As soon as the ceremony was over, the son, daughter and son-in-law

returned to the house of mourning, and, shutting themselves in the

library, they opened the will, the seals of which were to be broken by

them alone and only after the coffin had been placed in the ground. This

wish was expressed by a notice on the envelope.

M. Poirel de la Voulte tore open the envelope, in his character of a

lawyer used to such operations, and having adjusted his spectacles, he

read in a monotonous voice, made for reading the details of contracts:

My children, my dear children, I could not sleep the eternal sleep in

peace if I did not make to you from the tomb a confession, the

confession of a crime, remorse for which has ruined my life. Yes, I

committed a crime, a frightful, abominable crime.

I was twenty-six years old, and I had just been called to the bar in

Paris, and was living the life off young men from the provinces who are

stranded in this town without acquaintances, relatives, or friends.

I took a sweetheart. There are beings who cannot live alone. I was one

of those. Solitude fills me with horrible anguish, the solitude of my

room beside my fire in the evening. I feel then as if I were alone on

earth, alone, but surrounded by vague dangers, unknown and terrible

things; and the partition that separates me from my neighbor, my

neighbor whom I do not know, keeps me at as great a distance from him as

the stars that I see through my window. A sort of fever pervades me, a

fever of impatience and of fear, and the silence of the walls terrifies

me. The silence of a room where one lives alone is so intense and so

melancholy. It is not only a silence of the mind; when a piece of

furniture cracks a shudder goes through you for you expect no noise in

this melancholy abode.

How many times, nervous and timid from this motionless silence, I have

begun to talk, to repeat words without rhyme or reason, only to make

some sound. My voice at those times sounds so strange that I am afraid

of that, too. Is there anything more dreadful than talking to one's self

in an empty house? One's voice sounds like that of another, an unknown

voice talking aimlessly, to no one, into the empty air, with no ear to

listen to it, for one knows before they escape into the solitude of the

room exactly what words will be uttered. And when they resound

lugubriously in the silence, they seem no more than an echo, the

peculiar echo of words whispered by ones thought.

My sweetheart was a young girl like other young girls who live in Paris

on wages that are insufficient to keep them. She was gentle, good,

simple. Her parents lived at Poissy. She went to spend several days with

them from time to time.

For a year I lived quietly with her, fully decided to leave her when I

should find some one whom I liked well enough to marry. I would make a

little provision for this one, for it is an understood thing in our

social set that a woman's love should be paid for, in money if she is

poor, in presents if she is rich.

But one day she told me she was enceinte. I was thunderstruck, and saw

in a second that my life would be ruined. I saw the fetter that I should

wear until my death, everywhere, in my future family life, in my old

age, forever; the fetter of a woman bound to my life through a child;

the fetter of the child whom I must bring up, watch over, protect, while

keeping myself unknown to him, and keeping him hidden from the world.

I was greatly disturbed at this news, and a confused longing, a criminal

desire, surged through my mind; I did not formulate it, but I felt it in

my heart, ready to come to the surface, as if some one hidden behind a

portiere should await the signal to come out. If some accident might

only happen! So many of these little beings die before they are born!

Oh! I did not wish my sweetheart to die! The poor girl, I loved her very

much! But I wished, possibly, that the child might die before I saw it.

He was born. I set up housekeeping in my little bachelor apartment, an

imitation home, with a horrible child. He looked like all children; I

did not care for him. Fathers, you see, do not show affection until

later. They have not the instinctive and passionate tenderness of

mothers; their affection has to be awakened gradually, their mind must

become attached by bonds formed each day between beings that live in

each other's society.

A year passed. I now avoided my home, which was too small, where soiled

linen, baby-clothes and stockings the size of gloves were lying round,

where a thousand articles of all descriptions lay on the furniture, on

the arm of an easy-chair, everywhere. I went out chiefly that I might

not hear the child cry, for he cried on the slightest pretext, when he

was bathed, when he was touched, when he was put to bed, when he was

taken up in the morning, incessantly.

I had made a few acquaintances, and I met at a reception the woman who

was to be your mother. I fell in love with her and became desirous to

marry her. I courted her; I asked her parents' consent to our marriage

and it was granted.

I found myself in this dilemma: I must either marry this young girl whom

I adored, having a child already, or else tell the truth and renounce

her, and happiness, my future, everything; for her parents, who were

people of rigid principles, would not give her to me if they knew.

I passed a month of horrible anguish, of mortal torture, a month haunted

by a thousand frightful thoughts; and I felt developing in me a hatred

toward my son, toward that little morsel of living, screaming flesh, who

blocked my path, interrupted my life, condemned me to an existence

without hope, without all those vague expectations that make the charm

of youth.

But just then my companion's mother became ill, and I was left alone

with the child.

It was in December, and the weather was terribly cold. What a night!

My companion had just left. I had dined alone in my little dining-room

and I went gently into the room where the little one was asleep.

I sat down in an armchair before the fire. The wind was blowing, making

the windows rattle, a dry, frosty wind; and I saw trough the window the

stars shining with that piercing brightness that they have on frosty

nights.

Then the idea that had obsessed me for a month rose again to the

surface. As soon as I was quiet it came to me and harassed me. It ate

into my mind like a fixed idea, just as cancers must eat into the flesh.

It was there, in my head, in my heart, in my whole body, it seemed to

me; and it swallowed me up as a wild beast might have. I endeavored to

drive it away, to repulse it, to open my mind to other thoughts, as one

opens a window to the fresh morning breeze to drive out the vitiated

air; but I could not drive it from my brain, not even for a second. I do

not know how to express this torture. It gnawed at my soul, and I felt a

frightful pain, a real physical and moral pain.

My life was ruined! How could I escape from this situation? How could I

draw back, and how could I confess?

And I loved the one who was to become your mother with a mad passion,

which this insurmountable obstacle only aggravated.

A terrible rage was taking possession of me, choking me, a rage that

verged on madness! Surely I was crazy that evening!

The child was sleeping. I got up and looked at it as it slept. It was

he, this abortion, this spawn, this nothing, that condemned me to

irremediable unhappiness!

He was asleep, his mouth open, wrapped in his bed-clothes in a crib

beside my bed, where I could not sleep.

How did I ever do what I did? How do I know? What force urged me on?

What malevolent power took possession of me? Oh! the temptation to crime

came to me without any forewarning. All I recall is that my heart beat

tumultuously. It beat so hard that I could hear it, as one hears the

strokes of a hammer behind a partition. That is all I can recall—the

beating of my heart! In my head there was a strange confusion, a tumult,

a senseless disorder, a lack of presence of mind. It was one of those

hours of bewilderment and hallucination when a man is neither conscious

of his actions nor able to guide his will.

I gently raised the coverings from the body of the child; I turned them

down to the foot of the crib, and he lay there uncovered and naked.

He did not wake. Then I went toward the window, softly, quite softly,

and I opened it.

A breath of icy air glided in like an assassin; it was so cold that I

drew aside, and the two candles flickered. I remained standing near the

window, not daring to turn round, as if for fear of seeing what was

doing on behind me, and feeling the icy air continually across my

forehead, my cheeks, my hands, the deadly air which kept streaming in. I

stood there a long time.

I was not thinking, I was not reflecting. All at once a little cough

caused me to shudder frightfully from head to foot, a shudder that I

feel still to the roots of my hair. And with a frantic movement I

abruptly closed both sides of the window and, turning round, ran over to

the crib.

He was still asleep, his mouth open, quite naked. I touched his legs;

they were icy cold and I covered them up.

My heart was suddenly touched, grieved, filled with pity, tenderness,

love for this poor innocent being that I had wished to kill. I kissed

his fine, soft hair long and tenderly; then I went and sat down before

the fire.

I reflected with amazement with horror on what I had done, asking myself

whence come those tempests of the soul in which a man loses all

perspective of things, all command over himself and acts as in a

condition of mad intoxication, not knowing whither he is going—like a

vessel in a hurricane.

The child coughed again, and it gave my heart a wrench. Suppose it

should die! O God! O God! What would become of me?

I rose from my chair to go and look at him, and with a candle in my hand

I leaned over him. Seeing him breathing quietly I felt reassured, when

he coughed a third time. It gave me such a shock tat I started backward,

just as one does at sight of something horrible, and let my candle fall.

As I stood erect after picking it up, I noticed that my temples were

bathed in perspiration, that cold sweat which is the result of anguish

of soul. And I remained until daylight bending over my son, becoming

calm when he remained quiet for some time, and filled with atrocious

pain when a weak cough came from his mouth.

He awoke with his eyes red, his throat choked, and with an air of

suffering.

When the woman came in to arrange my room I sent her at once for a

doctor. He came at the end of an hour, and said, after examining the

child:

“Did he not catch cold?”

I began to tremble like a person with palsy, and I faltered:

“No, I do not think so.”

And then I said:

“What is the matter? Is it serious?”

“I do not know yet,” he replied. “I will come again this evening.”

He came that evening. My son had remained almost all day in a condition

of drowsiness, coughing from time to time. During the night inflammation

of the lungs set in.

That lasted ten days. I cannot express what I suffered in those

interminable hours that divide morning from night, right from morning.

He died.

And since—since that moment, I have not passed one hour, not a single

hour, without the frightful burning recollection, a gnawing

recollection, a memory that seems to wring my heart, awaking in me like

a savage beast imprisoned in the depth of my soul.

Oh! if I could have gone mad!

M. Poirel de la Voulte raised his spectacles with a motion that was

peculiar to him whenever he finished reading a contract; and the three

heirs of the defunct looked at one another without speaking, pale and

motionless.

At the end of a minute the lawyer resumed:

“That must be destroyed.”

The other two bent their heads in sign of assent. He lighted a candle,

carefully separated the pages containing the damaging confession from

those relating to the disposition of money, then he held them over the

candle and threw them into the fireplace.

And they watched the white sheets as they burned, till they were

presently reduced to little crumbling black heaps. And as some words

were still visible in white tracing, the daughter, with little strokes

of the toe of her shoe, crushed the burning paper, mixing it with the

old ashes in the fireplace.

Then all three stood there watching it for some time, as if they feared

that the destroyed secret might escape from the fireplace.

A MOTHER OF MONSTERS

I recalled this horrible story, the events of which occurred long ago,

and this horrible woman, the other day at a fashionable seaside resort,

where I saw on the beach a well-known young, elegant and charming

Parisienne, adored and respected by everyone.

I had been invited by a friend to pay him a visit in a little provincial

town. He took me about in all directions to do the honors of the place,

showed me noted scenes, chateaux, industries, ruins. He pointed out

monuments, churches, old carved doorways, enormous or distorted trees,

the oak of St. Andrew, and the yew tree of Roqueboise.

When I had exhausted my admiration and enthusiasm over all the sights,

my friend said with a distressed expression on his face, that there was

nothing left to look at. I breathed freely. I would now be able to rest

under the shade of the trees. But, all at once, he uttered an

exclamation:

“Oh, yes! We have the 'Mother of Monsters'; I must take you to see her.”

“Who is that, the 'Mother of Monsters'?” I asked.

“She is an abominable woman,” he replied, “a regular demon, a being who

voluntarily brings into the world deformed, hideous, frightful children,

monstrosities, in fact, and then sells them to showmen who exhibit such

things.

“These exploiters of freaks come from time to time to find out if she

has any fresh monstrosity, and if it meets with their approval they

carry it away with them, paying the mother a compensation.

“She has eleven of this description. She is rich.

“You think I am joking, romancing, exaggerating. No, my friend; I am

telling you the truth, the exact truth.

“Let us go and see this woman. Then I will tell you her history.”

He took me into one of the suburbs. The woman lived in a pretty little

house by the side of the road. It was attractive and well kept. The

garden was filled with fragrant flowers. One might have supposed it to

be the residence of a retired lawyer.

A maid ushered us into a sort of little country parlor, and the wretch

appeared. She was about forty. She was a tall, big woman with hard

features, but well formed, vigorous and healthy, the true type of a

robust peasant woman, half animal, and half woman.

She was aware of her reputation and received everyone with a humility

that smacked of hatred.

“What do the gentlemen wish?” she asked.

“They tell me that your last child is just like an ordinary child, that

he does not resemble his brothers at all,” replied my friend. “I wanted

to be sure of that. Is it true?”

She cast on us a malicious and furious look as she said:

“Oh, no, oh, no, my poor sir! He is perhaps even uglier than the rest. I

have no luck, no luck!

