i
We arrived at La Morinière in the first days of July, having stayed
in Paris only just long enough to do our shopping and pay a very few
visits.
La Morinière is situated, as I have told you, between Lisieux and
Pont-L’Evêque in the shadiest, wettest country I know. Innumerable
narrow coombes and gently rounded hills terminate near the wide ‘Vallée
d’Auge,’ which then stretches in an uninterrupted plain as far as the
sea. There is no horizon; some few copse-woods, filled with mysterious
shade, some few fields of corn, but chiefly meadow land--softly
sloping pastures, where the lush grass is mown twice a year, where the
apple-trees, when the sun is low, join shadow to shadow, where flocks
and herds graze untended; in every hollow there is water--pond or pool
or river; from every side comes the continual murmur of streams.
Oh, how well I remembered the house! its blue roofs, its walls of
stone and brick, its moat, the reflections in the still waters....
It was an old house which would easily have lodged a dozen persons;
Marceline, three servants, and myself, who occasionally lent a helping
hand, found it all we could do to animate a part of it. Our old
bailiff, who was called Bocage, had already done his best to prepare
some of the rooms; the old furniture awoke from its twenty years’
slumber; everything had remained just as I remembered it--the panelling
not too dilapidated, the rooms easy to live in. Bocage, to welcome
us, had put flowers in all the vases he could lay hands on. He had
had the large courtyard and the nearest paths in the park weeded and
raked. When we arrived, the sun’s last rays were falling on the house,
and from the valley facing it a mist had arisen which hovered there
motionless, masking and revealing the river. We had not well arrived,
when all at once I recognized the scent of the grass; and when I heard
the piercing cries of the swallows as they flew round the house, the
whole past suddenly rose up, as though it had been lying in wait for my
approach to close over and submerge me.
In a few days the house was more or less comfortable; I might have
settled down to work; but I delayed, at first still listening to the
voice of my past as it recalled its slightest details to my memory, and
then too much absorbed by an unwonted emotion. Marceline, a week after
our arrival, confided to me that she was expecting a child.
Thenceforward I thought I owed her redoubled care, and that she had a
right to greater tenderness than ever; at any rate during the first
weeks that followed her confidence, I spent almost every minute of the
day in her company. We used to go and sit near the wood, on a bench
where in old days I had been used to sit with my mother; there, each
moment brought us a richer pleasure, each hour passed with a smoother
flow. If no distinct memory of this period of my life stands out for
me, it is not because I am less deeply grateful for it--but because
everything in it melted and mingled into a state of changeless ease, in
which evening joined morning without a break, in which day passed into
day without a surprise.
I gradually set to work again with a quiet mind, in possession of
itself, certain of its strength, looking calmly and confidently to the
future; with a will that seemed softened, as though by harkening to the
counsels of that temperate land.
There can be no doubt, I thought, that the example of such a land,
where everything is ripening towards fruition and harvest, must
have the best of influences on me. I looked forward with admiring
wonder to the tranquil promise of the great oxen and fat cows that
grazed in those opulent meadows. The apple-trees, planted in order on
the sunniest slopes of the hill-sides, gave hopes this summer of a
magnificent crop. I saw in my mind’s eye the rich burden of fruit which
would soon bow down their branches. From this ordered abundance, this
joyous acceptance of service imposed, this smiling cultivation, had
arisen a harmony that was the result not of chance but of intention,
a rhythm, a beauty, at once human and natural, in which the teeming
fecundity of nature and the wise effort of man to regulate it, were
combined in such perfect agreement, that one no longer knew which was
most admirable. What would man’s effort be worth, thought I, without
the savagery of the power it controls? What would the wild rush of
these upwelling forces become without the intelligent effort that banks
it, curbs it, leads it by such pleasant ways to its outcome of luxury?
And I let myself go in a dream of lands where every force should be so
regulated, all expenditure so compensated, all exchanges so strict,
that the slightest waste would be appreciable; then I applied my
dream to life and imagined a code of ethics which should institute the
scientific and perfect utilization of a man’s self by a controlling
intelligence.
Where had my rebelliousness vanished to? Where was it hiding itself? It
seemed never to have existed, so tranquil was I. The rising tide of my
love had swept it all away.
