremely fond of. At Lachmi’s invitation, I tasted it; but I did not
like its sickly, raw, syrupy taste.
The following days I went further; I saw other gardens, other goatherds
and other goats. As Marceline had said, all these gardens were alike;
and yet they were all different.
Sometimes Marceline would still come with me; but more often, as soon
as we reached the orchards, I would leave her, persuade her that I was
tired, that I wanted to sit down, that she must not wait for me, for
she needed more exercise; so that she would finish the walk without
me. I stayed behind with the children. I soon knew a great number of
them; I had long conversations with them; I learnt their games, taught
them others, lost all my pennies at pitch and toss. Some of them used
to come with me on my walks (every day I walked further), showed me
some new way home, took charge of my coat and my shawl when I happened
to have them both with me. Before leaving the children, I used to
distribute a handful of pennies among them; sometimes they would follow
me, playing all the way, as far as my own door; and finally, they would
sometimes come in.
Then Marceline on her side brought in others. She brought the boys
who went to school and whom she encouraged to work; when school broke
up, the good little boys, the quiet little boys came in; those that
I brought were different; but they made friends over their games. We
took care always to have a store of syrups and sweetmeats on hand. Soon
other boys came of their own accord, even uninvited. I remember each
one of them; I can see them still....
* * * * *
Towards the end of January, the weather changed suddenly; a cold wind
sprang up and my health immediately began to suffer. The great open
space that separates the oasis from the town again became impassable,
and I was obliged once more to content myself with the public gardens.
Then it began to rain--an icy rain, which covered the mountains on the
far Northern horizon with snow.
I spent those melancholy days beside the fire, gloomily, obstinately,
fighting with my illness, which in this vile weather, gained upon me.
Lugubrious days! I could neither read nor work; the slightest effort
brought on the most troublesome perspiration; fixing my thoughts
exhausted me; directly I stopped paying attention to my breathing, I
suffocated.
During those melancholy days the children were my only distraction. In
the rainy weather, only the most familiar came in; their clothes were
drenched; they sat round the fire in a circle. A long time would often
go by without anything being said. I was too tired, too unwell to do
anything but look at them; but the presence of their good health did
me good. Those that Marceline petted were weakly, sickly, and too well
behaved; I was irritated with her and with them and ended by keeping
them at arm’s length. To tell the truth, they frightened me.
One morning I had a curious revelation as to my own character; Moktir,
the only one of my wife’s protégés who did not irritate me (because of
his good looks perhaps), was alone with me in my room; up till then,
I had not cared much about him, but there was something strange, I
thought, in the brilliant and sombre expression of his eyes. Some kind
of inexplicable curiosity made me watch his movements. I was standing
in front of the fire, my two elbows on the mantlepiece, apparently
absorbed in a book; but, though I had my back turned to him, I could
see what he was doing reflected in the glass. Moktir did not know I
was watching him and thought I was immersed in my reading. I saw him
go noiselessly up to a table where Marceline had laid her work and
a little pair of scissors beside it, seize them furtively, and in
a twinkling engulf them in the folds of his burnous. My heart beat
quickly for a moment, but neither reason nor reflection could arouse
in me the smallest feeling of indignation. More than that! I could not
manage to persuade myself that the feeling that filled me at the sight
was anything but joy.
When I had allowed Moktir ample time for robbing me, I turned round
again and spoke to him as if nothing had happened.
Marceline was very fond of this boy; but I do not think it was the fear
of grieving her that made me, rather than denounce Moktir, invent some
story or other to explain the loss of her scissors.
From that day onwards, Moktir became my favourite.
v
Our stay at Biskra was not to last much longer. When the February rains
were over, the outburst of heat that succeeded them was too violent.
After several days of drenching downpour, one morning, suddenly, I woke
in an atmosphere of brilliant blue. As soon as I was up, I hurried to
the highest part of the terrace. The sky, from one horizon to the other
was cloudless. Mists were rising under the heat of the sun, which was
already fierce; the whole oasis was smoking; in the distance could be
heard the grumbling of the Oued in flood. The air was so pure and so
delicious that I felt better at once. Marceline joined me; we wanted to
go out, but that day the mud kept us at home.
