“What! You too, my dear Michel! But _you_ didn’t begin by insulting
me,” said he. “Leave all that nonsense to the papers. They seem to
be surprised that a man with a certain reputation can still have any
virtues at all. They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot
apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be
natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I
ought to do it.”
“That may lead far,” I said.
“Indeed I hope so,” answered Ménalque. “If only the people we know
could persuade themselves of the truth of this! But most of them
believe that it is only by constraint they can get any good out of
themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It
is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each
of them sets up a pattern and imitates it; he doesn’t even choose the
pattern he imitates; he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for
him. And yet I verily believe there are other things to be read in
man. But people don’t dare to--they don’t dare to turn the page. Laws
of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself
alone--that is what they suffer from--and so they don’t find themselves
at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia--the most odious cowardice I
call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything--but they
don’t want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is
different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part
that makes our special value--and that is the very thing people try to
suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life.”
I let Ménalque speak on; he was saying exactly what I myself had said
the month before to Marceline; I ought to have approved him. For what
reason, through what moral cowardice did I interrupt him and say, in
imitation of Marceline, the very sentence word for word with which she
had interrupted me then?
“But, my dear Ménalque, you can’t expect each one of them to be
different from all the others.”...
Ménalque stopped speaking abruptly, looked at me oddly and then, as
at that very moment Eusèbe came up to take leave, he unceremoniously
turned his back on me and went off to talk about some trifle or other
to Hector.
The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I realized not only that
they were stupid, but worse still, that they might have given Ménalque
the impression that I thought his remarks had been pointed at me. It
was late; my guests were leaving. When the drawing-room was nearly
empty, Ménalque came back to me.
“I can’t leave you like this,” he said. “No doubt, I misunderstood what
you said. Let me at least hope so.”
“No,” I answered, “you did not misunderstand it ... but it was
senseless, and I had no sooner said it than I knew it was foolish. I
was sorry, and especially sorry to think it would make you place me
among the very people you were attacking and who, I assure you, are as
odious to me as to you. I hate people of principle.”
“Yes,” answered Ménalque, laughing, “there is nothing more detestable
in the world. It is impossible to expect any sort of sincerity from
them; for they never do anything but what their principles have
decreed they should do; or if they do, they think they have done wrong.
At the mere suspicion you might be one of them, the words froze on my
lips. I felt by my distress what a great affection I have for you; I
hoped I was mistaken--not in my affection, but in the conclusion I had
drawn.”
“Yes, really; your conclusion was wrong.”
“Oh! it was, I am sure,” said he, suddenly taking my hand. “Listen a
moment; I shall soon be going away, but I should like to see you again.
My expedition this time will be a longer one and more risky than any
of the others; I don’t know when I shall come back. I must start in a
fortnight’s time; no-one knows I am leaving so soon; I tell you so in
confidence. I start at daybreak. The night before leaving is always a
night of terrible heart-ache for me. Give me a proof that you are not a
man of principle; may I count on it that you will spend that last night
with me?”
“But we shall see each other again before then,” I said, a little
astonished.
“No; during the next fortnight I shall be at home to no-one. I shall
not even be in Paris. Tomorrow I leave for Buda-Pesth; in six days’
time I must be in Rome. I have friends dotted here and there to whom I
must say good-bye before leaving. There is one expecting me in Madrid.”
“Very well then, I will pass your night of vigil with you.”
“And we will have some Chiraz to drink,” said Ménalque.
* * * * *
A few days after this party, Marceline began to feel less well. I have
already said she was easily tired; but she did not complain, and as
I attributed her fatigue to her condition, I thought it natural and
felt no particular anxiety. A rather foolish--or rather ignorant--old
doctor had at first been over reassuring. Some fresh symptoms,
however, accompanied by fever, decided me to send for Dr. Tr... who
was considered at that time the cleverest specialist in Paris for
such cases. He expressed astonishment that I had not called him in
sooner and prescribed a strict régime which she ought to have begun
to follow some time ago. Marceline had been very courageous, but not
very prudent, and had overtired herself. She was told she must now lie
up till the date of her confinement, which was expected about the end
of January. Feeling no doubt a little anxious and more unwell than
she would admit, Marceline consented very meekly to the most tiresome
orders. She had a moment’s rebellion, however, when Tr... prescribed
quinine in such heavy doses that she knew it might endanger the child.