Meanwhile old Bocage bustled round us; he gave directions, he
superintended, he advised; his need of feeling himself indispensable
was tiresome in the extreme. In order not to hurt his feelings I
had to go over his accounts and listen for hours to his endless
explanations. Even that was not enough; I had to visit the estate with
him. His sententious truisms, his continual speeches, his evident
self-satisfaction, the display he made of his honesty drove me to
exasperation; he became more and more persistent and there was nothing
I would not have done to recover my liberty, when an unexpected
occurrence brought about a change in my relations with him. One evening
Bocage announced that he was expecting his son Charles the next day.
I said, “Oh!” rather casually, having so far troubled myself very
little as to any children Bocage might or might not have; then, seeing
my indifference offended him and that he expected some expression of
interest and surprise, “Where has he been?” I asked.
“In a model farm near Alençon,” answered Bocage.
“How old is he now? About...?” I went on, calculating the age of this
son, of whose existence I had so far been totally unaware, and leaving
him time enough to interrupt me....
“Past seventeen,” went on Bocage. “He was not much more than four when
your father’s good lady died. Ah! He’s a big lad now; he’ll know more
than his dad soon....” Once Bocage was started, nothing could stop him,
not even the boredom I very plainly showed.
I had forgotten all about this, when the next evening, Charles, newly
arrived from his journey, came to pay his respects to Marceline and me.
He was a fine strong young fellow, so exuberantly healthy, so lissom,
so well-made, that not even the frightful town clothes he had put on
in our honour could make him look ridiculous; his shyness hardly added
anything to the fine natural red of his cheeks. He did not look more
than fifteen, his eyes were so bright and so childlike; he expressed
himself clearly, without embarrassment, and, unlike his father, did
not speak when he had nothing to say. I cannot remember what we talked
about that first evening; I was so busy looking at him that I found
nothing to say and let Marceline do all the talking. But next day, for
the first time, I did not wait for old Bocage to come and fetch me, in
order to go down to the farm, where I knew they were starting work on a
pond that had to be repaired.
This pond--almost as big as a lake--was leaking. The leak had been
located and had to be cemented. In order to do this, the pond had first
to be drained, a thing that had not been done for fifteen years. It
was full of carp and tench, great creatures, some of them, that lay at
the bottom of the pond without ever coming up. I wanted to stock the
moat with some of these fish and give some to the labourers, so that
upon this occasion the pleasure of a fishing party was added to the
day’s work, as could be seen from the extraordinary animation of the
farm; some children from the neighbourhood had joined the workers and
Marceline herself had promised to come down later.
The water had already been sinking for some time when I got there.
Every now and then a great ripple suddenly stirred its surface and
the brown backs of the disturbed fish came into sight. The children
paddling in the puddles round the edges, amused themselves with
catching gleaming handfuls of small fry, which they flung into pails
of clear water. The water in the pond was muddy and soon became more
and more thick and troubled owing to the agitation of the fish. Their
abundance was beyond all expectation; four farm labourers, dipping
into the water at random, pulled them out in handfuls. I was sorry
that Marceline had not arrived and decided to run and fetch her, when
a shout signalled the appearance of the first eels. But no-one could
succeed in catching them; they slipped between the men’s fingers.
Charles, who up till then had been standing beside his father on the
bank, could restrain himself no longer; he took off his shoes and socks
in a moment, flung aside his coat and waistcoat, then, tucking up his
trousers and shirtsleeves as high as they would go, stepped resolutely
into the mud. I immediately did the same.
“Charles!” I cried, “it was a good thing you came back yesterday,
wasn’t it?” He was already too busy with his fishing to answer, but he
looked at me, laughing. I called him after a moment to help me catch a
big eel; we joined hands in trying to hold it.... Then came another and
another; our faces were splashed with mud; sometimes the ooze suddenly
gave way beneath us and we sank into it up to our waists; we were soon
drenched. In the ardour of the sport, we barely exchanged a shout or
two, a word or two; but at the end of the day, I became aware I was
saying ‘thou’ to Charles, without having any clear idea when I had
begun. Our work in common had taught us more about each other than a
long conversation. Marceline had not come yet; she did not come at all,
but I ceased to regret her absence; I felt as though she would have a
little spoilt our pleasure.