A few days later, we went back to Lassif’s orchard; the stems of the
plants looked heavy, sodden and swollen with water. This African land,
whose thirsty season of waiting was not then known to me, had lain
submerged for many long days and was now awaking from its winter sleep,
drunken with water, bursting with the fresh rise of sap; throughout
it rang the wild laughter of an exultant spring which found an echo,
a double, as it were, in my own heart. Ashour and Moktir came with us
at first; I still enjoyed their slight friendship, which cost me only
half a franc a day; but I soon grew tired of them; not now so weak as
to need the example of their health, and no longer finding in their
play the food necessary to keep my joy alive, I turned the elation of
my mind and senses to Marceline. Her gladness made me realize she had
been unhappy before. I excused myself like a child for having so often
left her to herself, set down my odd, elusive behaviour to the score of
weakness and declared that hitherto loving had been too much for me,
but that henceforward, as my health grew, so would my love. I spoke
truly, but no doubt I was still very weak, for it was not till more
than a month later that I desired Marceline.
In the meantime, it was getting hotter every day. There was nothing to
keep us at Biskra--except the charm which afterwards brought me back
there. Our determination to leave was taken suddenly. In three hours
our things were packed. The train started next morning at daybreak.
I remember that last night. The moon was nearly full; it streamed into
my room by the wide open window. Marceline was, I think, asleep. I had
gone to bed but could not sleep. I felt myself burning with a kind of
happy fever--the fever of life itself.... I got up, dipped my hands and
face in water, then, pushing open the glass doors, went out.
It was already late; not a sound; not a breath; the air itself seemed
asleep. The Arab dogs which yelp all night like jackals, could only
just be heard in the distance. Facing me, lay the little courtyard;
the wall opposite cast a slanting band of shadow across it; the
regular palm-trees, bereft of colour and life, seemed struck for ever
motionless.... But in sleep there is still some palpitation of life;
here, nothing seemed asleep; everything seemed dead. The calm appalled
me; and suddenly there rose in me afresh the tragic realization of my
life; it came upon me as though to protest, to assert itself, to bewail
itself in the silence, so violent, so impetuous, so agonizing almost,
that I should have cried aloud, if I could have cried like an animal.
I took hold of my hand, I remember--my left hand in my right; I wanted
to lift it to my head and I did. What for? To assure myself that I
was alive and that I felt the wonder of it. I touched my forehead, my
eyelids. Then a shudder seized me. A day will come, thought I, a day
will come when I shall not even be strong enough to lift to my lips the
very water I most thirst for.... I went in, but did not lie down again
at once; I wanted to fix that night, to engrave its memory on my mind,
to hold and to keep it; undecided as to what I should do, I took a book
from my table--it was the Bible--and opened it at random; by stooping
over it in the moonlight, I could see to read; I read Christ’s words to
Peter--those words, alas, which I was never to forget: “When thou wast
young, thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but
when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands ...”--thou
shalt stretch forth thy hands....
The next morning at dawn, we left.
vi
I shall not speak of every stage of the journey. Some of them have left
me only a confused recollection; I was sometimes better and sometimes
worse in health, still at the mercy of a cold wind and made anxious by
the shadow of a cloud; the condition of my nerves too was the cause
of frequent trouble; but my lungs at any rate were recovering. Each
relapse was shorter and less serious; the attacks were as sharp, but my
body was better armed against them.
From Tunis we went to Malta, and from there to Syracuse; I found myself
back again on the classic ground whose language and history were known
to me. Since the beginning of my illness I had lived without question
or rule, simply applying myself to the act of living as an animal
does or a child. Now that I was less absorbed by my malady, my life
became once more certain of itself and conscious. After that long and
almost mortal sickness, I had thought I should rise again the same as
before and be able without difficulty to reknit my present to my past;
in the newness of a strange country it had been possible to deceive
myself--but not here; everything brought home to me--though I still
thought it astonishing--that I was changed.
When at Syracuse and later, I wanted to start my work again and immerse
myself once more in a minute study of the past, I discovered that
something had, if not destroyed, at any rate modified my pleasure in
it ... and this something was the feeling of the present. The history
of the past had now taken on for me the immobility, the terrifying
fixity of the nocturnal shadows in the little courtyard of Biskra--the
immobility of death. In old days, I had taken pleasure in this very
fixity which enabled my mind to work with precision; the facts of
history all appeared to me like specimens in a museum, or rather like
plants in a herbarium, permanently dried, so that it was easy to
forget they had once upon a time been juicy with sap and alive in the
sun. Now-a-days, if I still took any pleasure in history, it was by
imagining it in the present. Thus the great political events of the
past moved me less than the feeling that began to revive in me for the
poets or for a few men of action. At Syracuse, I re-read Theocritus and
reflected that his goatherds with the beautiful names were the very
same as those I had loved at Biskra.
