{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_12414/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_12414","id":"gutenberg_12414","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12414","summary":null,"tags":["Category: French Literature","Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","France -- Fiction","Voyeurism -- Fiction"],"text":"THE INFERNO\n\nBY HENRI BARBUSSE\nAUTHOR OF \"UNDER FIRE\"\n\nTRANSLATED FROM THE 100TH FRENCH EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTION\nBY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN\n1918\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nIn introducing M. Barbusse's most important book to a public already\nfamiliar with \"Under Fire,\" it seems well to point out the relation of\nthe author's philosophy to his own time, and the kinship of his art to\nthat of certain other contemporary French and English novelists.\n\n\"L'Enfer\" has been more widely read and discussed in France than any\nother realistic study since the days of Zola.  The French sales of the\nvolume, in 1917 alone, exceeded a hundred thousand copies, a popularity\nall the more remarkable from the fact that its appeal is based as much\non its philosophical substance as on the story which it tells.\n\nAlthough M. Barbusse is one of the most distinguished contemporary\nFrench writers of short stories, he has found in the novel form the\nmost fitting literary medium for the expression of his philosophy, and\nit is to realism rather than romanticism that he turns for the\nexposition of his special imaginative point of view.  And yet this\nstatement seems to need some qualification.  In his introduction to\n\"Pointed Roofs,\" by Dorothy Richardson, Mr. J.D. Beresford points out\nthat a new objective literary method is becoming general in which the\nwriter's strict detachment from his objective subject matter is united\nto a tendency, impersonal, to be sure, to immerse himself in the life\nsurrounding his characters.  Miss May Sinclair points out that writers\nare beginning to take the complete plunge for the first time, and\ninstances as examples, not only the novels of Dorothy Richardson, but\nthose of James Joyce.\n\nNow it is perfectly true that Miss Richardson and Mr. Joyce have\nintroduced this method into English fiction, and that Mr. Frank\nSwinnerton has carried the method a step further in another direction,\nbut before these writers there was a precedent in France for this\nmethod, of which perhaps the two chief exemplars were Jules Romains and\nHenri Barbusse.  Although the two writers have little else in common,\nboth are intensely conscious of the tremendous, if imponderable, impact\nof elemental and universal forces upon personality, of the profound\nmodifications which natural and social environment unconsciously\nimpress upon the individual life, and of the continual interaction of\nforces by which the course of life is changed more fundamentally than\nby less imperceptible influences.  Both M. Romains and M. Barbusse\nperceive, as the fundamental factor influencing human life, the\ncontraction and expansion of physical and spiritual relationship, the\ninevitable ebb and flow perceived by the poet who pointed out that we\ncannot touch a flower without troubling of a star.\n\nM. Romains has found his literary medium in what he calls unanimism.\nWhile M. Barbusse would not claim to belong to the same school, and in\nfact would appear on the surface to be at the opposite pole of life in\nhis philosophy, we shall find that his detachment, founded, though it\nis, upon solitude, takes essentially the same account of outside forces\nas the philosophy of M. Romains.\n\nHe perceives that each man is an island of illimitable forces apart\nfrom his fellows, passionately eager to live his own life to the last\ndegree of self-fulfilment, but continually thwarted by nature and by\nother men and women, until death interposes and sets the seal of\noblivion upon all that he has dreamed and sought.\n\nAnd he has set himself the task of disengaging, as far as possible, the\npurpose and hope of human life, of endeavouring to discover what\npromise exists for the future and how this promise can be related to\nthe present, of marking the relationship between eternity and time, and\ndiscovering, through the tragedies of birth, love, marriage, illness\nand death, the ultimate possibility of human development and\nfulfilment.\n\n\"The Inferno\" is therefore a tragic book.  But I think that the\nattentive reader will find that the destructive criticism of M.\nBarbusse, in so far as it is possible for him to agree with it, only\nclears away the dead undergrowth which obscures the author's passionate\nhope and belief in the future.\n\nAlthough the action of this story is spiritual as well as physical, and\noccupies less than a month of time, it is focussed intensely upon\nreality.  Everything that the author permits us to see and understand\nis seen through a single point of life--a hole pierced in the wall\nbetween two rooms of a grey Paris boarding house.  The time is most\noften twilight, with its romantic penumbra, darkening into the\nobscurity of night by imperceptible degrees.