Early next morning, I went down to the farm to look for Charles. We
took our way together to the woods.
As I myself knew very little about my estate and was not much
distressed at knowing so little, I was astonished to find how much
Charles knew about it and about the way it was farmed; he told me what
I was barely aware of, namely, that I had six farmer-tenants, that
the rents might have amounted to sixteen or eighteen thousand francs,
and that if they actually amounted to barely half that sum, it was
because almost everything was eaten up by repairs of all sorts and
by the payment of middlemen. His way of smiling as he looked at the
fields in cultivation soon made me suspect that the management of the
estate was not quite so good as I had at first thought and as Bocage
had given me to understand; I pressed Charles further on this subject,
and the intelligence of practical affairs which had so exasperated me
in Bocage, amused me in a child like him. We continued our walks day
after day; the estate was large and when we had visited every corner
of it, we began again with more method. Charles did not hide his
irritation at the sight of certain fields, certain pieces of land that
were overgrown with gorse, thistles and weeds; he instilled into me his
hatred of fallow land and set me dreaming with him of a better mode of
agriculture.
“But,” I said to him at first, “who is it that suffers from this lack
of cultivation? Isn’t it only the farmer himself? However much the
profits of his farm vary, his rent still remains the same.”
Charles was a little annoyed: “You understand nothing about it,” he
ventured to say--and I smiled. “You think only of income and won’t
consider that the capital is deteriorating. Your land is slowly losing
its value by being badly cultivated.”
“If it were to bring in more by being better cultivated, I expect the
farmers would set about it. They are too eager for gain not to make as
much profit as they can.”
“You are not counting,” continued Charles, “the cost of increased
labour. These neglected bits of land are sometimes a long way from the
farms. True, if they were cultivated, they would bring in nothing or
next to nothing, but at any rate, they would keep from spoiling.”
And so the conversation went on. Sometimes for an hour on end we seemed
to be interminably repeating the same things as we walked over the
fields; but I listened, and little by little gathered information.
“After all, it’s your father’s business,” I said one day impatiently.
Charles blushed a little.
“My father is old,” he said; “he has a great deal to do already, seeing
to the upkeep of the buildings, collecting the rents and so on. It’s
not his business to make reforms.”
“And what reforms would _you_ make?” I asked. But at that he became
evasive and pretended he knew nothing about it; it was only by
insisting that I forced him to explain.
“I should take away all the uncultivated fields from the tenants,”
he ended by advising. “If the farmers leave part of their land
uncultivated, it’s a proof they don’t need it all in order to pay you;
or if they say they must keep it all, I should raise their rents. All
the people hereabouts are idle,” he added.
Of the six farms that belonged to me, the one I most liked visiting
was situated on a hill that overlooked La Morinière; it was called La
Valterie; the farmer who rented it was a pleasant enough fellow and I
used to like talking to him. Nearer La Morinière, was a farm called
the ‘home farm,’ which was let on a system that left Bocage, pending
the landlord’s absence, in possession of part of the cattle. Now that
my doubts had been awakened, I began to suspect honest Bocage himself,
if not of cheating me, at any rate, of allowing other people to cheat
me. One stable and one cow-house were, it is true, reserved to me,
but it soon dawned upon me that they had merely been invented so as
to allow the farmer to feed his cows and horses with my oats and hay.
So far, I had listened indulgently to the very unconvincing reports
which Bocage gave me from time to time of deaths, malformations and
diseases. I swallowed everything. It had not then occurred to me that
it was sufficient for one of the farmer’s cows to fall ill for it to
become one of my cows, nor that it was sufficient for one of my cows to
do well for it to become one of the farmer’s; but a few rash remarks of
Charles’s, a few observations of my own began to enlighten me, and my
mind once given the hint, worked quickly.
Marceline, at my suggestion, went over the accounts minutely, but could
find nothing wrong with them; Bocage’s honesty was displayed on every
page. What was to be done? Let things be. At any rate, I now watched
the management of the cattle in a state of suppressed indignation, but
without letting it be too obvious.