“They are all like that, it is heartbreaking! How can the good God be so

hard on a poor woman who is all alone in the world, how can He?” She

spoke hurriedly, her eyes cast down, with a deprecating air as of a wild

beast who is afraid. Her harsh voice became soft, and it seemed strange

to hear those tearful falsetto tones issuing from that big, bony frame,

of unusual strength and with coarse outlines, which seemed fitted for

violent action, and made to utter howls like a wolf.

“We should like to see your little one,” said my friend.

I fancied she colored up. I may have been deceived. After a few moments

of silence, she said in a louder tone:

“What good will that do you?”

“Why do you not wish to show it to us?” replied my friend. “There are

many people to whom you will show it; you know whom I mean.”

She gave a start, and resuming her natural voice, and giving free play

to her anger, she screamed:

“Was that why you came here? To insult me? Because my children are like

animals, tell me? You shall not see him, no, no, you shall not see him!

Go away, go away! I do not know why you all try to torment me like

that.”

She walked over toward us, her hands on her hips. At the brutal tone of

her voice, a sort of moaning, or rather a mewing, the lamentable cry of

an idiot, came from the adjoining room. I shivered to the marrow of my

bones. We retreated before her.

“Take care, Devil” (they called her the Devil); said my friend, “take

care; some day you will get yourself into trouble through this.”

She began to tremble, beside herself with fury, shaking her fist and

roaring:

“Be off with you! What will get me into trouble? Be off with you,

miscreants!”

She was about to attack us, but we fled, saddened at what we had seen.

When we got outside, my friend said:

“Well, you have seen her, what do you think of her?”

“Tell me the story of this brute,” I replied.

And this is what he told me as we walked along the white high road, with

ripe crops on either side of it which rippled like the sea in the light

breeze that passed over them.

“This woman was once a servant on a farm. She was an honest girl, steady

and economical. She was never known to have an admirer, and never

suspected of any frailty. But she went astray, as so many do.

“She soon found herself in trouble, and was tortured with fear and

shame. Wishing to conceal her misfortune, she bound her body tightly

with a corset of her own invention, made of boards and cord. The more

she developed, the more she bound herself with this instrument of

torture, suffering martyrdom, but brave in her sorrow, not allowing

anyone to see, or suspect, anything. She maimed the little unborn being,

cramping it with that frightful corset, and made a monster of it. Its

head was squeezed and elongated to a point, and its large eyes seemed

popping out of its head. Its limbs, exaggeratedly long, and twisted like

the stalk of a vine, terminated in fingers like the claws of a spider.

Its trunk was tiny, and round as a nut.

“The child was born in an open field, and when the weeders saw it, they

fled away, screaming, and the report spread that she had given birth to

a demon. From that time on, she was called 'the Devil.'

“She was driven from the farm, and lived on charity, under a cloud. She

brought up the monster, whom she hated with a savage hatred, and would

have strangled, perhaps, if the priest had not threatened her with

arrest.

“One day some travelling showmen heard about the frightful creature, and

asked to see it, so that if it pleased them they might take it away.

They were pleased, and counted out five hundred francs to the mother. At

first, she had refused to let them see the little animal, as she was

ashamed; but when she discovered it had a money value, and that these

people were anxious to get it, she began to haggle with them, raising

her price with all a peasant's persistence.

“She made them draw up a paper, in which they promised to pay her four

hundred francs a year besides, as though they had taken this deformity

into their employ.

“Incited by the greed of gain, she continued to produce these phenomena,

so as to have an assured income like a bourgeoise.

“Some of them were long, some short, some like crabs-all bodies-others

like lizards. Several died, and she was heartbroken.

“The law tried to interfere, but as they had no proof they let her

continue to produce her freaks.

“She has at this moment eleven alive, and they bring in, on an average,

counting good and bad years, from five to six thousand francs a year.

One, alone, is not placed, the one she was unwilling to show us. But she

will not keep it long, for she is known to all the showmen in the world,

who come from time to time to see if she has anything new.

“She even gets bids from them when the monster is valuable.”

My friend was silent. A profound disgust stirred my heart, and a feeling

of rage, of regret, to think that I had not strangled this brute when I

had the opportunity.

I had forgotten this story, when I saw on the beach of a fashionable

resort the other day, an elegant, charming, dainty woman, surrounded by

men who paid her respect as well as admiration.

I was walking along the beach, arm in arm with a friend, the resident

physician. Ten minutes later, I saw a nursemaid with three children, who

were rolling in the sand. A pair of little crutches lay on the ground,

and touched my sympathy. I then noticed that these three children were

all deformed, humpbacked, or crooked; and hideous.

“Those are the offspring of that charming woman you saw just now,” said

the doctor.

I was filled with pity for her, as well as for them, and exclaimed: “Oh,

the poor mother! How can she ever laugh!”

“Do not pity her, my friend. Pity the poor children,” replied the

doctor. “This is the consequence of preserving a slender figure up to

the last. These little deformities were made by the corset. She knows

very well that she is risking her life at this game. But what does she

care, as long as he can be beautiful and have admirers!”

And then I recalled that other woman, the peasant, the “Devil,” who sold

her children, her monsters.

AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED

One autumn I went to spend the hunting season with some friends in a

chateau in Picardy.

My friends were fond of practical jokes. I do not care to know people

who are not.

When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once

awakened suspicion in my mind. They fired off rifles, embraced me, made

much of me, as if they expected to have great fun at my expense.

I said to myself:

“Look out, old ferret! They have something in store for you.”

During the dinner the mirth was excessive, exaggerated, in fact. I

thought: “Here are people who have more than their share of amusement,

and apparently without reason. They must have planned some good joke.

Assuredly I am to be the victim of the joke. Attention!”

During the entire evening every one laughed in an exaggerated fashion. I

scented a practical joke in the air, as a dog scents game. But what was

it? I was watchful, restless. I did not let a word, or a meaning, or a

gesture escape me. Every one seemed to me an object of suspicion, and I

even looked distrustfully at the faces of the servants.

The hour struck for retiring; and the whole household came to escort me

to my room. Why?

They called to me: “Good-night.” I entered the apartment, shut the door,

and remained standing, without moving a single step, holding the wax

candle in my hand.

I heard laughter and whispering in the corridor. Without doubt they were

spying on me. I cast a glance round the walls, the furniture, the

ceiling, the hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify suspicion. I

heard persons moving about outside my door. I had no doubt they were

looking through the keyhole.

An idea came into my head: “My candle may suddenly go out and leave me

in darkness.”

Then I went across to the mantelpiece and lighted all the wax candles

that were on it. After that I cast another glance around me without

discovering anything. I advanced with short steps, carefully examining

the apartment. Nothing. I inspected every article, one after the other.

Still nothing. I went over to the window. The shutters, large wooden

shutters, were open. I shut them with great care, and then drew the

curtains, enormous velvet curtains, and placed a chair in front of them,

so as to have nothing to fear from outside.

Then I cautiously sat down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture to

get into the bed. However, the night was advancing; and I ended by

coming to the conclusion that I was foolish. If they were spying on me,

as I supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they

had been preparing for me, have been laughing immoderately at my terror.

So I made up my mind to go to bed. But the bed was particularly

suspicious-looking. I pulled at the curtains. They seemed to be secure.

All the same, there was danger. I was going perhaps to receive a cold

shower both from overhead, or perhaps, the moment I stretched myself

out, to find myself sinking to the floor with my mattress. I searched in

my memory for all the practical jokes of which I ever had experience.

And I did not want to be caught. Ah! certainly not! certainly not! Then

I suddenly bethought myself of a precaution which I considered insured

safety. I caught hold of the side of the mattress gingerly, and very

slowly drew it toward me. It came away, followed by the sheet and the

rest of the bedclothes. I dragged all these objects into the very middle

of the room, facing the entrance door. I made my bed over again as best

I could at some distance from the suspected bedstead and the corner

which had filled me with such anxiety. Then I extinguished all the

candles, and, groping my way, I slipped under the bed clothes.

For at least another hour I remained awake, starting at the slightest

sound. Everything seemed quiet in the chateau. I fell asleep.

I must have been in a deep sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden I

was awakened with a start by the fall of a heavy body tumbling right on

top of my own, and, at the same time, I received on my face, on my neck,

and on my chest a burning liquid which made me utter a howl of pain. And

a dreadful noise, as if a sideboard laden with plates and dishes had

fallen down, almost deafened me.

I was smothering beneath the weight that was crushing me and preventing

me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what was the nature

of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers. Then, with all my

strength, I launched out a blow at this face. But I immediately received

a hail of cuffings which made me jump straight out of the soaked sheets,

and rush in my nightshirt into the corridor, the door of which I found

open.

Oh, heavens! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends

hurrying into my apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised

bed, the dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea,

had tripped over this obstacle in the middle of the floor and fallen on

his stomach, spilling my breakfast over my face in spite of himself.

The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep

in the middle of the room had only brought about the practical joke I

had been trying to avoid.

Oh, how they all laughed that day!

A PORTRAIT

“Hello! there's Milial!” said somebody near me. I looked at the man who

had been pointed out as I had been wishing for a long time to meet this

Don Juan.

He was no longer young. His gray hair looked a little like those fur

bonnets worn by certain Northern peoples, and his long beard, which fell

down over his chest, had also somewhat the appearance of fur. He was

talking to a lady, leaning toward her, speaking in a low voice and

looking at her with an expression full of respect and tenderness.

I knew his life, or at least as much as was known of it. He had loved

madly several times, and there had been certain tragedies with which his

name had been connected. When I spoke to women who were the loudest in

his praise, and asked them whence came this power, they always answered,

after thinking for a while: “I don't know—he has a certain charm about

him.”

He was certainly not handsome. He had none of the elegance that we

ascribe to conquerors of feminine hearts. I wondered what might be his

hidden charm. Was it mental? I never had heard of a clever saying of

his. In his glance? Perhaps. Or in his voice? The voices of some beings

have a certain irresistible attraction, almost suggesting the flavor of

things good to eat. One is hungry for them, and the sound of their words

penetrates us like a dainty morsel. A friend was passing. I asked him:

“Do you know Monsieur Milial?”

“Yes.”

“Introduce us.”

A minute later we were shaking hands and talking in the doorway. What he

said was correct, agreeable to hear; it contained no irritable thought.

The voice was sweet, soft, caressing, musical; but I had heard others

much more attractive, much more moving. One listened to him with

pleasure, just as one would look at a pretty little brook. No tension of

the mind was necessary in order to follow him, no hidden meaning aroused

curiosity, no expectation awoke interest. His conversation was rather

restful, but it did not awaken in one either a desire to answer, to

contradict or to approve, and it was as easy to answer him as it was to

listen to him. The response came to the lips of its own accord, as soon

as he had finished talking, and phrases turned toward him as if he had

naturally aroused them.

One thought soon struck me. I had known him for a quarter of an hour,

and it seemed as if he were already one of my old friends, that I had

known all about him for a long time; his face, his gestures, his voice,

his ideas. Suddenly, after a few minutes of conversation, he seemed

already to be installed in my intimacy. All constraint disappeared

between us, and, had he so desired, I might have confided in him as one

confides only in old friends.

Certainly there was some mystery about him. Those barriers that are

closed between most people and that are lowered with time when sympathy,

similar tastes, equal intellectual culture and constant intercourse

remove constraint—those barriers seemed not to exist between him and me,

and no doubt this was the case between him and all people, both men and

women, whom fate threw in his path.

After half an hour we parted, promising to see each other often, and he

gave me his address after inviting me to take luncheon with him in two

days.

I forgot what hour he had stated, and I arrived too soon; he was not yet

home. A correct and silent domestic showed me into a beautiful, quiet,

softly lighted parlor. I felt comfortable there, at home. How often I

have noticed the influence of apartments on the character and on the

mind! There are some which make one feel foolish; in others, on the

contrary, one always feels lively. Some make us sad, although well

lighted and decorated in light-colored furniture; others cheer us up,

although hung with sombre material. Our eye, like our heart, has its

likes and dislikes, of which it does not inform us, and which it

secretly imposes on our temperament. The harmony of furniture, walls,

the style of an ensemble, act immediately on our mental state, just as

the air from the woods, the sea or the mountains modifies our physical

natures.

I sat down on a cushion-covered divan and felt myself suddenly carried

and supported by these little silk bags of feathers, as if the outline

of my body had been marked out beforehand on this couch.