My erudition, which was aroused at every step, became an encumbrance
and hampered my joy. I could not see a Greek theatre or temple without
immediately reconstructing it in my mind. Every thought of the
festivals of antiquity made me grieve over the death of the ruin that
was left standing in their place; and I had a horror of death.
I ended by avoiding ruins; the noblest monuments of the past were less
to me than those sunk gardens of the Latomie whose lemons have the
sharp sweetness of oranges--or the shores of the Cyane, still flowing
among the papyri as blue as on the day when it wept for Proserpine.
I ended by despising the learning that had at first been my pride;
the studies, which up till then had been my whole life, now seemed to
me to have a mere accidental and conventional connection with myself.
I found out that I was something different and--O rapture!--that I
had a separate existence of my own. Inasmuch as I was a specialist,
I appeared to myself senseless; inasmuch as I was a man, did I know
myself at all? I had only just been born and could not as yet know
_what_ I had been born. It was that I had to find out.
There is nothing more tragic for a man who has been expecting to die
than a long convalescence. After that touch from the wing of Death,
what seemed important is so no longer; other things become so which had
at first seemed unimportant, or which one did not even know existed.
The miscellaneous mass of acquired knowledge of every kind that has
overlain the mind gets peeled off in places like a mask of paint,
exposing the bare skin--the very flesh of the authentic creature that
had lain hidden beneath it.
He it was whom I thenceforward set out to discover--that authentic
creature, ‘the old Adam,’ whom the Gospel had repudiated, whom
everything about me--books, masters, parents, and I myself had begun
by attempting to suppress. And he was already coming into view, still
in the rough and difficult of discovery, thanks to all that overlay
him, but so much the more worthy to be discovered, so much the more
valorous. Thenceforward I despised the secondary creature, the creature
who was due to teaching, whom education had painted on the surface.
These overlays had to be shaken off.
And I compared myself to a palimpsest; I tasted the scholar’s joy when
he discovers under more recent writing, and on the same paper, a very
ancient and infinitely more precious text. What was this occult text?
In order to read it, was it not first of all necessary to efface the
more recent one?
I was besides no longer the sickly, studious being to whom my early
morality, with all its rigidity and restrictions, had been suited.
There was more here than a convalescence; there was an increase, a
recrudescence of life, the influx of a richer, warmer blood which must
of necessity affect my thoughts, touch them one by one, inform them
all, stir and colour the most remote, delicate and secret fibres of
my being. For, either to strength or to weakness, the creature adapts
itself; it constitutes itself according to the powers it possesses; but
if these should increase, if they should permit a wider scope, then ...
I did not think all this at the time, and my description gives a false
idea of me. In reality, I did not think at all; I never questioned
myself; a happy fatalism guided me. I was afraid that too hasty an
investigation might disturb the mystery of my slow transformation. I
must allow time for the effaced characters to reappear, and not attempt
to re-form them. Not so much neglecting my mind therefore, as allowing
it to lie fallow, I gave myself up to the luxurious enjoyment of my
own self, of external things, of all existence, which seemed to me
divine. We had left Syracuse, and as I ran along the precipitous road
that connects Taormina with Mola, I remember shouting aloud, as if my
calling could bring him to me: “A new self! A new self!”
My only effort then--an effort which was at that time
constant--consisted in systematically contemning and suppressing
everything which I believed I owed to my past education and early moral
beliefs. Deliberately disdainful of my learning, and in scorn of my
scholar’s tastes, I refused to visit Agrigentum, and a few days later,
on the road to Naples, I passed by the beautiful temple of Pæstum, in
which Greece still breathes, and where, two years later, I went to
worship some God or other--I no longer know which.