For three days she obstinately refused to take it; then as her fever
increased she was obliged to submit to that too; but this time it was
with deep sadness and as if she were mournfully giving up all hope of
the future; the resolution which had hitherto sustained her seemed
broken down by a kind of religious resignation, and her condition grew
suddenly worse in the days that followed.
I tended her with greater care than ever, did my best to reassure
her and repeated the very words Dr. Tr... had used, that he could
see nothing very serious in her case; but her extreme anxiety ended
by alarming me too. Alas! our happiness was already resting on the
dangerous foundations of hope--and hope of what an uncertain future!
I, who at first had taken pleasure only in the past, may have one day
felt, thought I, the sudden and intoxicating sweetness of a fugitive
moment, but the future disenchants the present even more than the
present then disenchanted the past; and since our night at Sorrento my
whole love, my whole life have been projected into the future.
* * * * *
In the meantime the evening I had promised Ménalque came round; and
notwithstanding the reluctance I felt at abandoning Marceline for a
whole winter’s night, I got her, as best I could, to acknowledge the
solemnity of the occasion and the gravity of my promise. Marceline was
a little better that evening and yet I was anxious; a nurse took my
place beside her. But as soon as I was in the street, my anxiety gained
ground; I shook it off, struggled against it, was angry with myself
for not being better able to get rid of it; thus I gradually reached a
state of excessive tension, of singular excitement, both very unlike
and very like the painful uneasiness from which it sprang, but liker
still to happiness. It was late and I strode along rapidly; the snow
began to fall in thick flakes; I was glad to be breathing a keener air,
to be struggling with the cold; I was happy with the wind, the night,
the snow against me; I rejoiced in my strength.
Ménalque had heard me coming and came out on to the landing to welcome
me. He was waiting for me not without impatience. His face was pale
and he looked overwrought. He helped me off with my overcoat and forced
me to change my wet boots for some soft Persian slippers. Sweets and
cakes were standing on a small table by the fire. There were two
lamps, but the light in the room came chiefly from the fire on the
hearth. Ménalque immediately enquired after Marceline; for the sake of
simplicity I answered that she was very well.
“Are you expecting your child soon?” he went on.
“In a month.”
Ménalque bent down towards the fire as if he wished to hide his face.
He remained silent. He remained silent so long that at last I felt
embarrassed, and as I myself could think of nothing to say either, I
got up, took a few steps, and then went up to him and put my hand on
his shoulder. Presently, as though he were pursuing his thoughts aloud:
“One must choose,” he murmured. “The chief thing is to know what one
wants....”
“Don’t you want to go?” I asked, in some uncertainty as to what he
meant.
“It looks like it.”
“Are you hesitating then?”
“What is the use? You have a wife and child, so stay at home.... Of
the thousand forms of life, each of us can know but one. It is madness
to envy other people’s happiness; one would not know what to do with
it. Happiness won’t come to one ready-made; it has to be made to
measure. I am going away tomorrow; yes, I know; I have tried to cut
out my happiness to fit me ... keep your calm happiness of hearth and
home....”
“_I_ cut out my happiness to fit me too,” I said, “but I have grown; I
am not at ease in my happiness now; sometimes I think it is strangling
me....”
“Pooh! you’ll get accustomed to it!” said Ménalque. Then he planted
himself in front of me and looked deep into my eyes; as I found nothing
to say, he smiled rather sadly.
“One imagines one possesses and in reality one is possessed,” he went
on. “Pour yourself out a glass of Chiraz, dear Michel; you won’t
often taste it; and eat some of those rose-coloured sweets which the
Persians take with it. I shall drink with you this evening, forget that
I am leaving tomorrow, and talk as if the night were long.... Do you
know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead letter
now-a-days? It is because they have severed themselves from life. In
Greece, ideas went hand in hand with life; so that the artist’s life
itself was already a poetic realization, the philosopher’s life a
putting into action of his philosophy; in this way, as both philosophy
and poetry took part in life, instead of remaining unacquainted with
each other, philosophy provided food for poetry, and poetry gave
expression to philosophy--and the result was admirably persuasive.