Then I looked about. There was nothing striking about the room; every-

where were beautiful and modest things, simple and rare furniture,

Oriental curtains which did not seem to come from a department store but

from the interior of a harem; and exactly opposite me hung the portrait

of a woman. It was a portrait of medium size, showing the head and the

upper part of the body, and the hands, which were holding a book. She

was young, bareheaded; ribbons were woven in her hair; she was smiling

sadly. Was it because she was bareheaded, was it merely her natural

expression? I never have seen a portrait of a lady which seemed so much

in its place as that one in that dwelling. Of all those I knew I have

seen nothing like that one. All those that I know are on exhibition,

whether the lady be dressed in her gaudiest gown, with an attractive

headdress and a look which shows that she is posing first of all before

the artist and then before those who will look at her or whether they

have taken a comfortable attitude in an ordinary gown. Some are standing

majestically in all their beauty, which is not at all natural to them in

life. All of them have something, a flower or, a jewel, a crease in the

dress or a curve of the lip, which one feels to have been placed there

for effect by the artist. Whether they wear a hat or merely their hair

one can immediately notice that they are not entirely natural. Why? One

cannot say without knowing them, but the effect is there. They seem to

be calling somewhere, on people whom they wish to please and to whom

they wish to appear at their best advantage; and they have studied their

attitudes, sometimes modest, Sometimes haughty.

What could one say about this one? She was at home and alone. Yes, she

was alone, for she was smiling as one smiles when thinking in solitude

of something sad or sweet, and not as one smiles when one is being

watched. She seemed so much alone and so much at home that she made the

whole large apartment seem absolutely empty. She alone lived in it,

filled it, gave it life. Many people might come in and converse, laugh,

even sing; she would still be alone with a solitary smile, and she alone

would give it life with her pictured gaze.

That look also was unique. It fell directly on me, fixed and caressing,

without seeing me. All portraits know that they are being watched, and

they answer with their eyes, which see, think, follow us without leaving

us, from the very moment we enter the apartment they inhabit. This one

did not see me; it saw nothing, although its look was fixed directly on

me. I remembered the surprising verse of Baudelaire:

And your eyes, attractive as those of a portrait.

They did indeed attract me in an irresistible manner; those painted eyes

which had lived, or which were perhaps still living, threw over me a

strange, powerful spell. Oh, what an infinite and tender charm, like a

passing breeze, like a dying sunset of lilac rose and blue, a little sad

like the approaching night, which comes behind the sombre frame and out

of those impenetrable eyes! Those eyes, created by a few strokes from a

brush, hide behind them the mystery of that which seems to be and which

does not exist, which can appear in the eyes of a woman, which can make

love blossom within us.

The door opened and M. Milial entered. He excused himself for being

late. I excused myself for being ahead of time. Then I said: “Might I

ask you who is this lady?”

He answered: “That is my mother. She died very young.”

Then I understood whence came the inexplicable attraction of this man.

THE DRUNKARD

The north wind was blowing a hurricane, driving through the sky big,

black, heavy clouds from which the rain poured down on the earth with

terrific violence.

A high sea was raging and dashing its huge, slow, foamy waves along the

coast with the rumbling sound of thunder. The waves followed each other

close, rolling in as high as mountains, scattering the foam as they

broke.

The storm engulfed itself in the little valley of Yport, whistling and

moaning, tearing the shingles from the roofs, smashing the shutters,

knocking down the chimneys, rushing through the narrow streets in such

gusts that one could walk only by holding on to the walls, and children

would have been lifted up like leaves and carried over the houses into

the fields.

The fishing smacks had been hauled high up on land, because at high tide

the sea would sweep the beach. Several sailors, sheltered behind the

curved bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky and

the sea.

Then, one by one, they went away, for night was falling on the storm,

wrapping in shadows the raging ocean and all the battling elements.

Just two men remained, their hands plunged deep into their pockets,

bending their backs beneath the squall, their woolen caps pulled down

over their ears; two big Normandy fishermen, bearded, their skin tanned

through exposure, with the piercing black eyes of the sailor who looks

over the horizon like a bird of prey.

One of them was saying:

“Come on, Jeremie, let's go play dominoes. It's my treat.”

The other hesitated a while, tempted on one hand by the game and the

thought of brandy, knowing well that, if he went to Paumelle's, he would

return home drunk; held back, on the other hand, by the idea of his wife

remaining alone in the house.

He asked:

“Any one might think that you had made a bet to get me drunk every

night. Say, what good is it doing you, since it's always you that's

treating?”

Nevertheless he was smiling at the idea of all this brandy drunk at the

expense of another. He was smiling the contented smirk of an avaricious

Norman.

Mathurin, his friend, kept pulling him by the sleeve.

“Come on, Jeremie. This isn't the kind of a night to go home without

anything to warm you up. What are you afraid of? Isn't your wife going

to warm your bed for you?”

Jeremie answered:

“The other night I couldn't find the door—I had to be fished out of the

ditch in front of the house!”

He was still laughing at this drunkard's recollection, and he was

unconsciously going toward Paumelle's Cafe, where a light was shining in

the window; he was going, pulled by Mathurin and pushed by the wind,

unable to resist these combined forces.

The low room was full of sailors, smoke and noise. All these men, clad

in woolens, their elbows on the tables, were shouting to make themselves

heard. The more people came in, the more one had to shout in order to

overcome the noise of voices and the rattling of dominoes on the marble

tables.

Jeremie and Mathurin sat down in a corner and began a game, and the

glasses were emptied in rapid succession into their thirsty throats.

Then they played more games and drank more glasses. Mathurin kept

pouring and winking to the saloon keeper, a big, red-faced man, who

chuckled as though at the thought of some fine joke; and Jeremie kept

absorbing alcohol and wagging his head, giving vent to a roar of

laughter and looking at his comrade with a stupid and contented

expression.

All the customers were going away. Every time that one of them would

open the door to leave a gust of wind would blow into the cafe, making

the tobacco smoke swirl around, swinging the lamps at the end of their

chains and making their flames flicker, and suddenly one could hear the

deep booming of a breaking wave and the moaning of the wind.

Jeremie, his collar unbuttoned, was taking drunkard's poses, one leg

outstretched, one arm hanging down and in the other hand holding a

domino.

They were alone now with the owner, who had come up to them, interested.

He asked:

“Well, Jeremie, how goes it inside? Feel less thirsty after wetting your

throat?”

Jeremie muttered:

“The more I wet it, the drier it gets inside.”

The innkeeper cast a sly glance at Mathurin. He said:

“And your brother, Mathurin, where's he now?”

The sailor laughed silently:

“Don't worry; he's warm, all right.”

And both of them looked toward Jeremie, who was triumphantly putting

down the double six and announcing:

“Game!”

Then the owner declared:

“Well, boys, I'm goin' to bed. I will leave you the lamp and the bottle;

there's twenty cents' worth in it. Lock the door when you go, Mathurin,

and slip the key under the mat the way you did the other night.”

Mathurin answered:

“Don't worry; it'll be all right.”

Paumelle shook hands with his two customers and slowly went up the

wooden stairs. For several minutes his heavy step echoed through the

little house. Then a loud creaking announced that he had got into bed.

The two men continued to play. From time to time a more violent gust of

wind would shake the whole house, and the two drinkers would look up, as

though some one were about to enter. Then Mathurin would take the bottle

and fill Jeremie's glass. But suddenly the clock over the bar struck

twelve. Its hoarse clang sounded like the rattling of saucepans. Then

Mathurin got up like a sailor whose watch is over.

“Come on, Jeremie, we've got to get out.”

The other man rose to his feet with difficulty, got his balance by

leaning on the table, reached the door and opened it while his companion

was putting out the light.

As soon as they were in the street Mathurin locked the door and then

said:

“Well, so long. See you to-morrow night!”

And he disappeared in the darkness.

Jeremie took a few steps, staggered, stretched out his hands, met a wall

which supported him and began to stumble along. From time to time a gust

of wind would sweep through the street, pushing him forward, making him

run for a few steps; then, when the wind would die down, he would stop

short, having lost his impetus, and once more he would begin to stagger

on his unsteady drunkard's legs.

He went instinctively toward his home, just as birds go to their nests.

Finally he recognized his door, and began to feel about for the keyhole

and tried to put the key in it. Not finding the hole, he began to swear.

Then he began to beat on the door with his fists, calling for his wife

to come and help him:

“Melina! Oh, Melina!”

As he leaned against the door for support, it gave way and opened, and

Jeremie, losing his prop, fell inside, rolling on his face into the

middle of his room, and he felt something heavy pass over him and escape

in the night.

He was no longer moving, dazed by fright, bewildered, fearing the devil,

ghosts, all the mysterious beings of darkness, and he waited a long time

without daring to move. But when he found out that nothing else was

moving, a little reason returned to him, the reason of a drunkard.

Gently he sat up. Again he waited a long time, and at last, growing

bolder, he called:

“Melina!”

His wife did not answer.

Then, suddenly, a suspicion crossed his darkened mind, an indistinct,

vague suspicion. He was not moving; he was sitting there in the dark,

trying to gather together his scattered wits, his mind stumbling over

incomplete ideas, just as his feet stumbled along.

Once more he asked:

“Who was it, Melina? Tell me who it was. I won't hurt you!”

He waited, no voice was raised in the darkness. He was now reasoning

with himself out loud.

“I'm drunk, all right! I'm drunk! And he filled me up, the dog; he did

it, to stop my goin' home. I'm drunk!”

And he would continue:

“Tell me who it was, Melina, or somethin'll happen to you.”

After having waited again, he went on with the slow and obstinate logic

of a drunkard:

“He's been keeping me at that loafer Paumelle's place every night, so as

to stop my going home. It's some trick. Oh, you damned carrion!”

Slowly he got on his knees. A blind fury was gaining possession of him,

mingling with the fumes of alcohol.

He continued:

“Tell me who it was, Melina, or you'll get a licking—I warn you!”

He was now standing, trembling with a wild fury, as though the alcohol

had set his blood on fire. He took a step, knocked against a chair,

seized it, went on, reached the bed, ran his hands over it and felt the

warm body of his wife.

Then, maddened, he roared:

“So! You were there, you piece of dirt, and you wouldn't answer!”

And, lifting the chair, which he was holding in his strong sailor's

grip, he swung it down before him with an exasperated fury. A cry burst

from the bed, an agonizing, piercing cry. Then he began to thrash around

like a thresher in a barn. And soon nothing more moved. The chair was

broken to pieces, but he still held one leg and beat away with it,

panting.

At last he stopped to ask:

“Well, are you ready to tell me who it was?”

Melina did not answer.

Then tired out, stupefied from his exertion, he stretched himself out on

the ground and slept.

When day came a neighbor, seeing the door open, entered. He saw Jeremie

snoring on the floor, amid the broken pieces of a chair, and on the bed

a pulp of flesh and blood.

THE WARDROBE

As we sat chatting after dinner, a party of men, the conversation turned

on women, for lack of something else.

One of us said:

“Here's a funny thing that happened to me on, that very subject.” And he

told us the following story:

One evening last winter I suddenly felt overcome by that overpowering

sense of misery and languor that takes possession of one from time to

time. I was in my own apartment, all alone, and I was convinced that if

I gave in to my feelings I should have a terrible attack of melancholia,

one of those attacks that lead to suicide when they recur too often.

I put on my overcoat and went out without the slightest idea of what I

was going to do. Having gone as far as the boulevards, I began to wander

along by the almost empty cafes. It was raining, a fine rain that

affects your mind as it does your clothing, not one of those good

downpours which come down in torrents, driving breathless passers-by

into doorways, but a rain without drops that deposits on your clothing

an imperceptible spray and soon covers you with a sort of iced foam that

chills you through.

What should I do? I walked in one direction and then came back, looking

for some place where I could spend two hours, and discovering for the

first time that there is no place of amusement in Paris in the evening.

At last I decided to go to the Folies-Bergere, that entertaining resort

for gay women.

There were very few people in the main hall. In the long horseshoe curve

there were only a few ordinary looking people, whose plebeian origin was

apparent in their manners, their clothes, the cut of their hair and

beard, their hats, their complexion. It was rarely that one saw from

time to time a man whom you suspected of having washed himself

thoroughly, and his whole make-up seemed to match. As for the women,

they were always the same, those frightful women you all know, ugly,

tired looking, drooping, and walking along in their lackadaisical

manner, with that air of foolish superciliousness which they assume, I

do not know why.