I had four horses and ten cows--quite enough to be a considerable
worry to me. Among my four horses was one which was still called ‘the
colt,’ though it was more than three years old; it was now being broken
in; I was beginning to take an interest in it, when one fine morning
I was informed that it was perfectly unmanageable, that it would be
impossible ever to do anything with it and that the best thing would
be to get rid of it. As if on purpose to convince me of this, in case I
had doubted it, it had been made to break the front of a small cart and
had cut its hocks in doing so.
I had much ado that day to keep my temper, but what helped me was
Bocage’s obvious embarrassment. After all, thought I, he is more weak
than anything else; it is the men who are to blame, but they want a
guiding hand over them.
I went into the yard to see the colt; one of the men who had been
beating it began to stroke it as soon as he heard me coming; I
pretended to have seen nothing. I did not know much about horses, but
this colt seemed to me a fine animal; it was half-bred, light bay in
colour and remarkably elegant in shape, with a very bright eye and a
very light mane and tail. I made sure it had not been injured, insisted
on its cuts being properly dressed and went away without another word.
That evening, as soon as I saw Charles, I tried to find out what he
personally thought of the colt.
“I think he’s a perfectly quiet beast,” he said, “but they don’t know
how to manage him; they’ll drive him wild.”
“And how would _you_ manage him?”
“Will you let me have him for a week, Sir? I’ll answer for him.”
“And what will you do?”
“You will see.”
The next morning, Charles took the colt down to a corner of the field
that was shaded by a superb walnut-tree and bordered by the river;
I went too, together with Marceline. It is one of my most vivid
recollections. Charles had tied the colt with a rope a few yards long
to a stake firmly planted in the ground. The mettlesome creature had,
it seems, objected for some time with great spirit; but now, tired and
quieted, it was going round more calmly; the elasticity of its trot was
astonishing and as delightful and engaging to watch as a dance. Charles
stood in the centre of the circle and avoided the rope at every round
with a sudden leap, exciting or calming the beast with his voice; he
held a long whip in his hand, but I did not see him use it. Everything
about his look and movements--his youthfulness, his delight--gave his
work the fervent and beautiful aspect of pleasure. Suddenly--I have no
idea how--he was astride the animal; it had slackened its pace and then
stopped; he had patted it a little and then, all of a sudden, I saw he
was on horseback, sure of himself, barely holding its mane, laughing,
leaning forward, still patting and stroking its neck. The colt had
hardly resisted for a moment; then it began its even trot again, so
handsome, so easy, that I envied Charles and told him so.
“A few days’ more training and the saddle won’t tickle him at all; in a
fortnight, Sir, your lady herself won’t be afraid to mount him; he’ll
be as quiet as a lamb.”
It was quite true; a few days later, the horse allowed himself to
be stroked, harnessed, led, without any signs of restiveness; and
Marceline might really have ridden him if her state of health had
permitted.
“You ought to try him yourself, Sir,” said Charles.
I should never have done so alone; but Charles suggested saddling
another of the farm horses for himself, and the pleasure of
accompanying him proved irresistible.
How grateful I was to my mother for having sent me to a riding-school
when I was a boy! The recollection of those long-ago lessons stood
me in good stead. The sensation of feeling myself on horseback was
not too strange; after the first few moments, I had no tremors and
felt perfectly at ease. Charles’s mount was heavier; it was not pure
bred, but far from bad-looking, and above all, Charles rode it well.
We got into the habit of going out every day; for choice, we started
in the early morning, through grass that was still bright with dew;
we rode to the limit of the woods; the dripping hazels, shaken by our
passage, drenched us with their showers; suddenly the horizon opened
out; there, in front of us, lay the vast Vallée d’Auge and far in the
distance could be divined the presence of the sea. We stayed a moment
without dismounting; the rising sun coloured the mists, parted them,
dispersed them; then, we set off again at a brisk trot; we lingered a
little at the farm, where the work was only just beginning; we enjoyed
for a moment the proud pleasure of being earlier than the labourers--of
looking down on them; then, abruptly, we left them; I was home again at
La Morinière just as Marceline was beginning to get up.
I used to come in drunk with the open air, dazed with speed, my limbs
a little stiff with a delicious fatigue, all health and appetite and
freshness. Marceline approved, encouraged my fancy. I went straight to
her room, still in my gaiters, and found her lingering in bed, waiting
for me; I came bringing with me a scent of wet leaves, which she
said she liked. And she listened while I told her of our ride, of the
awakening of the fields, of the recommencing of the day’s labour....