\n\nM. Barbusse has conceived the idea of making a man perceive the whole\nspiritual tragedy of life through a cranny in the wall, and there is a\nfine symbolism in this, as if he were vouchsafing us the opportunity to\nperceive eternal things through the tiny crack which is all that is\nrevealed to us of infinity, so that the gates of Horn, darkened by our\nhuman blindness, scarcely swing open before they close again.\n\nThe hero of this story has been dazzled by the flaming ramparts of the\nworld, so that eternity is only revealed to him in fiery glimpses that\nshrivel him, and he is left in the dark void of time, clinging to a\ndream which already begins to fail him.\n\nAnd the significant thing about this book is that the final revelation\ncomes to him through the human voices of those who have suffered much,\nbecause they have loved much, after his own daring intellectual flights\nhave failed him.\n\nSo this man who has confronted the greatest realities of life, enabled\nto view them with the same objective detachment with which God sees\nthem, though without the divine knowledge which transmutes their\ndarkness, comes to learn that we carry all heaven and hell within\nourselves, and with a relentless insight, almost Lucretian in its\ndesperate intensity, he cries:  \"We are divinely alone, the heavens\nhave fallen on our heads.\"  And he adds:  \"Here they will pass again,\nday after day, year after year, all the prisoners of rooms will pass in\ntheir kind of eternity.  In the twilight when everything fades, they\nwill sit down near the light, in the room full of haloes; they will\ndrag themselves to the window's void.  Their mouths will join and they\nwill grow tender.  They will exchange a first or a last useless glance.\nThey will open their arms, they will caress each other.  They will love\nlife and be afraid to disappear....\n\n\"I have heard the annunciation of whatever finer things are to come.\nThrough me has passed, without staying me in my course, the Word which\ndoes not lie, and which said over again, will satisfy.\"\n\nTruly a great and pitiless book, but there is a cleansing wind running\nthrough it, which sweeps away life's illusions, and leaves a new hope\nfor the future in our hearts.\n\nEDWARD J. O'BRIEN.\n\nBASS RIVER, MASS.,\nJuly, 10, 1918.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n\nThe landlady, Madame Lemercier, left me alone in my room, after a short\nspeech impressing upon me all the material and moral advantages of the\nLemercier boarding-house.\n\nI stopped in front of the glass, in the middle of the room in which I\nwas going to live for a while.  I looked round the room and then at\nmyself.\n\nThe room was grey and had a dusty smell.  I saw two chairs, one of\nwhich held my valise, two narrow-backed armchairs with smeary\nupholstery, a table with a piece of green felt set into the top, and an\noriental carpet with an arabesque pattern that fairly leaped to the\neye.\n\nThis particular room I had never seen before, but, oh, how familiar it\nall was--that bed of imitation mahogany, that frigid toilet table, that\ninevitable arrangement of the furniture, that emptiness within those\nfour walls.\n\nThe room was worn with use, as if an infinite number of people had\noccupied it.  The carpet was frayed from the door to the window--a path\ntrodden by a host of feet from day to day.  The moulding, which I could\nreach with my hands, was out of line and cracked, and the marble\nmantelpiece had lost its sharp edges.  Human contact wears things out\nwith disheartening slowness.\n\nThings tarnish, too.  Little by little, the ceiling had darkened like a\nstormy sky.  The places on the whitish woodwork and the pink wallpaper\nthat had been touched oftenest had become smudgy--the edge of the door,\nthe paint around the lock of the closet and the wall alongside the\nwindow where one pulls the curtain cords.  A whole world of human\nbeings had passed here like smoke, leaving nothing white but the\nwindow.\n\nAnd I?  I am a man like every other man, just as that evening was like\nevery other evening.\n\n. . . . .\n\nI had been travelling since morning.  Hurry, formalities, baggage, the\ntrain, the whiff of different towns.\n\nI fell into one of the armchairs.  Everything became quieter and more\npeaceful.\n\nMy coming from the country to stay in Paris for good marked an epoch in\nmy life.  I had found a situation here in a bank.  My days were to\nchange.  It was because of this change that I got away from my usual\nthoughts and turned to thoughts of myself.\n\nI was thirty years old.  I had lost my father and mother eighteen or\ntwenty years before, so long ago that the event was now insignificant.\nI was unmarried.  I had no children and shall have none.  There are\nmoments when this troubles me, when I reflect that with me a line will\nend which has lasted since the beginning of humanity.\n\nWas I happy?  Yes, I had nothing to mourn or regret, I had no\ncomplicated desires.  Therefore, I was happy.  I remembered that since\nmy childhood I had had spiritual illuminations, mystical emotions, a\nmorbid fondness for shutting myself up face to face with my past.  I\nhad attributed exceptional importance to myself and had come to think\nthat I was more than other people.  But this had gradually become\nsubmerged in the positive nothingness of every day.