I thought to myself that, in truth, not one of those languid creatures,

greasy rather than fat, puffed out here and thin there, with the contour

of a monk and the lower extremities of a bow-legged snipe, was worth the

louis that they would get with great difficulty after asking five.

But all at once I saw a little creature whom I thought attractive, not

in her first youth, but fresh, comical and tantalizing. I stopped her,

and stupidly, without thinking, I made an appointment with her for that

night. I did not want to go back to my own home alone, all alone; I

preferred the company and the caresses of this hussy.

And I followed her. She lived in a great big house in the Rue des

Martyrs. The gas was already extinguished on the stairway. I ascended

the steps slowly, lighting a candle match every few seconds, stubbing my

foot against the steps, stumbling and angry as I followed the rustle of

the skirt ahead of me.

She stopped on the fourth floor, and having closed the outer door she

said:

“Then you will stay till to-morrow?”

“Why, yes. You know that that was the agreement.”

“All right, my dear, I just wanted to know. Wait for me here a minute, I

will be right back.”

And she left me in the darkness. I heard her shutting two doors and then

I thought I heard her talking. I was surprised and uneasy. The thought

that she had a protector staggered me. But I have good fists and a solid

back. “We shall see,” I said to myself.

I listened attentively with ear and mind. Some one was stirring about,

walking quietly and very carefully. Then another door was opened and I

thought I again heard some one talking, but in a very low tone.

She came back carrying a lighted candle.

“You may come in,” she said.

She said “thou” in speaking to me, which was an indication of

possession. I went in and after passing through a dining room in which

it was very evident that no one ever ate, I entered a typical room of

all these women, a furnished room with red curtains and a soiled

eiderdown bed covering.

“Make yourself at home, 'mon chat',” she said.

I gave a suspicious glance at the room, but there seemed no reason for

uneasiness.

As she took off her wraps she began to laugh.

“Well, what ails you? Are you changed into a pillar of salt? Come, hurry

up.”

I did as she suggested.

Five minutes later I longed to put on my things and get away. But this

terrible languor that had overcome me at home took possession of me

again, and deprived me of energy enough to move and I stayed in spite of

the disgust that I felt for this association. The unusual attractiveness

that I supposed I had discovered in this creature over there under the

chandeliers of the theater had altogether vanished on closer

acquaintance, and she was nothing more to me now than a common woman,

like all the others, whose indifferent and complaisant kiss smacked of

garlic.

I thought I would say something.

“Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Over six months on the fifteenth of January.”

“Where were you before that?”

“In the Rue Clauzel. But the janitor made me very uncomfortable and I

left.”

And she began to tell me an interminable story of a janitor who had

talked scandal about her.

But, suddenly, I heard something moving quite close to us. First there

was a sigh, then a slight, but distinct, sound as if some one had turned

round on a chair.

I sat up abruptly and asked.

“What was that noise?”

She answered quietly and confidently:

“Do not be uneasy, my dear boy, it is my neighbor. The partition is so

thin that one can hear everything as if it were in the room. These are

wretched rooms, just like pasteboard.”

I felt so lazy that I paid no further attention to it. We resumed our

conversation. Driven by the stupid curiosity that prompts all men to

question these creatures about their first experiences, to attempt to

lift the veil of their first folly, as though to find in them a trace of

pristine innocence, to love them, possibly, in a fleeting memory of

their candor and modesty of former days, evoked by a word, I insistently

asked her about her earlier lovers.

I knew she was telling me lies. What did it matter? Among all these lies

I might, perhaps, discover something sincere and pathetic.

“Come,” said I, “tell me who he was.”

“He was a boating man, my dear.”

“Ah! Tell me about it. Where were you?”

“I was at Argenteuil.”

“What were you doing?”

“I was waitress in a restaurant.”

“What restaurant?”

“'The Freshwater Sailor.' Do you know it?”

“I should say so, kept by Bonanfan.”

“Yes, that's it.”

“And how did he make love to you, this boating man?”

“While I was doing his room. He took advantage of me.”

But I suddenly recalled the theory of a friend of mine, an observant and

philosophical physician whom constant attendance in hospitals has

brought into daily contact with girl-mothers and prostitutes, with all

the shame and all the misery of women, of those poor women who have

become the frightful prey of the wandering male with money in his

pocket.

“A woman,” he said, “is always debauched by a man of her own class and

position. I have volumes of statistics on that subject. We accuse the

rich of plucking the flower of innocence among the girls of the people.

This is not correct. The rich pay for what they want. They may gather

some, but never for the first time.”

Then, turning to my companion, I began to laugh.

“You know that I am aware of your history. The boating man was not the

first.”

“Oh, yes, my dear, I swear it:”

“You are lying, my dear.”

“Oh, no, I assure you.”

“You are lying; come, tell me all.”

She seemed to hesitate in astonishment. I continued:

“I am a sorcerer, my dear girl, I am a clairvoyant. If you do not tell

me the truth, I will go into a trance sleep and then I can find out.”

She was afraid, being as stupid as all her kind. She faltered:

“How did you guess?”

“Come, go on telling me,” I said.

“Oh, the first time didn't amount to anything.

“There was a festival in the country. They had sent for a special chef,

M. Alexandre. As soon as he came he did just as he pleased in the house.

He bossed every one, even the proprietor and his wife, as if he had been

a king. He was a big handsome man, who did not seem fitted to stand

beside a kitchen range. He was always calling out, 'Come, some butter

—some eggs—some Madeira!' And it had to be brought to him at once in a

hurry, or he would get cross and say things that would make us blush all

over.

“When the day was over he would smoke a pipe outside the door. And as I

was passing by him with a pile of plates he said to me, like that:

'Come, girlie, come down to the water with me and show me the country.'

I went with him like a fool, and we had hardly got down to the bank of

the river when he took advantage of me so suddenly that I did not even

know what he was doing. And then he went away on the nine o'clock train.

I never saw him again.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

She hesitated.

“Oh, I think Florentin belongs to him.”

“Who is Florentin?”

“My little boy.”

“Oh! Well, then, you made the boating man believe that he was the

father, did you not?”

“You bet!”

“Did he have any money, this boating man?”

“Yes, he left me an income of three hundred francs, settled on

Florentin.”

I was beginning to be amused and resumed:

“All right, my girl, all right. You are all of you less stupid than one

would imagine, all the same. And how old is he now, Florentin?”

She replied:

“He is now twelve. He will make his first communion in the spring.”

“That is splendid. And since then you have carried on your business

conscientiously?”

She sighed in a resigned manner.

“I must do what I can.”

But a loud noise just then coming from the room itself made me start up

with a bound. It sounded like some one falling and picking themselves up

again by feeling along the wall with their hands.

I had seized the candle and was looking about me, terrified and furious.

She had risen also and was trying to hold me back to stop me, murmuring:

“That's nothing, my dear, I assure you it's nothing.”

But I had discovered what direction the strange noise came from. I

walked straight towards a door hidden at the head of the bed and I

opened it abruptly and saw before me, trembling, his bright, terrified

eyes opened wide at sight of me, a little pale, thin boy seated beside a

large wicker chair off which he had fallen.

As soon as he saw me he began to cry. Stretching out his arms to his

mother, he cried:

“It was not my fault, mamma, it was not my fault. I was asleep, and I

fell off. Do not scold me, it was not my fault.”

I turned to the woman and said:

“What does this mean?”

She seemed confused and worried, and said in a broken voice:

“What do you want me to do? I do not earn enough to put him to school! I

have to keep him with me, and I cannot afford to pay for another room,

by heavens! He sleeps with me when I am alone. If any one comes for one

hour or two he can stay in the wardrobe; he keeps quiet, he understands

it. But when people stay all night, as you have done, it tires the poor

child to sleep on a chair.

“It is not his fault. I should like to see you sleep all night on a

chair—you would have something to say.”

She was getting angry and excited and was talking loud.

The child was still crying. A poor delicate timid little fellow, a

veritable child of the wardrobe, of the cold, dark closet, a child who

from time to time was allowed to get a little warmth in the bed if it

chanced to be unoccupied.

I also felt inclined to cry.

And I went home to my own bed.

THE MOUNTAIN POOL

Saint Agnes, May 6. MY DEAR FRIEND: You asked me to write to you often

and to tell you in particular about the things I might see. You also

begged me to rummage among my recollections of travels for some of those

little anecdotes gathered from a chance peasant, from an innkeeper, from

some strange traveling acquaintance, which remain as landmarks in the

memory. With a landscape depicted in a few lines, and a little story

told in a few sentences you think one can give the true characteristics

of a country, make it living, visible, dramatic. I will try to do as you

wish. I will, therefore, send you from time to time letters in which I

will mention neither you nor myself, but only the landscape and the

people who move about in it. And now I will begin.

Spring is a season in which one ought, it seems to me, to drink and eat

the landscape. It is the season of chills, just as autumn is the season

of reflection. In spring the country rouses the physical senses, in

autumn it enters into the soul.

I desired this year to breathe the odor of orange blossoms and I set out

for the South of France just at the time that every one else was

returning home. I visited Monaco, the shrine of pilgrims, rival of Mecca

and Jerusalem, without leaving any gold in any one else's pockets, and I

climbed the high mountain beneath a covering of lemon, orange and olive

branches.

Have you ever slept, my friend, in a grove of orange trees in flower?

The air that one inhales with delight is a quintessence of perfumes. The

strong yet sweet odor, delicious as some dainty, seems to blend with our

being, to saturate us, to intoxicate us, to enervate us, to plunge us

into a sleepy, dreamy torpor. As though it were an opium prepared by the

hands of fairies and not by those of druggists.

This is a country of ravines. The surface of the mountains is cleft,

hollowed out in all directions, and in these sinuous crevices grow

veritable forests of lemon trees. Here and there where the steep gorge

is interrupted by a sort of step, a kind of reservoir has been built

which holds the water of the rain storms.

They are large holes with slippery walls with nothing for any one to

grasp hold of should they fall in.

I was walking slowly in one of these ascending valleys or gorges,

glancing through the foliage at the vivid-hued fruit that remained on

the branches. The narrow gorge made the heavy odor of the flowers still

more penetrating; the air seemed to be dense with it. A feeling of

lassitude came over me and I looked for a place to sit down. A few drops

of water glistened in the grass. I thought that there was a spring near

by and I climbed a little further to look for it. But I only reached the

edge of one of these large, deep reservoirs.

I sat down tailor fashion, with my legs crossed under me, and remained

there in a reverie before this hole, which looked as if it were filled

with ink, so black and stagnant was the liquid it contained. Down

yonder, through the branches, I saw, like patches, bits of the

Mediterranean gleaming so that they fairly dazzled my eyes. But my

glance always returned to the immense somber well that appeared to be

inhabited by no aquatic animals, so motionless was its surface. Suddenly

a voice made me tremble. An old gentleman who was picking flowers—this

country is the richest in Europe for herbalists—asked me:

“Are you a relation of those poor children, monsieur?”

I looked at him in astonishment.

“What children, monsieur?”

He seemed embarrassed and answered with a bow:

“I beg your pardon. On seeing you sitting thus absorbed in front of this

reservoir I thought you were recalling the frightful tragedy that

occurred here.”

Now I wanted to know about it, and I begged him to tell me the story.

It is very dismal and very heart-rending, my dear friend, and very

trivial at the same time. It is a simple news item. I do not know

whether to attribute my emotion to the dramatic manner in which the

story was told to me, to the setting of the mountains, to the contrast

between the joy of the sunlight and the flowers and this black,

murderous hole, but my heart was wrung, all my nerves unstrung by this

tale which, perhaps, may not appear so terribly harrowing to you as you

read it in your room without having the scene of the tragedy before your

eyes.

It was one spring in recent years. Two little boys frequently came to

play on the edge of this cistern while their tutor lay under a tree

reading a book. One warm afternoon a piercing cry awoke the tutor who

was dozing and the sound of splashing caused by something falling into

the water made him jump to his feet abruptly. The younger of the

children, eight years of age, was shouting, as he stood beside the

reservoir, the surface of which was stirred and eddying at the spot

where the older boy had fallen in as he ran along the stone coping.

Distracted, without waiting or stopping to think what was best to do,

the tutor jumped into the black water and did not rise again, having

struck his head at the bottom of the cistern.

At the same moment the young boy who had risen to the surface was waving

his stretched-out arms toward his brother. The little fellow on land lay

down full length, while the other tried to swim, to approach the wall,

and presently the four little hands clasped each other, tightened in

each other's grasp, contracted as though they were fastened together.