She took as much delight, it seemed, in feeling me live as in living
herself. Soon I trespassed on this delight too; our rides grew longer,
and sometimes I did not come in till nearly noon.
I kept the afternoons and evenings, however, as much as possible for
the preparation of my lectures. My work on them made good progress;
I was satisfied with it and thought they might perhaps be worth
publishing later as a book. By a kind of natural reaction, the more
regular and orderly my life became and the more pleasure I took in
establishing order about me--the more attracted I felt by the rude
ethics of the Goths. With a boldness, for which I was afterwards
blamed, I took the line throughout my lectures of making the apology
and eulogy of non-culture; but, at the same time, in my private life,
I was laboriously doing all I could to control, if not to suppress,
everything about me and within me that in any way suggested it. How far
did I not push this wisdom--or this folly?
Two of my tenants whose leases expired at Christmas time, came to me
with a request for renewal; it was a matter of signing the usual
preliminary agreement. Strong in Charles’s assurances and encouraged by
his daily conversations, I awaited the farmers with resolution. They
on the other hand, equally strong in the conviction that tenants are
hard to replace, began by asking for their rents to be lowered. Their
stupefaction was great when I read them the agreement I had myself
drawn up, in which I not only refused to lower the rents but also
withdrew from the farms certain portions of land, which I said they
were making no use of. They pretended at first to take it as a laughing
matter--I must be joking. What could I do with the land? It was worth
nothing; and if they made no use of it, it was because no use could be
made of it.... Then, seeing I was serious, they turned obstinate; I was
obstinate too. They thought they would frighten me by threatening to
leave. It was what I was waiting for:
“All right! Go if you like! I won’t keep you,” I said, tearing the
agreement up before their eyes.
So there I was, with more than two hundred acres left on my hands.
I had planned for some time past to give the chief management of
this land to Bocage, thinking that in this way I should be giving
it indirectly to Charles; my intention also was to look after it a
good deal myself; but in reality, I reflected very little about it;
the very risk of the undertaking tempted me. The tenants would not be
turning out before Christmas; between this and then we should have
time to look about us. I told Charles; his delight annoyed me; he
could not hide it; it made me feel more than ever that he was much
too young. We were already pressed for time; it was the season when
the reaping of the crops leaves the fields empty for early ploughing.
By an established custom, the outgoing tenant works side by side with
the incoming; the former quits the land bit by bit, as soon as he has
carried his crops. I was afraid the two farmers I had dismissed would
somehow revenge themselves on me; but, on the contrary, they made a
pretence of being perfectly amiable (I only learnt later how much they
benefited by this). I took advantage of their complaisance to go up to
their land--which was soon going to be mine--every morning and evening.
Autumn was beginning; more labourers had to be hired to get on with
the ploughing and sowing; we had bought harrows, rollers, ploughs; I
rode about on horseback, superintending and directing the work, taking
pleasure in ordering people about and in using my authority.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring meadows, the apples were being gathered;
they dropped from the trees and lay rolling in the thick grass; never
had there been a more abundant crop; there were not enough pickers;
they had to be brought in from the neighbouring villages and taken on
for a week; Charles and I sometimes amused ourselves by helping them.
Some of the men beat the branches with sticks to bring down the late
fruit; the fruit that fell of itself was gathered into separate heaps;
often the overripe apples lay bruised and crushed in the long grass so
that it was impossible to walk without stepping on them. The smell that
rose from the ground was acrid and sickly and mingled with the smell of
the ploughed land.
Autumn was advancing. The mornings of the last fine days are
the freshest, the most limpid of all. There were times when the
moisture-laden atmosphere painted all the distances blue, made them
look more distant still, turned a short walk into a day’s journey;
and the whole country looked bigger; at times again the abnormal
transparency of the air brought the horizon closer; it seemed as though
it might be reached by one stroke of the wing; and I could not tell
which of the two states filled me with a heavier languor. My work was
almost finished--at least, so I told myself, as an encouragement to be
idle. The time I did not spend at the farm, I spent with Marceline.