Why do I say ‘my only effort’? How could I be interested in myself save
as a perfectible being? Never before had my will been so tensely strung
as in striving after this unknown and vaguely imagined perfection. I
employed the whole of my will indeed, in strengthening and bronzing my
body. We had left the coast near Salerno and reached Ravello. There, a
keener air, the charm of the rocks, their recesses, their surprises,
the unexplored depths of the valleys, all contributed to my strength
and enjoyment and gave impetus to my enthusiasm.
Not far from the shore and very near the sky, Ravello lies on an
abrupt height facing the flat and distant coast of Pæstum. Under the
Norman domination, it was a city of no inconsiderable importance; it
is nothing now but a narrow village where I think we were the only
strangers. We were lodged in an ancient religious house which had
been turned into a hotel; it is situated on the extreme edge of the
rock, and its terraces and gardens seemed to hang suspended over an
abyss of azure. Over the wall, festooned with creeping vine, one
could at first see nothing but the sea; one had to go right up to the
wall in order to discover the steep cultivated slope that connects
Ravello with the shore by paths that seem more like staircases. Above
Ravello, the mountain continues. First come enormous olive and caroub
trees, with cyclamen growing in their shadow; then, higher up, Spanish
chestnuts in great quantities, cool air, northern plants; lower down
lemon trees near the sea. These are planted in small plots owing to
the slope of the ground; they are step gardens, nearly all alike; a
narrow path goes from end to end through the middle of each; one enters
noiselessly, like a thief; one dreams in their green shadow; their
foliage is thick and heavy; no direct ray of sunlight penetrates it;
the lemons, like drops of opaque wax, hang perfumed; they are white and
greenish in the shade; they are within reach of one’s hand, of one’s
thirst; they are sweet and sharp and refreshing.
The shade was so dense beneath them that I did not dare linger in it
after my walk, for exercise still made me perspire. And yet I now
managed the steps without being exhausted; I practised climbing them
with my mouth shut; I put greater and greater intervals between my
halts; “I will go so far without giving in,” I used to say to myself;
then, the goal reached, I was rewarded by a glow of satisfied pride;
I would take a few long deep breaths, and feel as if the air entered
my lungs more thoroughly, more efficaciously. I brought all my old
assiduity to bear on the care of my body. I began to progress.
I was sometimes astonished that my health came back so quickly. I began
to think I had exaggerated the gravity of my condition--to doubt that
I had been very ill--to laugh at my blood-spitting--to regret that my
recovery had not been more arduous.
In my ignorance of my physical needs, my treatment of myself had at
first been very foolish. I now made a patient study of them and came
to regard my ingenious exercise of prudence and care as a kind of
game. What I still suffered from most was my morbid sensitiveness to
the slightest change of temperature. Now that my lungs were cured, I
attributed this hyperaesthesia to the nervous debility left me by my
illness and I determined to conquer it. The sight of the beautiful,
brown, sunburnt skins which some of the carelessly clad peasants at
work in the fields showed beneath their open shirts, made me long to be
like them. One morning, after I had stripped, I looked at myself; my
thin arms, my stooping shoulders, which no effort of mine could keep
straight, but above all the whiteness of my skin, or rather its entire
want of colour, shamed me to tears. I dressed quickly and, instead of
going down to Amalfi as usual, I turned my steps towards some mossy,
grass-grown rocks, in a place far from any habitation, far from any
road, where I knew no-one could see me. When I got there, I undressed
slowly. The air was almost sharp, but the sun was burning. I exposed my
whole body to its flame. I sat down, lay down, turned myself about. I
felt the ground hard beneath me; the waving grass brushed me. Though I
was sheltered from the wind, I shivered and thrilled at every breath.
Soon a delicious burning enveloped me; my whole being surged up into my
skin.
We stayed at Ravello a fortnight; every morning I returned to the
same rocks and went on with my cure. I soon found I was wearing a
troublesome and unnecessary amount of clothing; my skin, having
recovered its tone, the constant perspiration ceased and I was able to
keep warm without superfluous protection.