They both felt the intense joy of an escape from death, a shudder at the

danger past.

The older boy tried to climb up to the edge, but could not manage it, as

the wall was perpendicular, and his brother, who was too weak, was

sliding slowly towards the hole.

Then they remained motionless, filled anew with terror. And they waited.

The little fellow squeezed his brother's hands with all his might and

wept from nervousness as he repeated: “I cannot drag you out, I cannot

drag you out.” And all at once he began to shout, “Help! Help!” But his

light voice scarcely penetrated beyond the dome of foliage above their

heads.

They remained thus a long time, hours and hours, facing each other,

these two children, with one thought, one anguish of heart and the

horrible dread that one of them, exhausted, might let go the hands of

the other. And they kept on calling, but all in vain.

At length the older boy, who was shivering with cold, said to the little

one: “I cannot hold out any longer. I am going to fall. Good-by, little

brother.” And the other, gasping, replied: “Not yet, not yet, wait.”

Evening came on, the still evening with its stars mirrored in the water.

The older lad, his endurance giving out, said: “Let go my hand, I am

going to give you my watch.” He had received it as a present a few days

before, and ever since it had been his chief amusement. He was able to

get hold of it, and held it out to the little fellow who was sobbing and

who laid it down on the grass beside him.

It was night now. The two unhappy beings, exhausted, had almost loosened

their grasp. The elder, at last, feeling that he was lost, murmured once

more: “Good-by, little brother, kiss mamma and papa.” And his numbed

fingers relaxed their hold. He sank and did not rise again . . . . The

little fellow, left alone, began to shout wildly: “Paul! Paul!” But the

other did not come to the surface.

Then he darted across the mountain, falling among the stones, overcome

by the most frightful anguish that can wring a child's heart, and with a

face like death reached the sitting-room, where his parents were

waiting. He became bewildered again as he led them to the gloomy

reservoir. He could not find his way. At last he reached the spot. “It

is there; yes, it is there!”

But the cistern had to be emptied, and the proprietor would not permit

it as he needed the water for his lemon trees.

The two bodies were found, however, but not until the next day.

You see, my dear friend, that this is a simple news item. But if you had

seen the hole itself your heart would have been wrung, as mine was, at

the thought of the agony of that child hanging to his brother's hands,

of the long suspense of those little chaps who were accustomed only to

laugh and to play, and at the simple incident of the giving of the

watch.

I said to myself: “May Fate preserve me from ever receiving a similar

relic!” I know of nothing more terrible than such a recollection

connected with a familiar object that one cannot dispose of. Only think

of it; each time that he handles this sacred watch the survivor will

picture once more the horrible scene; the pool, the wall, the still

water, and the distracted face of his brother-alive, and yet as lost as

though he were already dead. And all through his life, at any moment,

the vision will be there, awakened the instant even the tip of his

finger touches his watch pocket.

And I was sad until evening. I left the spot and kept on climbing,

leaving the region of orange trees for the region of olive trees, and

the region of olive trees for the region of pines; then I came to a

valley of stones, and finally reached the ruins of an ancient castle,

built, they say, in the tenth century by a Saracen chief, a good man,

who was baptized a Christian through love for a young girl. Everywhere

around me were mountains, and before me the sea, the sea with an almost

imperceptible patch on it: Corsica, or, rather, the shadow of Corsica.

But on the mountain summits, blood-red in the glow of the sunset, in the

boundless sky and on the sea, in all this superb landscape that I had

come here to admire I saw only two poor children, one lying prone on the

edge of a hole filled with black water, the other submerged to his neck,

their hands intertwined, weeping opposite each other, in despair. And it

seemed as though I continually heard a weak, exhausted voice saying:

“Good-by, little brother, I am going to give you my watch.”

This letter may seem rather melancholy, dear friend. I will try to be

more cheerful some other day.

A CREMATION

Last Monday an Indian prince died at Etretat, Bapu Sahib Khanderao

Ghatay, a relation of His Highness, the Maharajah Gaikwar, prince of

Baroda, in the province of Guzerat, Presidency of Bombay.

For about three weeks there had been seen walking in the streets about

ten young East Indians, small, lithe, with dark skins, dressed all in

gray and wearing on their heads caps such as English grooms wear. They

were men of high rank who had come to Europe to study the military

institutions of the principal Western nations. The little band consisted

of three princes, a nobleman, an interpreter and three servants.

The head of the commission had just died, an old man of forty-two and

father-in-law of Sampatro Kashivao Gaikwar, brother of His Highness, the

Gaikwar of Baroda.

The son-in-law accompanied his father-in-law.

The other East Indians were called Ganpatrao Shravanrao Gaikwar, cousin

of His Highness Khasherao Gadhav; Vasudev Madhav Samarth, interpreter

and secretary; the slaves: Ramchandra Bajaji, Ganu bin Pukiram Kokate,

Rhambhaji bin Fabji.

On leaving his native land the one who died recently was overcome with

terrible grief, and feeling convinced that he would never return he

wished to give up the journey, but he had to obey the wishes of his

noble relative, the Prince of Baroda, and he set out.

They came to spend the latter part of the summer at Etretat, and people

would go out of curiosity every morning to see them taking their bath at

the Etablissment des Roches-Blanches.

Five or six days ago Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatay was taken with pains in

his gums; then the inflammation spread to the throat and became

ulceration. Gangrene set in and, on Monday, the doctors told his young

friends that their relative was dying. The final struggle was already

beginning, and the breath had almost left the unfortunate man's body

when his friends seized him, snatched him from his bed and laid him on

the stone floor of the room, so that, stretched out on the earth, our

mother, he should yield up his soul, according to the command of Brahma.

They then sent to ask the mayor, M. Boissaye, for a permit to burn the

body that very day so as to fulfill the prescribed ceremonial of the

Hindoo religion. The mayor hesitated, telegraphed to the prefecture to

demand instructions, at the same time sending word that a failure to

reply would be considered by him tantamount to a consent. As he had

received no reply at 9 o'clock that evening, he decided, in view of the

infectious character of the disease of which the East Indian had died,

that the cremation of the body should take place that very night,

beneath the cliff, on the beach, at ebb tide.

The mayor is being criticized now for this decision, though he acted as

an intelligent, liberal and determined man, and was upheld and advised

by the three physicians who had watched the case and reported the death.

They were dancing at the Casino that evening. It was an early autumn

evening, rather chilly. A pretty strong wind was blowing from the ocean,

although as yet there was no sea on, and swift, light, ragged clouds

were driving across the sky. They came from the edge of the horizon,

looking dark against the background of the sky, but as they approached

the moon they grew whiter and passed hurriedly across her face, veiling

it for a few seconds without completely hiding it.

The tall straight cliffs that inclose the rounded beach of Etretat and

terminate in two celebrated arches, called “the Gates,” lay in shadow,

and made two great black patches in the softly lighted landscape.

It had rained all day.

The Casino orchestra was playing waltzes, polkas and quadrilles. A rumor

was presently circulated among the groups of dancers. It was said that

an East Indian prince had just died at the Hotel des Bains and that the

ministry had been approached for permission to burn the body. No one

believed it, or at least no one supposed that such a thing could occur

so foreign was the custom as yet to our customs, and as the night was

far advanced every one went home.

At midnight, the lamplighter, running from street to street,

extinguished, one after another, the yellow jets of flame that lighted

up the sleeping houses, the mud and the puddles of water. We waited,

watching for the hour when the little town should be quiet and deserted.

Ever since noon a carpenter had been cutting up wood and asking himself

with amazement what was going to be done with all these planks sawn up

into little bits, and why one should destroy so much good merchandise.

This wood was piled up in a cart which went along through side streets

as far as the beach, without arousing the suspicion of belated persons

who might meet it. It went along on the shingle at the foot of the

cliff, and having dumped its contents on the beach the three Indian

servants began to build a funeral pile, a little longer than it was

wide. They worked alone, for no profane hand must aid in this solemn

duty.

It was one o'clock in the morning when the relations of the deceased

were informed that they might accomplish their part of the work.

The door of the little house they occupied was open, and we perceived,

lying on a stretcher in the small, dimly lighted vestibule the corpse

covered with white silk. We could see him plainly as he lay stretched

out on his back, his outline clearly defined beneath this white veil.

The East Indians, standing at his feet, remained motionless, while one

of them performed the prescribed rites, murmuring unfamiliar words in a

low, monotonous tone. He walked round and round the corpse; touching it

occasionally, then, taking an urn suspended from three slender chains,

he sprinkled it for some time with the sacred water of the Ganges, that

East Indians must always carry with them wherever they go.

Then the stretcher was lifted by four of them who started off at a slow

march. The moon had gone down, leaving the muddy, deserted streets in

darkness, but the body on the stretcher appeared to be luminous, so

dazzlingly white was the silk, and it was a weird sight to see, passing

along through the night, the semi-luminous form of this corpse, borne by

those men, the dusky skin of whose faces and hands could scarcely be

distinguished from their clothing in the darkness.

Behind the corpse came three Indians, and then, a full head taller than

themselves and wrapped in an ample traveling coat of a soft gray color,

appeared the outline of an Englishman, a kind and superior man, a friend

of theirs, who was their guide and counselor in their European travels.

Beneath the cold, misty sky of this little northern beach I felt as if I

were taking part in a sort of symbolical drama. It seemed to me that

they were carrying there, before me, the conquered genius of India,

followed, as in a funeral procession, by the victorious genius of

England robed in a gray ulster.

On the shingly beach the four bearers halted a few moments to take

breath, and then proceeded on their way. They now walked quickly,

bending beneath the weight of their burden. At length they reached the

funeral pile. It was erected in an indentation, at the very foot of the

cliff, which rose above it perpendicularly a hundred meters high,

perfectly white but looking gray in the night.

The funeral pile was about three and a half feet high. The corpse was

placed on it and then one of the Indians asked to have the pole star

pointed out to him. This was done, and the dead Rajah was laid with his

feet turned towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosene

were poured over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs of

pine wood. For almost another hour the relations and servants kept

piling up the funeral pyre which looked like one of those piles of wood

that carpenters keep in their yards. Then on top of this was poured the

contents of twenty bottles of oil, and on top of all they emptied a bag

of fine shavings. A few steps further on, a flame was glimmering in a

little bronze brazier, which had remained lighted since the arrival of

the corpse.

The moment had arrived. The relations went to fetch the fire. As it was

barely alight, some oil was poured on it, and suddenly a flame arose

lighting up the great wall of rock from summit to base. An Indian who

was leaning over the brazier rose upright, his two hands in the air, his

elbows bent, and all at once we saw arising, all black on the immense

white cliff, a colossal shadow, the shadow of Buddha in his hieratic

posture. And the little pointed toque that the man wore on his head even

looked like the head-dress of the god.

The effect was so striking and unexpected that I felt my heart beat as

though some supernatural apparition had risen up before me.

That was just what it was—the ancient and sacred image, come from the

heart of the East to the ends of Europe, and watching over its son whom

they were going to cremate there.

It vanished. They brought fire. The shavings on top of the pyre were

lighted and then the wood caught fire and a brilliant light illumined

the cliff, the shingle and the foam of the waves as they broke on the

beach.

It grew brighter from second to second, lighting up on the sea in the

distance the dancing crest of the waves.

The breeze from the ocean blew in gusts, increasing the heat of the

flame which flattened down, twisted, then shot up again, throwing out

millions of sparks. They mounted with wild rapidity along the cliff and

were lost in the sky, mingling with the stars, increasing their number.

Some sea birds who had awakened uttered their plaintive cry, and,

describing long curves, flew, with their white wings extended, through

the gleam from the funeral pyre and then disappeared in the night.

Before long the pile of wood was nothing but a mass of flame, not red

but yellow, a blinding yellow, a furnace lashed by the wind. And,

suddenly, beneath a stronger gust, it tottered, partially crumbling as

it leaned towards the sea, and the corpse came to view, full length,

blackened on his couch of flame and burning with long blue flames:

The pile of wood having crumbled further on the right the corpse turned

over as a man does in bed. They immediately covered him with fresh wood

and the fire started up again more furiously than ever.

The East Indians, seated in a semi-circle on the shingle, looked out

with sad, serious faces. And the rest of us, as it was very cold, had

drawn nearer to the fire until the smoke and sparks came in our faces.

There was no odor save that of burning pine and petroleum.