Together we went out into the garden; we walked slowly, she languidly
hanging on my arm; the bench where we went to sit looked over the
valley, which the evening gradually filled with light. She had a tender
way of leaning against my shoulder; and we would stay so till evening,
motionless, speechless, letting the day sink and melt within us.... In
what a cloak of silence our love had already learnt to wrap itself!
For already Marceline’s love was stronger than words--for sometimes
her love was almost an anguish to me. As a breath of wind sometimes
ripples the surface of a tranquil pool, the slightest emotion was
visible in her face; she was listening now to the new life mysteriously
quivering within her, and I leant over her as over deep transparent
waters where, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but
love. Ah! if this was still happiness, I know I did my best to hold
it, as one tries--in vain--to hold the water that slips between one’s
joined hands; but already I felt, close beside my happiness, something
not happiness, something indeed that coloured my love, but with the
colours of autumn.
Autumn was passing. Every morning the grass was wetter, till it no
longer dried in the fringe of the woods on the shady side of the
valley; at the first streak of dawn, it was white. The ducks on the
waters of the moat fluttered and flapped their wings; they grew
fiercely agitated; sometimes they rose together, calling loudly, and
flew in a noisy flight right round La Morinière. One morning we missed
them. Bocage had shut them up. Charles told me that every autumn at
migration time they had to be shut up in this way. And a few days later
the weather changed. One evening, suddenly, there came a great blast,
a breath from the sea, stormy, steady, bringing with it cold and rain,
carrying off the birds of passage. Marceline’s condition, the business
of settling into a new apartment, the work entailed by my lectures,
would in any case have soon called us back to town. The bad weather,
which began early, drove us away at once.
It is true that the farm affairs were to bring me back in November. I
was greatly vexed to hear of Bocage’s plans for the winter; he told
me he wished to send Charles back to his model farm where, so he
declared, he had still a great deal to learn; I talked to him long,
used all the arguments I could think of, but I could not make him
budge; at the outside, he consented to shorten Charles’s training by
a trifle, so as to allow him to come back a little sooner. Bocage did
not conceal from me that the running of the two farms would be a matter
of no small difficulty; but he had in view, so he said, two highly
trustworthy peasants whom he intended to employ; they would be partly
farmers, partly tenants, partly labourers; the thing was too unusual in
these parts for him to hope much good would come of it; but, he said,
it was my own wish. This conversation took place towards the end of
October. In the first days of November, we moved to Paris.
ii
It was in S... Street, near Passy, that we took up our residence. The
apartment, which had been found for us by one of Marceline’s brothers,
and which we had visited when we had last passed through Paris, was
much bigger than the one my father had left me, and Marceline was a
little uneasy, not only at the increased rent, but at all the other
expenses we should certainly be led into. I countered all her fears by
pretending I had a horror of anything temporary; I forced myself to
believe in this feeling and deliberately exaggerated it. Certainly, the
cost of furnishing and arranging the apartment would exceed our income
for the present year, but our fortune, which was already large, was
sure to increase still further; I counted on my lectures for this, on
the publication of my book and, such was my folly, on the profits from
my new farms. In consequence, I stopped short at no expense, telling
myself at each new one that here was another tie and thinking also
that by these means I should suppress every vagabond inclination I
felt--or feared I might feel--within me.
For the first few days, our time was taken up from morning to night
by shopping and other business of the sort; and though eventually,
Marceline’s brother very obligingly offered to do as much as he
could for us, it was not long before Marceline felt thoroughly tired
out. Then, as soon as we were settled in, instead of resting as she
should have done, she felt obliged to receive visitors; they flocked
to see us now because we had been absent from Paris during the
first days of our marriage, and Marceline, who had become unused to
society, was incapable of getting rid of them quickly or of shutting
her doors altogether. When I came home in the evening, I found her
exhausted, and, though her fatigue, which seemed only natural, caused
me no anxiety, I did my best to lessen it; often receiving visits in
her stead, which was very little to my taste, and sometimes paying
them--which was still less so.
I have never been a brilliant talker; the frivolity, the wit, the
spirit of fashionable drawing-rooms, were things in which I could
take no pleasure; yet in old days I had frequented some of these
salons--but how long ago that seemed! What had happened since then?