On one of the last mornings (we were in the middle of April), I was
bolder still. In a hollow of the rocks I have mentioned, there flowed
a spring of transparent water. At this very place it fell in a little
cascade--not a very abundant one to be sure, but the fall had hollowed
out a deeper basin at its foot in which the water lingered, exquisitely
pure and clear. Three times already I had been there, leant over it,
stretched myself along its bank, thirsty and longing; I had gazed at
the bottom of polished rock, where not a stain, not a weed was to be
seen, and where the sun shot its dancing and iridescent rays. On this
fourth day, I came to the spot with my mind already made up. The
water looked as bright and as clear as ever, and without pausing to
think, I plunged straight in. It struck an instant chill through me
and I jumped out again quickly and flung myself down on the grass in
the sun. There was some wild thyme growing near by; I picked some of
the sweet-smelling leaves, crushed them in my hands and rubbed my wet
but burning body with them. I looked at myself for a long while--with
no more shame now--with joy. Although not yet robust, I felt myself
capable of becoming so--harmonious, sensuous, almost beautiful.
vii
And so, in the place of all action and all work, I contented myself
with physical exercises, which certainly implied a change in my moral
outlook, but which I soon began to regard as mere training, as simply a
means to an end, and no longer satisfying in themselves.
I will tell you, however, about one other action of mine, though
perhaps you will consider it ridiculous, for its very childishness
marks the need that then tormented me of showing by some outward sign
the change that had come over my inward self: at Amalfi I had my beard
and moustache shaved off. Up till that day I had worn them long and
my hair cropped close. It had never occurred to me that I could do
anything else. And suddenly, on the day when I first stripped myself
on the rock, my beard made me feel uncomfortable; it was like a last
piece of clothing I could not get rid of; I felt as if it were false;
it was carefully cut--not in a point, but square, and it then and
there struck me as very ugly and ridiculous. When I got back to my
hotel room, I looked at myself in the glass and was displeased with my
appearance; I looked like what I had hitherto been--an archaeologist--a
bookworm. Immediately after lunch, I went down to Amalfi with my mind
made up. The town is very small and I could find nothing better than
a vulgar little shop in the piazza. It was market day; the place was
full; I had to wait interminably; but nothing--neither the suspicious
looking razors, nor the dirty yellow shaving-brush, nor the smell, nor
the barber’s talk could put me off. When my beard fell beneath his
scissors, I felt as though I had taken off a mask. But oh! when I saw
myself, the emotion that filled me and which I tried to keep down, was
not pleasure, but fear. I do not criticize this feeling--I record it. I
thought myself quite good-looking ... no, the reason of my fear was a
feeling that my mind had been stripped of all disguise, and it suddenly
appeared to me redoubtable.
On the other hand, I let my hair grow.
That is all my new and still unoccupied self found to do. I expected
it eventually to give birth to actions that would astonish me--but
later--later, I said to myself, when it is more fully formed. In the
meantime, as I was obliged to live, I was reduced, like Descartes,
to a provisional mode of action. This was the reason Marceline did
not notice anything. The different look in my eyes, no doubt, and
the changed expression of my features, especially on the day when I
appeared without my beard, might perhaps have aroused her suspicions,
but she already loved me too much to see me as I was; and then I did
my best to reassure her. The important thing was that she should not
interfere with my renascent life, and to keep it from her eyes, I had
to dissemble.
For that matter, the man Marceline loved, the man she had married, was
not my ‘new self.’ So I told myself again and again as an excuse for
hiding him. In this way I showed her an image of myself, which by the
very fact of its remaining constant and faithful to the past, became
every day falser and falser.
For the time being, therefore, my relationship with Marceline remained
the same, though it was every day getting more intense by reason of
my growing love. My dissimulation (if that expression can be applied
to the need I felt of protecting my thoughts from her judgment),
my very dissimulation increased that love. I mean that it kept me
incessantly occupied with Marceline. At first, perhaps, this necessity
for falsehood cost me a little effort; but I soon came to understand
that the things that are reputed worst (lying, to mention only one)
are only difficult to do as long as one has never done them; but that
they become--and very quickly too--easy, pleasant and agreeable to do
over again, and soon even natural. So then, as is always the case when
one overcomes an initial disgust, I ended by taking pleasure in my
dissimulation itself, by protracting it, as if it afforded opportunity
for the play of my undiscovered faculties. And every day my life grew
richer and fuller, as I advanced towards a riper, more delicious
happiness.
viii
The road from Ravello to Sorrento is so beautiful that I had no desire
that morning to see anything more beautiful on earth. The sun-warmed
harshness of the rocks, the air’s abundance, the scents, the limpidity,
all filled me with the heavenly delight of living, and with such
contentment that there seemed to dwell in me nothing but a dancing
joy; memories and regrets, hope and desire, future and past were alike
silent; I was conscious of nothing in life but what the moment brought,
but what the moment carried away.