Hours passed; day began to break. Toward five o'clock in the morning

nothing remained but a heap of ashes. The relations gathered them up,

cast some of them to the winds, some in the sea, and kept some in a

brass vase that they had brought from India. They then retired to their

home to give utterance to lamentations.

These young princes and their servants, by the employment of the most

inadequate appliances succeeded in carrying out the cremation of their

relation in the most perfect manner, with singular skill and remarkable

dignity. Everything was done according to ritual, according to the rigid

ordinances of their religion. Their dead one rests in peace.

The following morning at daybreak there was an indescribable commotion

in Etretat. Some insisted that they had burned a man alive, others that

they were trying to hide a crime, some that the mayor would be put in

jail, others that the Indian prince had succumbed to an attack of

cholera.

The men were amazed, the women indignant. A crowd of people spent the

day on the site of the funeral pile, looking for fragments of bone in

the shingle that was still warm. They found enough bones to reconstruct

ten skeletons, for the farmers on shore frequently throw their dead

sheep into the sea. The finders carefully placed these various fragments

in their pocketbooks. But not one of them possesses a true particle of

the Indian prince.

That very night a deputy sent by the government came to hold an inquest.

He, however, formed an estimate of this singular case like a man of

intelligence and good sense. But what should he say in his report?

The East Indians declared that if they had been prevented in France from

cremating their dead they would have taken him to a freer country where

they could have carried out their customs.

Thus, I have seen a man cremated on a funeral pile, and it has given me

a wish to disappear in the same manner.

In this way everything ends at once. Man expedites the slow work of

nature, instead of delaying it by the hideous coffin in which one

decomposes for months. The flesh is dead, the spirit has fled. Fire

which purifies disperses in a few hours all that was a human being; it

casts it to the winds, converting it into air and ashes, and not into

ignominious corruption.

This is clean and hygienic. Putrefaction beneath the ground in a closed

box where the body becomes like pap, a blackened, stinking pap, has

about it something repugnant and disgusting. The sight of the coffin as

it descends into this muddy hole wrings one's heart with anguish. But

the funeral pyre which flames up beneath the sky has about it something

grand, beautiful and solemn.

MISTI

I was very much interested at that time in a droll little woman. She was

married, of course, as I have a horror of unmarried flirts. What

enjoyment is there in making love to a woman who belongs to nobody and

yet belongs to any one? And, besides, morality aside, I do not

understand love as a trade. That disgusts me somewhat.

The especial attraction in a married woman to a bachelor is that she

gives him a home, a sweet, pleasant home where every one takes care of

you and spoils you, from the husband to the servants. One finds

everything combined there, love, friendship, even fatherly interest, bed

and board, all, in fact, that constitutes the happiness of life, with

this incalculable advantage, that one can change one's family from time

to time, take up one's abode in all kinds of society in turn: in summer,

in the country with the workman who rents you a room in his house; in

winter with the townsfolk, or even with the nobility, if one is

ambitious.

I have another weakness; it is that I become attached to the husband as

well as the wife. I acknowledge even that some husbands, ordinary or

coarse as they may be, give me a feeling of disgust for their wives,

however charming they may be. But when the husband is intellectual or

charming I invariably become very much attached to him. I am careful if

I quarrel with the wife not to quarrel with the husband. In this way I

have made some of my best friends, and have also proved in many cases

the incontestable superiority of the male over the female in the human

species. The latter makes all sorts of trouble-scenes, reproaches, etc.;

while the former, who has just as good a right to complain, treats you,

on the contrary, as though you were the special Providence of his

hearth.

Well, my friend was a quaint little woman, a brunette, fanciful,

capricious, pious, superstitious, credulous as a monk, but charming. She

had a way of kissing one that I never saw in any one else—but that was

not the attraction—and such a soft skin! It gave me intense delight

merely to hold her hands. And an eye—her glance was like a slow caress,

delicious and unending. Sometimes I would lean my head on her knee and

we would remain motionless, she leaning over me with that subtle,

enigmatic, disturbing smile that women have, while my eyes would be

raised to hers, drinking sweetly and deliciously into my heart, like a

form of intoxication, the glance of her limpid blue eyes, limpid as

though they were full of thoughts of love, and blue as though they were

a heaven of delights.

Her husband, inspector of some large public works, was frequently away

from home and left us our evenings free. Sometimes I spent them with her

lounging on the divan with my forehead on one of her knees; while on the

other lay an enormous black cat called “Misti,” whom she adored. Our

fingers would meet on the cat's back and would intertwine in her soft

silky fur. I felt its warm body against my cheek, trembling with its

eternal purring, and occasionally a paw would reach out and place on my

mouth, or my eyelid, five unsheathed claws which would prick my eyelids,

and then be immediately withdrawn.

Sometimes we would go out on what we called our escapades. They were

very innocent, however. They consisted in taking supper at some inn in

the suburbs, or else, after dining at her house or at mine, in making

the round of the cheap cafes, like students out for a lark.

We would go into the common drinking places and take our seats at the

end of the smoky den on two rickety chairs, at an old wooden table. A

cloud of pungent smoke, with which blended an odor of fried fish from

dinner, filled the room. Men in smocks were talking in loud tones as

they drank their petits verres, and the astonished waiter placed before

us two cherry brandies.

She, trembling, charmingly afraid, would raise her double black veil as

far as her nose, and then take up her glass with the enjoyment that one

feels at doing something delightfully naughty. Each cherry she swallowed

made her feel as if she had done something wrong, each swallow of the

burning liquor had on her the affect of a delicate and forbidden

enjoyment.

Then she would say to me in a low tone: “Let us go.” And we would leave,

she walking quickly with lowered head between the drinkers who watched

her going by with a look of displeasure. And as soon as we got into the

street she would give a great sigh of relief, as if we had escaped some

terrible danger.

Sometimes she would ask me with a shudder:

“Suppose they, should say something rude to me in those places, what

would you do?” “Why, I would defend you, parbleu!” I would reply in a

resolute manner. And she would squeeze my arm for happiness, perhaps

with a vague wish that she might be insulted and protected, that she

might see men fight on her account, even those men, with me!

One evening as we sat at a table in a tavern at Montmartre, we saw an

old woman in tattered garments come in, holding in her hand a pack of

dirty cards. Perceiving a lady, the old woman at once approached us and

offered to tell my friend's fortune. Emma, who in her heart believed in

everything, was trembling with longing and anxiety, and she made a place

beside her for the old woman.

The latter, old, wrinkled, her eyes with red inflamed rings round them,

and her mouth without a single tooth in it, began to deal her dirty

cards on the table. She dealt them in piles, then gathered them up, and

then dealt them out again, murmuring indistinguishable words. Emma,

turning pale, listened with bated breath, gasping with anxiety and

curiosity.

The fortune-teller broke silence. She predicted vague happenings:

happiness and children, a fair young man, a voyage, money, a lawsuit, a

dark man, the return of some one, success, a death. The mention of this

death attracted the younger woman's attention. “Whose death? When? In

what manner?”

The old woman replied: “Oh, as to that, these cards are not certain

enough. You must come to my place to-morrow; I will tell you about it

with coffee grounds which never make a mistake.”

Emma turned anxiously to me:

“Say, let us go there to-morrow. Oh, please say yes. If not, you cannot

imagine how worried I shall be.”

I began to laugh.

“We will go if you wish it, dearie.”

The old woman gave us her address. She lived on the sixth floor, in a

wretched house behind the Buttes-Chaumont. We went there the following

day.

Her room, an attic containing two chairs and a bed, was filled with

strange objects, bunches of herbs hanging from nails, skins of animals,

flasks and phials containing liquids of various colors. On the table a

stuffed black cat looked out of eyes of glass. He seemed like the demon

of this sinister dwelling.

Emma, almost fainting with emotion, sat down on a chair and exclaimed:

“Oh, dear, look at that cat; how like it is to Misti.”

And she explained to the old woman that she had a cat “exactly like

that, exactly like that!”

The old woman replied gravely:

“If you are in love with a man, you must not keep it.”

Emma, suddenly filled with fear, asked:

“Why not?”

The old woman sat down familiarly beside her and took her hand.

“It was the undoing of my life,” she said.

My friend wanted to hear about it. She leaned against the old woman,

questioned her, begged her to tell. At length the woman agreed to do so.

“I loved that cat,” she said, “as one would love a brother. I was young

then and all alone, a seamstress. I had only him, Mouton. One of the

tenants had given it to me. He was as intelligent as a child, and gentle

as well, and he worshiped me, my dear lady, he worshiped me more than

one does a fetish. All day long he would sit on my lap purring, and all

night long on my pillow; I could feel his heart beating, in fact.

“Well, I happened to make an acquaintance, a fine young man who was

working in a white-goods house. That went on for about three months on a

footing of mere friendship. But you know one is liable to weaken, it may

happen to any one, and, besides, I had really begun to love him. He was

so nice, so nice, and so good. He wanted us to live together, for

economy's sake. I finally allowed him to come and see me one evening. I

had not made up my mind to anything definite; oh, no! But I was pleased

at the idea that we should spend an hour together.

“At first he behaved very well, said nice things to me that made my

heart go pit-a-pat. And then he kissed me, madame, kissed me as one does

when they love. I remained motionless, my eyes closed, in a paroxysm of

happiness. But, suddenly, I felt him start violently and he gave a

scream, a scream that I shall never forget. I opened my eyes and saw

that Mouton had sprung at his face and was tearing the skin with his

claws as if it had been a linen rag. And the blood was streaming down

like rain, madame.

“I tried to take the cat away, but he held on tight, scratching all the

time; and he bit me, he was so crazy. I finally got him and threw him

out of the window, which was open, for it was summer.

“When I began to bathe my poor friend's face, I noticed that his eyes

were destroyed, both his eyes!

“He had to go to the hospital. He died of grief at the end of a year. I

wanted to keep him with me and provide for him, but he would not agree

to it. One would have supposed that he hated me after the occurrence.

“As for Mouton, his back was broken by the fall, The janitor picked up

his body. I had him stuffed, for in spite of all I was fond of him. If

he acted as he did it was because he loved me, was it not?”

The old woman was silent and began to stroke the lifeless animal whose

body trembled on its iron framework.

Emma, with sorrowful heart, had forgotten about the predicted death—or,

at least, she did not allude to it again, and she left, giving the woman

five francs.

As her husband was to return the following day, I did not go to the

house for several days. When I did go I was surprised at not seeing

Misti. I asked where he was.

She blushed and replied:

“I gave him away. I was uneasy.”

I was astonished.

“Uneasy? Uneasy? What about?”

She gave me a long kiss and said in a low tone:

“I was uneasy about your eyes, my dear.”

Misti appeared in. Gil Blas of January 22, 1884, over the signature of

“MAUFRIGNEUSE.”

MADAME HERMET

Crazy people attract me. They live in a mysterious land of weird dreams,

in that impenetrable cloud of dementia where all that they have

witnessed in their previous life, all they have loved, is reproduced for

them in an imaginary existence, outside of all laws that govern the

things of this life and control human thought.

For them there is no such thing as the impossible, nothing is

improbable; fairyland is a constant quantity and the supernatural quite

familiar. The old rampart, logic; the old wall, reason; the old main

stay of thought, good sense, break down, fall and crumble before their

imagination, set free and escaped into the limitless realm of fancy, and

advancing with fabulous bounds, and nothing can check it. For them

everything happens, and anything may happen. They make no effort to

conquer events, to overcome resistance, to overturn obstacles. By a

sudden caprice of their flighty imagination they become princes,

emperors, or gods, are possessed of all the wealth of the world, all the

delightful things of life, enjoy all pleasures, are always strong,

always beautiful, always young, always beloved! They, alone, can be

happy in this world; for, as far as they are concerned, reality does not

exist. I love to look into their wandering intelligence as one leans

over an abyss at the bottom of which seethes a foaming torrent whose

source and destination are both unknown.

But it is in vain that we lean over these abysses, for we shall never

discover the source nor the destination of this water. After all, it is

only water, just like what is flowing in the sunlight, and we shall

learn nothing by looking at it.

It is likewise of no use to ponder over the intelligence of crazy

people, for their most weird notions are, in fact, only ideas that are

already known, which appear strange simply because they are no longer

under the restraint of reason. Their whimsical source surprises us

because we do not see it bubbling up. Doubtless the dropping of a little

stone into the current was sufficient to cause these ebullitions.

Nevertheless crazy people attract me and I always return to them, drawn

in spite of myself by this trivial mystery of dementia.