Now-a-days beauty no longer acts; action no longer desires to be
beautiful; and wisdom works in a sphere apart.”
“But _you_ live your wisdom,” said I; “why do you not write your
memoirs? Or simply,” I added, seeing him smile, “recollections of your
travels?”
“Because I do not want to recollect,” he replied. “I should be afraid
of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It
is out of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create every new
hour’s freshness. It is never enough for me to have been happy. I do
not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more
and never having been.”
These words were too far in advance of my thoughts not to end by
irritating me; I should have liked to hang back, to stop him; but I
tried in vain to contradict, and besides I was more irritated with
myself than with Ménalque. I remained silent therefore, while he,
sometimes pacing up and down like a wild beast in a cage, sometimes
stooping over the fire, kept up a long and moody silence, or again
broke abruptly into words:
“If only our paltry minds,” he said, “were able to embalm our memories!
But memories keep badly. The most delicate fade and shrivel; the most
voluptuous decay; the most delicious are the most dangerous in the end.
The things one repents of were at first delicious.”
Again a long silence; and then he went on:
“Regrets, remorse, repentance, are past joys seen from behind. I don’t
like looking backwards and I leave my past behind me as the bird leaves
his shade to fly away. Oh, Michel! every joy is always awaiting us, but
it must always be the only one; it insists on finding the bed empty
and demands from us a widower’s welcome. Oh, Michel! every joy is like
the manna of the desert which corrupts from one day to the next; it is
like the fountain of Ameles, whose waters, says Plato, could never be
kept in any vase.... Let every moment carry away with it all that it
brought.”
Ménalque went on speaking for long; I cannot repeat all his words;
but many of them were imprinted on my mind the more deeply, the more
anxious I was to forget them; not that they taught me much that was
new--but they suddenly laid bare my thoughts--thoughts I had shrouded
in so many coverings that I had almost hoped to smother them.
And so the night of watching passed.
The next morning, after I had seen Ménalque into the train that carried
him away, as I was walking home on my way back to Marceline, I felt
horribly sad and full of hatred of his cynical joy; I wanted to believe
it was a sham; I tried to deny it. I was angry with myself for not
having found anything to say to him in reply; for having said words
that might make him doubt my happiness, my love. And I clung to my
doubtful happiness--my “calm happiness,” as Ménalque had called it;
I could not, it was true, banish uneasiness from it, but I assured
myself that uneasiness was the very food of love. I imagined the future
and saw my child smiling at me; for his sake I would strengthen my
character, I would build it up anew.... Yes, I walked with a confident
step.
Alas! when I got in that morning, I was struck by a sight of
unaccustomed disorder. The nurse met me and told me guardedly that my
wife had been seized in the night with bad sickness and pains, though
she did not think the term of her confinement was at hand; feeling very
ill, she had sent for the doctor; he had arrived post-haste in the
night and had not yet left the patient; then, seeing me change colour,
I suppose, she tried to reassure me, said that things were going much
better now, that ... I rushed to Marceline’s room.
The room was darkened and at first I could make out nothing but the
doctor, who signed to me to be quiet; then I saw a figure in the dark I
did not know. Anxiously, noiselessly, I drew near the bed. Marceline’s
eyes were shut; she was so terribly pale that at first I thought she
was dead; but she turned her head towards me, though without opening
her eyes. The unknown figure was in a dark corner of the room,
arranging, hiding, various objects; I saw shining instruments, cotton
wool; I saw, I thought I saw a cloth stained with blood.... I felt I
was tottering. I almost fell into the doctor’s arms; he held me up. I
understood; I was afraid of understanding....
“The child?” I asked anxiously.