“O joys of the body!” I exclaimed; “unerring rhythm of the muscles!
health!...”
I had started early that morning, ahead of Marceline, for her calmer
pleasure would have cooled mine, just as her slower pace would have
kept me back. She was to join me by carriage at Positano, where we were
to lunch.
I was nearing Positano, when a noise of wheels, which sounded like the
bass accompaniment to a curious kind of singing, made me look round
abruptly. At first I could see nothing because of a turn in the road,
which in that place follows the edge of the cliff; then a carriage
driven at a frantic pace dashed suddenly into view; it was Marceline’s.
The driver was singing at the top of his voice, standing up on the
box and gesticulating violently, while he ferociously whipped his
frightened horse. What a brute the fellow was! He passed me so quickly
that I only just had time to get out of the way and my shouts failed
to make him stop.... I rushed after him, but the carriage was going
too fast. I was terrified that Marceline would fling herself out of
the carriage, and equally so that she would stay in it; a single jolt
might have thrown her into the sea.... All of a sudden the horse fell
down. Marceline jumped out and started running, but I was beside her
in a moment.... The driver, as soon as he saw me, broke into horrible
oaths. I was furious with the man; at his first word of abuse, I rushed
at him and flung him brutally from his box. I rolled on the ground with
him, but did not lose my advantage; he seemed dazed by his fall and was
soon still more so by a blow on the face which I gave him, when I saw
he meant to bite me. I did not let go of him, however, and pressed with
my knee on his chest, while I tried to pinion his arms. I looked at his
ugly face, which my fist had made still uglier; he spat, foamed, bled,
swore; oh, what a horrible creature! He deserved strangling, I thought.
And perhaps I should have strangled him--at any rate, I felt capable
of it; and I really believe it was only the thought of the police that
prevented me.
I succeeded, not without difficulty, in tying the madman up, and flung
him into the carriage like a sack.
Ah! what looks, what kisses Marceline and I exchanged when it was all
over. The danger had not been great; but I had had to show my strength,
and that in order to protect her. At the moment I felt I could have
given my life for her ... and given it wholly with joy.... The horse
got up. We left the drunkard at the bottom of the carriage, got on to
the box together, and drove as best we could, first to Positano, and
then to Sorrento.
It was that night that I first possessed Marceline.
Have you really understood or must I tell you again that I was as it
were new to things of love? Perhaps it was to its novelty that our
wedding night owed its grace.... For it seems to me, when I recall it,
that that first night of ours was our only one, the expectation and
the surprise of love added so much deliciousness to its pleasures--so
sufficient is a single night for the expression of the greatest love,
and so obstinately does my memory recall that night alone. It was a
flashing moment that caught and mingled our souls in its laughter....
But I believe there comes a point in love, once and no more, which
later on the soul seeks--yes, seeks in vain--to surpass; I believe that
happiness wears out in the effort made to recapture it; that nothing
is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness. Alas! I
remember that night....
Our hotel was outside the town and surrounded with gardens and
orchards; a very large balcony opened out from our room and the
branches of the trees brushed against it. Our wide open windows let in
the dawn freely. I got up and bent tenderly over Marceline. She was
asleep; she looked as though she were smiling in her sleep; my greater
strength seemed to make me feel her greater delicacy and that her grace
was all fragility. Tumultuous thoughts whirled in my brain. I reflected
that she was telling the truth when she said I was her all; then,
“What do I do for her happiness?” I thought. “Almost all day and every
day I abandon her; her every hope is in me and I neglect her!... oh,
poor, poor Marceline!” My eyes filled with tears. I tried in vain to
seek an excuse in my past weakness; what need had I now for so much
care and attention, for so much egoism? Was I not now the stronger of
the two?
The smile had left her cheeks; daybreak, though it had touched
everything else with gold, suddenly showed her to me sad and pale; and
perhaps the approach of morning inclined me to be anxious. “Shall I in
my turn have to nurse you, fear for you, Marceline?” I inwardly cried.