In other people’s company, I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at
once bored and boring.... By a singular piece of ill-luck, you, whom
I considered my only real friends, were absent from Paris and not
expected back for long. Should I have been able to speak to you more
openly? Would you have perhaps understood me better than I did myself?
But what did I know at that time of all that was growing up within me,
of all I am now telling you about? The future seemed to me absolutely
assured and I had never thought myself more master of it.
And even if I had been more perspicacious, what help against myself
should I have found in Hubert, Didier or Maurice, or in all the
others whom you know and judge as I do? I very soon discovered,
alas, the impossibility of their understanding me. In our very first
conversations, I found myself forced to impersonate a false character,
to resemble the man they imagined I still was; and for convenience’
sake, I pretended to have the thoughts and tastes with which they
credited me. One cannot both be sincere and seem so.
I was rather more willing to renew my acquaintance with the people of
my own profession--archaeologists and philologists--but I found very
little more pleasure and no more emotion in talking to them than in
consulting a good dictionary. I hoped at first to find a rather more
direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if
they really had such a comprehension, it must be confessed they did
not show it; most of them, I thought, did not really live--contented
themselves with appearing to live, and were on the verge of considering
life merely as a vexatious hindrance to writing. I could not blame
them for it; and I do not affirm that the mistake was not mine.... As
to that, what did I mean by ‘living’? That is exactly what I wanted to
find out. One and another talked cleverly of the different events of
life--never of what is at the back of them.
As for the few philosophers whose business it should have been to
instruct me, I had long known, what to expect of them; whether
mathematicians or neo-Kantians, they kept as far away as possible
from the disturbing reality and had no more concern for it than the
algebraist has for the existence of the quantities he measures.
When I got back to Marceline, I did not conceal from her how tedious I
found all these acquaintances.
“They are all alike,” I said to her. “When I talk to one, I feel as if
I were talking to the whole lot.”
“But, my dear,” said Marceline, “you can’t expect each of them to be
different from all the others.”
“The greater their likeness to each other, the more unlike they are to
me.”
And then I went on with a sigh, “Not one of them has managed to be
ill. They are alive--they seem to be alive, and yet not to know they
are alive. For that matter, since I have been in their company, I have
ceased to be alive myself. Today, amongst other days, what have I done?
I had to leave you about nine o’clock. I had just a bare moment for a
little reading before I went out; it was the only satisfactory moment
of the day. Your brother was waiting for me at the solicitor’s, and
after the solicitor’s, he insisted on sticking to me; I had to see the
upholsterer with him; he was really a nuisance at the cabinet-maker’s
and I only got rid of him at Gaston’s; I had lunch in the neighbourhood
with Philip and then I met Louis at a café and went with him to
Theodore’s absurd lecture, and paid him compliments when it was over;
then, in order to get out of his invitation for Sunday, I had to go
with him to Arthur’s; then to a water-colour exhibition with Arthur;
then left cards on Albertine and Julie.... I came in thoroughly
exhausted and found you as tired as myself, after visits from Adeline,
Marthe, Jeanne and Sophie.... And now, in the evening, as I look back
on my day, it seems to me so vain and so empty, that I long to have it
back and live it over again hour by hour--and the thought of it makes
me inclined to weep.”
And yet I should not have been able to say what I meant by ‘living,’
nor whether the very simple secret of my trouble was not that I had
acquired a taste for a more spacious, breezier life, one that was
less hemmed in, less regardful of others; the secret seemed to me
much more mysterious than that; it was the secret, I thought, of one
who has known death; for I moved a stranger among ordinary people,
like a man who has risen from the grave. And at first I merely felt
rather painfully out of my element; but soon I became aware of a very
different feeling. I had known no pride, I repeat, when the publication
of my Essay had brought me such praise. Was it pride now? Perhaps; but
at any rate there was no trace of vanity mixed with it. It was rather,
for the first time, the consciousness of my own worth. What separated
me--distinguished me--from other people was crucial; what no-one said,
what no-one could say but myself, _that_ it was my task to say.
My lectures began soon after; the subject was congenial and I poured
into the first of them all my newly born passion. Speaking of the later
Latin civilization, I depicted artistic culture as welling up in a
whole people, like a secretion, which is at first a sign of plethora,
of a superabundance of health, but which afterwards stiffens, hardens,
forbids the perfect contact of the mind with nature, hides under the
persistent appearance of life a diminution of life, turns into an
outside sheath, in which the cramped mind languishes and pines, in
which at last it dies. Finally, pushing my thought to its logical
conclusion, I showed Culture, born of life, as the destroyer of life.