He shrugged his shoulders sadly. I lost all sense of what I was doing
and flung myself sobbing against the bed. Oh! how suddenly the
future had come upon me! The ground had given way abruptly beneath my
feet; there was nothing there but an empty hole into which I stumbled
headlong.
* * * * *
My recollections here are lost in dark confusion. Marceline, however,
seemed at first to recover fairly quickly. The Christmas holidays
allowed me a little respite and I was able to spend nearly the
whole day with her. I read or wrote in her room, or read aloud to
her quietly. I never went out without bringing her back flowers. I
remembered the tenderness with which she had nursed me when I was ill,
and surrounded her with so much love that sometimes she smiled as
though it made her happy. Not a word was exchanged about the melancholy
accident that had shattered our hopes....
Then phlebitis declared itself; and when that got better, a clot
of blood suddenly set her hovering between life and death. It was
night time; I remember leaning over her, feeling my heart stop and
go on again with hers. How many nights I watched by her bedside, my
eyes obstinately fixed on her, hoping by the strength of my love to
instil some of my own life into hers. I no longer thought much about
happiness; my single melancholy pleasure was sometimes seeing Marceline
smile.
My lectures had begun again. How did I find strength to prepare them,
to deliver them?... My memory of this time is blurred; I have forgotten
how the weeks passed. And yet there was a little incident I must tell
you about.
It was one morning, a little after the embolism; I was sitting with
Marceline; she seemed a little better, but she was still ordered to
keep absolutely motionless; she was not allowed to move even her arms.
I bent over her to give her some drink and after she had drunk, and as
I was still stooping over her, she begged me, in a voice made weaker
still by her emotion, to open a little box, which she showed me by
the direction of her glance; it was close by, on the table; I opened
it and found it full of ribbons, bits of lace, little ornaments of no
value.... I wondered what she wanted. I brought the box to her bedside
and took out every object one by one. Was it this? That?... No, not
yet; and I felt her getting agitated “Oh, Marceline, is it this little
rosary you want?”
She tried to smile.
“Are you afraid then that I shan’t nurse you properly?”
“Oh, my dear,” she murmured. And I remembered our conversation at
Biskra, and her timid reproaches when she heard me refuse what she
called “the help of God.” I went on a little roughly:
“_I_ got well alone all right.”
“I prayed for you so much,” she answered.
She said the words tenderly, sadly. There was something anxious and
imploring in her look.... I took the rosary and slipped it into her
weak hand as it lay on the sheet beside her. A tearful, love-laden
glance rewarded me--but I could not answer it; I waited another moment
or two, feeling awkward and embarrassed; finally not knowing what to
do, “Goodbye,” I said, and left the room, with a feeling of hostility,
and as though I had been turned out of it.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the horrible clot had brought on serious trouble; after
her heart had escaped, it attacked her lungs, brought on congestion,
impeded her breathing, made it short and laborious. I thought she would
never get well. Disease had taken hold of Marceline, never again to
leave her; it had marked her, stained her. Henceforth she was a thing
that had been spoilt.
iii
The weather was now becoming warmer. As soon as my lectures were over,
I took Marceline to La Morinière, the doctor having told me that all
immediate danger was past and that nothing would be more likely to
complete her cure than a change to purer air. I myself was in great
need of rest. The nights I had spent nursing her, almost entirely by
myself, the prolonged anxiety, and especially the kind of physical
sympathy which had made me at the time of her attack feel the fearful
throbbing of her heart in my own breast--all this had exhausted me as
much as if I myself had been ill.
I should have preferred to take Marceline to the mountains, but she
expressed the strongest desire to return to Normandy, declared that no
climate could be better for her and reminded me that I must not neglect
the two farms of which I had rather rashly assumed the charge. She
insisted that as I had made myself responsible for them, it was my
business to make them succeed. No sooner had we arrived therefore, than
she urged me to visit the estate immediately.... I am not sure that her
friendly insistence did not go with a good deal of abnegation; she was
afraid perhaps, that as she still required assistance, I might think
myself bound to stay with her and not feel as free as I might wish
to.... Marceline was better however; the colour had returned to her
cheeks, and nothing gave me greater comfort than to feel her smile was
less sad; I was able to leave her without uneasiness.