I shuddered, and, overflowing with love, pity and tenderness, I placed
between her closed eyes the gentlest, the most lover-like, the most
pious of kisses.
ix
The few days we stayed at Sorrento were smiling days and very calm. Had
I ever enjoyed before such rest, such happiness? Should I ever enjoy
them again?... I spent almost all my time with Marceline; thinking
less of myself, I was able to think more of her, and now took as much
pleasure in talking to her as I had before taken in being silent.
I was at first astonished to feel that she looked upon our wandering
life, with which I professed myself perfectly satisfied, only as
something temporary; but its idleness soon became obvious to me; I
agreed it must not last; for the first time, thanks to the leisure
left me by my recovered health, there awoke in me a desire for work,
and I began to speak seriously of going home; from Marceline’s joy, I
realized she herself had long been thinking of it.
Meanwhile, when I again began to turn my attention to some of my old
historical studies, I found I no longer took the same pleasure in
them. As I have already told you, since my illness, I had come to
consider this abstract and neutral acquaintance with the past as mere
vanity. In other days I had worked at philological research, studying
more especially, for instance, the influence of the Goths on the
corruption of the Latin language, and had passed over and misunderstood
the figures of Theodoric, Cassiodorus and Amalasontha, and their
admirable and astonishing passions, in order to concentrate all my
enthusiasm on mere signs--the waste product of their lives.
At present, however, these same signs, and indeed philology as a whole,
were nothing more to me than a means of penetrating further into things
whose savage grandeur and nobility had begun to dawn on me. I resolved
to study this period further, to limit myself for a time to the last
years of the empire of the Goths, and to turn to account our coming
stay at Ravenna, the scene of its closing agonies.
But shall I confess that the figure of the young king Athalaric was
what attracted me most? I pictured to myself this fifteen-year-old
boy, worked on in secret by the Goths, in revolt against his mother
Amalasontha, rebelling against his Latin education and flinging aside
his culture, as a restive horse shakes off a troublesome harness;
I saw him preferring the society of the untutored Goths to that of
Cassiodorus--too old and too wise--plunging for a few years into a life
of violent and unbridled pleasures with rude companions of his own age,
and dying at eighteen, rotten and sodden with debauchery. I recognized
in this tragic impulse towards a wilder, more natural state, something
of what Marceline used to call my ‘crisis.’ I tried to find some
satisfaction in applying my mind to it, since it no longer occupied my
body; and in Athalaric’s horrible death, I did my best to read a lesson.
So we settled to spend a fortnight at Ravenna, visit Rome and Florence
rapidly, then, giving up Venice and Verona, hurry over the end of our
journey and not stop again before reaching Paris. I found a pleasure
I had never felt before in talking to Marceline about the future; we
were still a little undecided as to how we should spend the summer;
we were both tired of travelling and I was in need of absolute quiet
for my work; then we thought of a place of mine, situated between
Lisieux and Pont-L’Evêque, in the greenest of green Normandy; it had
formerly belonged to my mother, and I had passed several summers there
with her in my childhood, though I had never gone back to it since
her death. My father had left it in charge of a bailiff, an old man
by now, who collected the rents and sent them to us regularly. I had
kept enchanting memories of a large and very pleasant house standing
in a garden watered by running streams; it was called La Morinière; I
thought it would be good to live there.
I spoke of spending the following winter in Rome, but as a worker this
time, not a tourist.... But this last plan was soon upset. Amongst the
number of letters we found waiting for us at Naples, was one containing
an unexpected piece of information--a chair at the Collège de France
had fallen vacant and my name had been several times mentioned in
connection with it; it was only a temporary post which would leave me
free in the future; the friend who wrote advised me of the few steps to
be taken in case I should accept, which he strongly advised me to do.
I hesitated to bind myself to what at first seemed to me slavery; but
then I reflected that it might be interesting to put forward my ideas
on Cassiodorus in a course of lectures.... The pleasure I should be
giving Marceline finally decided me, and once my decision taken, I saw
only its advantages.
My father had several connections in the learned world of Rome and
Florence, with whom I had myself been in correspondence. They gave
me every facility for making the necessary researches in Ravenna and
elsewhere; I had no thoughts now but for my work. Marceline, by her
constant consideration and in a thousand charming ways, did all she
could to help me.
Our happiness during those last days of travel was so equable, so calm,
that there is nothing to say about it. Men’s finest works bear the
persistent marks of pain. What would there be in a story of happiness?
Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told. I have now
told you what prepared it.