The historians blamed a tendency, as they phrased it, to too rapid
generalization. Other people blamed my method; and those who
complimented me were those who understood me least.
* * * * *
It was at the end of my lecture that I came across Ménalque again for
the first time. I had never seen much of him, and shortly before my
marriage, he had started on one of those distant voyages of discovery
which sometimes kept him from us for over a year. In the old days, I
had never much liked him; he seemed proud and he took no interest in my
existence. I was therefore astonished to see him at my first lecture.
His very insolence, which had at first held me aloof from him, pleased
me, and I thought the smile he gave me all the more charming because
I knew he smiled rarely. Recently, an absurd--a shameful--lawsuit had
caused a scandal and given the newspapers a convenient occasion to
drag him through the mud; those whom he had offended by his disdain
and superiority seized this pretext to revenge themselves; and what
irritated them most was that he appeared not to care.
“One must allow other people to be right,” he used to say when he was
insulted, “it consoles them for not being anything else.”
But ‘good society’ was indignant and people who, as they say, ‘respect
themselves,’ thought it their duty to turn their backs on him, and
so pay him back his contempt. This was an extra encouragement to me;
feeling myself attracted by a secret influence, I went up to him and
embraced him before everyone.
When they saw to whom I was talking, the last intruders withdrew; I was
left alone with Ménalque.
After the irritating criticisms and inept compliments I had been
listening to, his few words on the subject of my lecture were very
soothing.
“You are burning what you used to adore,” said he. “Very good. It is a
little late in the day, but never mind, the fire is all the fiercer. I
am not sure whether I altogether understand you. You make me curious. I
don’t much care about talking, but I should like to talk to you. Come
and dine with me tonight.”
“Dear Ménalque,” I answered, “you seem to forget that I am married.”
“Yes,” he answered, “quite true. The frank cordiality with which you
were not afraid to greet me made me think you might be free.”
I was afraid I might have wounded him; still more so of seeming weak,
and I told him I would join him after dinner.
* * * * *
Ménalque never did more than pass through Paris on his way to somewhere
else; he always stayed in a hotel. On this occasion he had had several
rooms fitted up for him as a private apartment; he had his own
servants, took his meals apart, lived apart; stuffs and hangings of
great value which he had brought back from Nepal had been hung on the
walls and thrown over the furniture, whose commonplace ugliness was an
offence to him. He was dirtying them out, he said, before presenting
them to a museum. My haste to rejoin him had been so great, that I
found him still at table when I came in; as I excused myself for
disturbing his meal:
“But I have no intention of letting you disturb it,” he said, “and I
expect you to let me finish it. If you had come to dinner, I should
have given you some Chiraz--the wine that Hafiz celebrated--but it is
too late now; one must only drink it fasting; but you’ll take some
liqueur, won’t you?”
I accepted, thinking he would take some too, and when only one glass
was brought in, I expressed astonishment.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but I hardly ever drink such things.”
“Are you afraid of getting drunk?”
“Oh!” replied he, “on the contrary! But I consider sobriety a more
powerful intoxication--in which I keep my lucidity.”
“And you pour the drink out for others?”
He smiled.
“I cannot,” said he, “expect everyone to have my virtues. It’s good
enough to meet with my vices....”
“You smoke, at any rate?”
“No, not even that. Smoking is an impersonal, negative, too easily
achieved kind of drunkenness; what I want from drunkenness is an
enhancement not a diminution of life. But that’s enough. Do you know
where I have just come from? Biskra. I heard you had been staying
there, and I thought I would like to follow up your tracks. What
could the blindfolded scholar, the learned bookworm have come to do
at Biskra? It’s my habit to be discreet only about things that are
confided to me; for things that I find out myself, I’ll admit that I
have an unbounded curiosity. So I searched, poked about, questioned
wherever I could. My indiscretion was rewarded, since it has made me
wish to meet you again; since instead of the learned man of habit you
seemed to be in the old days, I know now that you are ... it’s for you
to tell me what.”