I went then to the farms. The first hay was being made. The scented
air, heavy with pollen, at first went to my head like a strong
drink. I felt that I had hardly breathed at all since last year, or
breathed nothing but dust, so drowned was I in the honied sweetness
of the atmosphere. The bank, on which I seated myself in a kind of
intoxication, overlooked the house; I saw its blue roofs; I saw the
still waters of the moat; all around were fields, some newly mown,
others rich with grass; further on, the curve of the brook; further
again, the woods where last autumn I had so often gone riding with
Charles. A sound of singing, which I had been listening to for the last
moment or two, drew near; it was the haymakers going home, with a fork
or a rake on their shoulders. I recognized nearly all of them, and the
unpleasant recollection came to me that I was not there as an enchanted
traveller, but as their master. I went up to them, smiled, spoke to
them, enquired after each of them in turn. Bocage that morning had
already given me a report of the crops; he had indeed kept me regularly
informed by letter of everything that went on in the farms. They were
not doing so badly--much better than Bocage had led me to expect. But
my arrival was being awaited in order to take some important decisions,
and during the next few days I devoted myself to farm business to the
best of my ability--not taking much pleasure in it, but hoping by this
semblance of work to give some stability to my disintegrated life.
As soon as Marceline was well enough to receive visitors, a few
friends came to stay with us. They were affectionate, quiet people and
Marceline liked their society, but it had the effect of making me leave
the house with more pleasure than usual. I preferred the society of
the farm hands; I felt that with them there was more to be learnt--not
that I questioned them--no; and I hardly know how to express the kind
of rapture I felt when I was with them; I seemed to feel things with
their senses rather than with my own--and while I knew what our friends
were going to say before they opened their mouths, the mere sight of
these poor fellows filled me with perpetual amazement.
If at first they appeared as condescending in their answers as I tried
to avoid being in my questions, they soon became more tolerant of
my presence. I came into closer contact with them. Not content with
following them at their work, I wanted to see them at their play; their
obtuse thoughts had little interest for me, but I shared their meals,
listened to their jokes, fondly watched their pleasures. By a kind of
sympathy similar to that which had made my heart throb at the throbs
of Marceline’s, their alien sensations immediately awoke the echo of
my own--no vague echo, but a sharp and precise one. I felt my own arms
grow stiff with the mower’s stiffness; I was weary with his weariness;
the mouthful of cider he drank quenched my thirst; I felt it slip down
his throat; one day, one of them, while sharpening his scythe, cut his
thumb badly; his pain hurt me to the bone.
And it seemed to me that it was no longer with my sight alone that I
became aware of the landscape, but that I _felt_ it as well by some
sense of touch, which my curious power of sympathy inimitably enlarged.
Bocage’s presence was now a nuisance to me; when he came I had to play
the master, which I had no longer the least inclination to do. I still
gave orders--I had to--still superintended the labourers; but I no
longer went on horseback, for fear of looking down on them from too
great a height. But notwithstanding the precautions I took to accustom
them to my presence and prevent them from feeling ill at ease in it,
in theirs I was still filled as before with an evil curiosity. There
was a mystery about the existence of each one of them. I always felt
that a part of their lives was concealed. What did they do when I
was not there? I refused to believe that they had not better ways of
amusing themselves. And I credited each of them with a secret which I
pertinaciously tried to discover. I went about prowling, following,
spying. For preference I fastened on the rudest and roughest among
them, as if I expected to find a guiding light shine from their
darkness.
One in particular attracted me; he was fairly good-looking, tall, not
in the least stupid, but wholly guided by instinct, never acting but
on the spur of the moment, blown hither and thither by every passing
impulse. He did not belong to the place, and had been taken on by
some chance. An excellent worker for two days--and on the third dead
drunk. One night I crept furtively down to the barn to see him; he lay
sprawling in a heavy, drunken sleep. I stayed looking at him a long
time.... One fine day, he went as he had come. How much I should have
liked to know along what roads!... I learnt that same evening that
Bocage had dismissed him.