One day as I was visiting one of the asylums the physician who was my

guide said:

“Come, I will show you an interesting case.”

And he opened the door of a cell where a woman of about forty, still

handsome, was seated in a large armchair, looking persistently at her

face in a little hand mirror.

As soon as she saw us she rose to her feet, ran to the other end of the

room, picked up a veil that lay on a chair, wrapped it carefully round

her face, then came back, nodding her head in reply to our greeting.

“Well,” said the doctor, “how are you this morning?”

She gave a deep sigh.

“Oh, ill, monsieur, very ill. The marks are increasing every day.”

He replied in a tone of conviction:

“Oh, no; oh, no; I assure you that you are mistaken.”

She drew near to him and murmured:

“No. I am certain of it. I counted ten pittings more this morning, three

on the right cheek, four on the left cheek, and three on the forehead.

It is frightful, frightful! I shall never dare to let any one see me,

not even my son; no, not even him! I am lost, I am disfigured forever.”

She fell back in her armchair and began to sob.

The doctor took a chair, sat down beside her, and said soothingly in a

gentle tone:

“Come, let me see; I assure you it is nothing. With a slight

cauterization I will make it all disappear.”

She shook her head in denial, without speaking. He tried to touch her

veil, but she seized it with both hands so violently that her fingers

went through it.

He continued to reason with her and reassure her.

“Come, you know very well that I remove those horrid pits every time and

that there is no trace of them after I have treated them. If you do not

let me see them I cannot cure you.”

“I do not mind your seeing them,” she murmured, “but I do not know that

gentleman who is with you.”

“He is a doctor also, who can give you better care than I can.”

She then allowed her face to be uncovered, but her dread, her emotion,

her shame at being seen brought a rosy flush to her face and her neck,

down to the collar of her dress. She cast down her eyes, turned her face

aside, first to the right; then to the left, to avoid our gaze and

stammered out:

“Oh, it is torture to me to let myself be seen like this! It is

horrible, is it not? Is it not horrible?”

I looked at her in much surprise, for there was nothing on her face, not

a mark, not a spot, not a sign of one, nor a scar.

She turned towards me, her eyes still lowered, and said:

“It was while taking care of my son that I caught this fearful disease,

monsieur. I saved him, but I am disfigured. I sacrificed my beauty to

him, to my poor child. However, I did my duty, my conscience is at rest.

If I suffer it is known only to God.”

The doctor had drawn from his coat pocket a fine water-color paint

brush.

“Let me attend to it,” he said, “I will put it all right.”

She held out her right cheek, and he began by touching it lightly with

the brush here and there, as though he were putting little points of

paint on it. He did the same with the left cheek, then with the chin,

and the forehead, and then exclaimed:

“See, there is nothing there now, nothing at all!”

She took up the mirror, gazed at her reflection with profound, eager

attention, with a strong mental effort to discover something, then she

sighed:

“No. It hardly shows at all. I am infinitely obliged to you.”

The doctor had risen. He bowed to her, ushered me out and followed me,

and, as soon as he had locked the door, said:

“Here is the history of this unhappy woman.”

Her name is Mme. Hermet. She was once very beautiful, a great coquette,

very much beloved and very much in-love with life.

She was one of those women who have nothing but their beauty and their

love of admiration to sustain, guide or comfort them in this life. The

constant anxiety to retain her freshness, the care of her complexion, of

her hands, her teeth, of every portion of body that was visible,

occupied all her time and all her attention.

She became a widow, with one son. The boy was brought up as are all

children of society beauties. She was, however, very fond of him.

He grew up, and she grew older. Whether she saw the fatal crisis

approaching, I cannot say. Did she, like so many others, gaze for hours

and hours at her skin, once so fine, so transparent and free from

blemish, now beginning to shrivel slightly, to be crossed with a

thousand little lines, as yet imperceptible, that will grow deeper day

by day, month by month? Did she also see slowly, but surely, increasing

traces of those long wrinkles on the forehead, those slender serpents

that nothing can check? Did she suffer the torture, the abominable

torture of the mirror, the little mirror with the silver handle which

one cannot make up one's mind to lay down on the table, but then throws

down in disgust only to take it up again in order to look more closely,

and still more closely at the hateful and insidious approaches of old

age? Did she shut herself up ten times, twenty times a day, leaving her

friends chatting in the drawing-room, and go up to her room where, under

the protection of bolts and bars, she would again contemplate the work

of time on her ripe beauty, now beginning to wither, and recognize with

despair the gradual progress of the process which no one else had as yet

seemed to perceive, but of which she, herself, was well aware. She knows

where to seek the most serious, the gravest traces of age. And the

mirror, the little round hand-glass in its carved silver frame, tells

her horrible things; for it speaks, it seems to laugh, it jeers and

tells her all that is going to occur, all the physical discomforts and

the atrocious mental anguish she will suffer until the day of her death,

which will be the day of her deliverance.

Did she weep, distractedly, on her knees, her forehead to the ground,

and pray, pray, pray to Him who thus slays his creatures and gives them

youth only that he may render old age more unendurable, and lends them

beauty only that he may withdraw it almost immediately? Did she pray to

Him, imploring Him to do for her what He has never yet done for any one,

to let her retain until her last day her charm, her freshness and her

gracefulness? Then, finding that she was imploring in vain an inflexible

Unknown who drives on the years, one after another, did she roll on the

carpet in her room, knocking her head against the furniture and stifling

in her throat shrieks of despair?

Doubtless she suffered these tortures, for this is what occurred:

One day (she was then thirty-five) her son aged fifteen, fell ill.

He took to his bed without any one being able to determine the cause or

nature of his illness.

His tutor, a priest, watched beside him and hardly ever left him, while

Mme. Hermet came morning and evening to inquire how he was.

She would come into the room in the morning in her night wrapper,

smiling, all powdered and perfumed, and would ask as she entered the

door:

“Well, George, are you better?”

The big boy, his face red, swollen and showing the ravages of fever,

would reply:

“Yes, little mother, a little better.”

She would stay in the room a few seconds, look at the bottles of

medicine, and purse her lips as if she were saying “phew,” and then

would suddenly exclaim: “Oh, I forgot something very important,” and

would run out of the room leaving behind her a fragrance of choice

toilet perfumes.

In the evening she would appear in a decollete dress, in a still greater

hurry, for she was always late, and she had just time to inquire:

“Well, what does the doctor say?”

The priest would reply:

“He has not yet given an opinion, madame.”

But one evening the abbe replied: “Madame, your son has got the small-

pox.”

She uttered a scream of terror and fled from the room.

When her maid came to her room the following morning she noticed at once

a strong odor of burnt sugar, and she found her mistress, with wide-open

eyes, her face pale from lack of sleep, and shivering with terror in her

bed.

As soon as the shutters were opened Mme. Herrnet asked:

“How is George?”

“Oh, not at all well to-day, madame.”

She did not rise until noon, when she ate two eggs with a cup of tea, as

if she herself had been ill, and then she went out to a druggist's to

inquire about prophylactic measures against the contagion of small-pox.

She did not come home until dinner time, laden with medicine bottles,

and shut herself up at once in her room, where she saturated herself

with disinfectants.

The priest was waiting for her in the dining-room. As soon as she saw

him she exclaimed in a voice full of emotion:

“Well?”

“No improvement. The doctor is very anxious:”

She began to cry and could eat nothing, she was so worried.

The next day, as soon as it was light, she sent to inquire for her son,

but there was no improvement and she spent the whole day in her room,

where little braziers were giving out pungent odors. Her maid said also

that you could hear her sighing all the evening.

She spent a whole week in this manner, only going out for an hour or two

during the afternoon to breathe the air.

She now sent to make inquiries every hour, and would sob when the

reports were unfavorable.

On the morning of the eleventh day the priest, having been announced,

entered her room, his face grave and pale, and said, without taking the

chair she offered him:

“Madame, your son is very ill and wishes to see you.”

She fell on her knees, exclaiming:

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I would never dare! My God! My God! Help me!”

The priest continued:

“The doctor holds out little hope, madame, and George is expecting you!”

And he left the room.

Two hours later as the young lad, feeling himself dying, again asked for

his mother, the abbe went to her again and found her still on her knees,

still weeping and repeating:

“I will not . . . . I will not. . . . I am too much afraid . . . . I

will not. . . .”

He tried to persuade her, to strengthen her, to lead her. He only

succeeded in bringing on an attack of “nerves” that lasted some time and

caused her to shriek.

The doctor when he came in the evening was told of this cowardice and

declared that he would bring her in himself, of her own volition, or by

force. But after trying all manner of argument and just as he seized her

round the waist to carry her into her son's room, she caught hold of the

door and clung to it so firmly that they could not drag her away. Then

when they let go of her she fell at the feet of the doctor, begging his

forgiveness and acknowledging that she was a wretched creature. And then

she exclaimed: “Oh, he is not going to die; tell me that he is not going

to die, I beg of you; tell him that I love him, that I worship him. . .”

The young lad was dying. Feeling that he had only a few moments more to

live, he entreated that his mother be persuaded to come and bid him a

last farewell. With that sort of presentiment that the dying sometimes

have, he had understood, had guessed all, and he said: “If she is afraid

to come into the room, beg her just to come on the balcony as far as my

window so that I may see her, at least, so that I may take a farewell

look at her, as I cannot kiss her.”

The doctor and the abbe, once more, went together to this woman and

assured her: “You will run no risk, for there will be a pane of glass

between you and him.”

She consented, covered up her head, and took with her a bottle of

smelling salts. She took three steps on the balcony; then, all at once,

hiding her face in her hands, she moaned: “No . . . no . . . I would

never dare to look at him . . . never. . . . I am too much ashamed . . .

too much afraid . . . . No . . . I cannot.”

They endeavored to drag her along, but she held on with both hands to

the railings and uttered such plaints that the passers-by in the street

raised their heads. And the dying boy waited, his eyes turned towards

that window, waited to die until he could see for the last time the

sweet, beloved face, the worshiped face of his mother.

He waited long, and night came on. Then he turned over with his face to

the wall and was silent.

When day broke he was dead. The day following she was crazy.

THE MAGIC COUCH

The Seine flowed past my house, without a ripple on its surface, and

gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. It was a beautiful, broad,

indolent silver stream, with crimson lights here and there; and on the

opposite side of the river were rows of tall trees that covered all the

bank with an immense wall of verdure.

The sensation of life which is renewed each day, of fresh, happy, loving

life trembled in the leaves, palpitated in the air, was mirrored in the

water.

The postman had just brought my papers, which were handed to me, and I

walked slowly to the river bank in order to read them.

In the first paper I opened I noticed this headline, “Statistics of

Suicides,” and I read that more than 8,500 persons had killed themselves

in that year.

In a moment I seemed to see them! I saw this voluntary and hideous

massacre of the despairing who were weary of life. I saw men bleeding,

their jaws fractured, their skulls cloven, their breasts pierced by a

bullet, slowly dying, alone in a little room in a hotel, giving no

thought to their wound, but thinking only of their misfortunes.

I saw others seated before a tumbler in which some matches were soaking,

or before a little bottle with a red label.

They would look at it fixedly without moving; then they would drink and

await the result; then a spasm would convulse their cheeks and draw

their lips together; their eyes would grow wild with terror, for they

did not know that the end would be preceded by so much suffering.

They rose to their feet, paused, fell over and with their hands pressed

to their stomachs they felt their internal organs on fire, their

entrails devoured by the fiery liquid, before their minds began to grow

dim.

I saw others hanging from a nail in the wall, from the fastening of the

window, from a hook in the ceiling, from a beam in the garret, from a

branch of a tree amid the evening rain. And I surmised all that had

happened before they hung there motionless, their tongues hanging out of

their mouths. I imagined the anguish of their heart, their final

hesitation, their attempts to fasten the rope, to determine that it was

secure, then to pass the noose round their neck and to let themselves

fall.

I saw others lying on wretched beds, mothers with their little children,

old men dying of hunger, young girls dying for love, all rigid,

suffocated, asphyxiated, while in the center of the room the brasier

still gave forth the fumes of charcoal.

And I saw others walking at night along the deserted bridges. These were

the most sinister. The water flowed under the arches with a low sound.

They did not see it . . . they guessed at it from its cool breath! They

longed for it and they feared it. They dared not do it! And yet, they

must. A distant clock sounded the hour and, suddenly, in the vast

silence of the night, there was heard the splash of a body falling into

the river, a scream or two, the sound of hands beating the water, and

all was still. Sometimes, even, there was only the sound of the falling

body when they had tied their arms down or fastened a stone to their

feet. Oh, the poor things, the poor things, the poor things, how I felt

their anguish, how I died in their death! I went through all their

wretchedness; I endured in one hour all their tortures. I knew all the

sorrows that had led them to this, for I know the deceitful infamy of

life, and no one has felt it more than I have.

How I understood them, these who weak, harassed by misfortune, having

lost those they loved, awakened from the dream of a tardy compensation,

from the illusion of another existence where God will finally be just,

after having been ferocious, and their minds disabused of the mirages of

happiness, have given up the fight and desire to put an end to this

ceaseless tragedy, or this shameful comedy.

Suicide! Why, it is the strength of those whose strength is exhausted,

the hope of those who no longer believe, the sublime courage of the

conquered! Yes, there is at least one door to this life we can always

open and pass through to the other side. Nature had an impulse of pity;

she did not shut us up in prison. Mercy for the despairing!

As for those who are simply disillusioned, let them march ahead with

free soul and quiet heart. They have nothing to fear since they may take

their leave; for behind them there is always this door that the gods of

our illusions cannot even lock.

I thought of this crowd of suicides: more than eight thousand five

hundred in one year. And it seemed to me that they had combined to send

to the world a prayer, to utter a cry of appeal, to demand something

that should come into effect later when we understood things better. It

seemed to me that all these victims, their throats cut, poisoned, hung,

asphyxiated, or drowned, all came together, a frightful horde, like

citizens to the polls, to say to society:

“Grant us, at least, a gentle death! Help us to die, you who will not

help us to live! See, we are numerous, we have the right to speak in

these days of freedom, of philosophic independence and of popular

suffrage. Give to those who renounce life the charity of a death that

will not be repugnant nor terrible.”

I began to dream, allowing my fancy to roam at will in weird and

mysterious fashion on this subject.

I seemed to be all at once in a beautiful city. It was Paris; but at

what period? I walked about the streets, looking at the houses, the

theaters, the public buildings, and presently found myself in a square

where I remarked a large building; very handsome, dainty and attractive.

I was surprised on reading on the facade this inscription in letters of

gold, “Suicide Bureau.”

Oh, the weirdness of waking dreams where the spirit soars into a world

of unrealities and possibilities! Nothing astonishes one, nothing shocks

one; and the unbridled fancy makes no distinction between the comic and

the tragic.

I approached the building where footmen in knee-breeches were seated in

the vestibule in front of a cloak-room as they do at the entrance of a

club.

I entered out of curiosity. One of the men rose and said:

“What does monsieur wish?”

“I wish to know what building this is.”

“Nothing more?”

“Why, no.”

“Then would monsieur like me to take him to the Secretary of the

Bureau?”

I hesitated, and asked:

“But will not that disturb him?”

“Oh, no, monsieur, he is here to receive those who desire information.”

“Well, lead the way.”

He took me through corridors where old gentlemen were chatting, and

finally led me into a beautiful office, somewhat somber, furnished

throughout in black wood. A stout young man with a corporation was

writing a letter as he smoked a cigar, the fragrance of which gave

evidence of its quality.

He rose. We bowed to each other, and as soon as the footman had retired

he asked:

“What can I do for you?”

“Monsieur,” I replied, “pardon my curiosity. I had never seen this

establishment. The few words inscribed on the facade filled me with

astonishment, and I wanted to know what was going on here.”

He smiled before replying, then said in a low tone with a complacent

air:

“Mon Dieu, monsieur, we put to death in a cleanly and gentle—I do not

venture to say agreeable manner those persons who desire to die.”

I did not feel very shocked, for it really seemed to me natural and

right. What particularly surprised me was that on this planet, with its

low, utilitarian, humanitarian ideals, selfish and coercive of all true

freedom, any one should venture on a similar enterprise, worthy of an

emancipated humanity.

“How did you get the idea?” I asked.

“Monsieur,” he replied, “the number of suicides increased so enormously

during the five years succeeding the world exposition of 1889 that some

measures were urgently needed. People killed themselves in the streets,

at fetes, in restaurants, at the theater, in railway carriages, at the

receptions held by the President of the Republic, everywhere. It was not

only a horrid sight for those who love life, as I do, but also a bad

example for children. Hence it became necessary to centralize suicides.”

“What caused this suicidal epidemic?”

“I do not know. The fact is, I believe, the world is growing old. People

begin to see things clearly and they are getting disgruntled. It is the

same to-day with destiny as with the government, we have found out what

it is; people find that they are swindled in every direction, and they

just get out of it all. When one discovers that Providence lies, cheats,

robs, deceives human beings just as a plain Deputy deceives his

constituents, one gets angry, and as one cannot nominate a fresh

Providence every three months as we do with our privileged

representatives, one just gets out of the whole thing, which is

decidedly bad.”

“Really!”

“Oh, as for me, I am not complaining.”

“Will you inform me how you carry on this establishment?”

“With pleasure. You may become a member when you please. It is a club.”

“A club!”

“Yes, monsieur, founded by the most eminent men in the country, by men

of the highest intellect and brightest intelligence. And,” he added,

laughing heartily, “I swear to you that every one gets a great deal of

enjoyment out of it.”

“In this place?”

“Yes, in this place.”

“You surprise me.”

“Mon Dieu, they enjoy themselves because they have not that fear of

death which is the great killjoy in all our earthly pleasures.”

“But why should they be members of this club if they do not kill

themselves?”

“One may be a member of the club without being obliged for that reason

to commit suicide.”

“But then?”

“I will explain. In view of the enormous increase in suicides, and of

the hideous spectacle they presented, a purely benevolent society was

formed for the protection of those in despair, which placed at their

disposal the facilities for a peaceful, painless, if not unforeseen

death.”

“Who can have authorized such an institution?”

“General Boulanger during his brief tenure of power. He could never

refuse anything. However, that was the only good thing he did. Hence, a

society was formed of clear-sighted, disillusioned skeptics who desired

to erect in the heart of Paris a kind of temple dedicated to the

contempt for death. This place was formerly a dreaded spot that no one

ventured to approach. Then its founders, who met together here, gave a

grand inaugural entertainment with Mmes. Sarah Bernhardt, Judic, Theo,

Granier, and twenty others, and Mme. de Reske, Coquelin, Mounet-Sully,

Paulus, etc., present, followed by concerts, the comedies of Dumas, of

Meilhac, Halevy and Sardon. We had only one thing to mar it, one drama

by Becque which seemed sad, but which subsequently had a great success

at the Comedie-Francaise. In fact all Paris came. The enterprise was

launched.”

“In the midst of the festivities! What a funereal joke!”

“Not at all. Death need not be sad, it should be a matter of

indifference. We made death cheerful, crowned it with flowers, covered

it with perfume, made it easy. One learns to aid others through example;

one can see that it is nothing.”

“I can well understand that they should come to the entertainments; but

did they come to . . . Death?”

“Not at first; they were afraid.”

“And later?”

“They came.”

“Many of them?”

“In crowds. We have had more than forty in a day. One finds hardly any

more drowned bodies in the Seine.”

“Who was the first?”

“A club member.”

“As a sacrifice to the cause?”

“I don't think so. A man who was sick of everything, a 'down and out'

who had lost heavily at baccarat for three months.”

“Indeed?”

“The second was an Englishman, an eccentric. We then advertised in the

papers, we gave an account of our methods, we invented some attractive

instances. But the great impetus was given by poor people.”

“How do you go to work?”

“Would you like to see? I can explain at the same time.”

“Yes, indeed.”

He took his hat, opened the door, allowed me to precede him, and we

entered a card room, where men sat playing as they, play in all gambling

places. They were chatting cheerfully, eagerly. I have seldom seen such

a jolly, lively, mirthful club.

As I seemed surprised, the secretary said:

“Oh, the establishment has an unheard of prestige. All the smart people

all over the world belong to it so as to appear as though they held

death in scorn. Then, once they get here, they feel obliged to be

cheerful that they may not appear to be afraid. So they joke and laugh

and talk flippantly, they are witty and they become so. At present it is

certainly the most frequented and the most entertaining place in Paris.

The women are even thinking of building an annex for themselves.”

“And, in spite of all this, you have many suicides in the house?”

“As I said, about forty or fifty a day. Society people are rare, but

poor devils abound. The middle class has also a large contingent.

“And how . . . do they do?”

“They are asphyxiated . . . very slowly.”

“In what manner?”

“A gas of our own invention. We have the patent. On the other side of

the building are the public entrances—three little doors opening on

small streets. When a man or a woman present themselves they are

interrogated. Then they are offered assistance, aid, protection. If a

client accepts, inquiries are made; and sometimes we have saved their

lives.”

“Where do you get your money?”

“We have a great deal. There are a large number of shareholders. Besides

it is fashionable to contribute to the establishment. The names of the

donors are published in Figaro. Then the suicide of every rich man costs

a thousand francs. And they look as if they were lying in state. It

costs the poor nothing.”

“How can you tell who is poor?”

“Oh, oh, monsieur, we can guess! And, besides, they must bring a

certificate of indigency from the commissary of police of their

district. If you knew how distressing it is to see them come in! I

visited their part of our building once only, and I will never go again.

The place itself is almost as good as this part, almost as luxurious and

comfortable; but they themselves . . . they themselves!!! If you could

see them arriving, the old men in rags coming to die; persons who have

been dying of misery for months, picking up their food at the edges of

the curbstone like dogs in the street; women in rags, emaciated, sick,

paralyzed, incapable of making a living, who say to us after they have

told us their story: 'You see that things cannot go on like that, as I

cannot work any longer or earn anything.' I saw one woman of eighty-

seven who had lost all her children and grandchildren, and who for the

last six weeks had been sleeping out of doors. It made me ill to hear of

it. Then we have so many different cases, without counting those who say

nothing, but simply ask: 'Where is it?' These are admitted at once and

it is all over in a minute.”

With a pang at my heart I repeated:

“And . . . where is it?”

“Here,” and he opened a door, adding:

“Go in; this is the part specially reserved for club members, and the

one least used. We have so far had only eleven annihilations here.”

“Ah! You call that an . . . annihilation!”

“Yes, monsieur. Go in.”

I hesitated. At length I went in. It was a wide corridor, a sort of

greenhouse in which panes of glass of pale blue, tender pink and

delicate green gave the poetic charm of landscapes to the inclosing

walls. In this pretty salon there were divans, magnificent palms,

flowers, especially roses of balmy fragrance, books on the tables, the

Revue des Deuxmondes, cigars in government boxes, and, what surprised

me, Vichy pastilles in a bonbonniere.

As I expressed my surprise, my guide said:

“Oh, they often come here to chat.” He continued: “The public corridors

are similar, but more simply furnished.”

In reply to a question of mine, he pointed to a couch covered with

creamy crepe de Chine with white embroidery, beneath a large shrub of

unknown variety at the foot of which was a circular bed of mignonette.

The secretary added in a lower tone:

“We change the flower and the perfume at will, for our gas, which is

quite imperceptible, gives death the fragrance of the suicide's favorite

flower. It is volatilized with essences. Would you like to inhale it for

a second?”

“'No, thank you,” I said hastily, “not yet . . . .”

He began to laugh.

“Oh, monsieur, there is no danger. I have tried it myself several

times.”

I was afraid he would think me a coward, and I said:

“Well, I'll try it.”

“Stretch yourself out on the 'endormeuse.”'

A little uneasy I seated myself on the low couch covered with crepe de

Chine and stretched myself full length, and was at once bathed in a

delicious odor of mignonette. I opened my mouth in order to breathe it

in, for my mind had already become stupefied and forgetful of the past

and was a prey, in the first stages of asphyxia, to the enchanting

intoxication of a destroying and magic opium.

Some one shook me by the arm.

“Oh, oh, monsieur,” said the secretary, laughing, “it looks to me as if

you were almost caught.”

But a voice, a real voice, and no longer a dream voice, greeted me with

the peasant intonation:

“Good morning, m'sieu. How goes it?”

My dream was over. I saw the Seine distinctly in the sunlight, and,

coming along a path, the garde champetre of the district, who with his

right hand touched his kepi braided in silver. I replied:

“Good morning, Marinel. Where are you going?”

“I am going to look at a drowned man whom they fished up near the

Morillons. Another who has thrown himself into the soup. He even took

off his trousers in order to tie his legs together with them.”