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThere I was now in that room.\n\nI leaned forward in my armchair to be nearer the glass, and I examined\nmyself carefully.\n\nRather short, with an air of reserve (although there are times when I\nlet myself go); quite correctly dressed; nothing to criticise and\nnothing striking about my appearance.\n\nI looked close at my eyes.  They are green, though, oddly enough,\npeople usually take them for black.\n\nI believed in many things in a confused sort of way, above all, in the\nexistence of God, if not in the dogmas of religion.  However, I\nthought, these last had advantages for poor people and for women, who\nhave less intellect than men.\n\nAs for philosophical discussions, I thought they are absolutely\nuseless.  You cannot demonstrate or verify anything.  What was truth,\nanyway?\n\nI had a sense of good and evil.  I would not have committed an\nindelicacy, even if certain of impunity.  I would not have permitted\nmyself the slightest overstatement.\n\nIf everyone were like me, all would be well.\n\n. . . . .\n\nIt was already late.  I was not going to do anything.  I remained\nseated there, at the end of the day, opposite the looking-glass.  In\nthe setting of the room that the twilight began to invade, I saw the\noutline of my forehead, the oval of my face, and, under my blinking\neyelids, the gaze by which I enter into myself as into a tomb.\n\nMy tiredness, the gloominess (I heard rain outside), the darkness that\nintensified my solitude and made me look larger, and then something\nelse, I knew not what, made me sad.  It bored me to be sad.  I shook\nmyself.  What was the matter?  Nothing.  Only myself.\n\nI have not always been alone in life as I was that evening.  Love for\nme had taken on the form and the being of my little Josette.  We had\nmet long before, in the rear of the millinery shop in which she worked\nat Tours.  She had smiled at me with singular persistence, and I caught\nher head in my hands, kissed her on the lips--and found out suddenly\nthat I loved her.\n\nI no longer recall the strange bliss we felt when, we first embraced.\nIt is true, there are moments when I still desire her as madly as the\nfirst time.  This is so especially when she is away.  When she is with\nme, there are moments when she repels me.\n\nWe discovered each other in the holidays.  The days when we shall see\neach other again before we die--we could count them--if we dared.\n\nTo die!  The idea of death is decidedly the most important of all\nideas.  I should die some day.  Had I ever thought of it?  I reflected.\nNo, I had never thought of it.  I could not.  You can no more look\ndestiny in the face than you can look at the sun, and yet destiny is\ngrey.\n\nAnd night came, as every night will come, until the last one, which\nwill be too vast.\n\nBut all at once I jumped up and stood on my feet, reeling, my heart\nthrobbing like the fluttering of wings.\n\nWhat was it?  In the street a horn resounded, playing a hunting song.\nApparently some groom of a rich family, standing near the bar of a\ntavern, with cheeks puffed out, mouth squeezed tight, and an air of\nferocity, astonishing and silencing his audience.\n\nBut the thing that so stirred me was not the mere blowing of a horn in\nthe city streets.  I had been brought up in the country, and as a child\nI used to hear that blast far in the distance, along the road to the\nwoods and the castle.  The same air, the same thing exactly.  How could\nthe two be so precisely alike?\n\nAnd involuntarily my hand wavered to my heart.\n\nFormerly--to-day--my life--my heart--myself!  I thought of all this\nsuddenly, for no reason, as if I had gone mad.\n\n. . . . .\n\nMy past--what had I ever made of myself?  Nothing, and I was already on\nthe decline.  Ah, because the refrain recalled the past, it seemed to\nme as if it were all over with me, and I had not lived.  And I had a\nlonging for a sort of lost paradise.\n\nBut of what avail to pray or rebel?  I felt I had nothing more to\nexpect from life.  Thenceforth, I should be neither happy nor unhappy.\nI could not rise from the dead.  I would grow old quietly, as quiet as\nI was that day in the room where so many people had left their traces,\nand yet no one had left his own traces.\n\nThis room--anywhere you turn, you find this room.  It is the universal\nroom.  You think it is closed.  No, it is open to the four winds of\nheaven.  It is lost amid a host of similar rooms, like the light in the\nsky, like one day amid the host of all other days, like my \"I\" amid a\nhost of other I's.\n\nI, I!  I saw nothing more now than the pallor of my face, with deep\norbits, buried in the twilight, and my mouth filled with a silence\nwhich gently but surely stifles and destroys.\n\nI raised myself on my elbow as on a clipped wing.  I wished that\nsomething partaking of the infinite would happen to me.\n\nI had no genius, no mission to fulfil, no great heart to bestow.  I had\nnothing and I deserved nothing.  But all the same I desired some sort\nof reward.\n\nLove.  I dreamed of a unique, an unheard-of idyll with a woman far from\nthe one with whom I had hitherto lost all my time, a woman whose\nfeatures I did not see, but whose shadow I imagined beside my own as we\nwalked along the road together.\n\nSomething infinite, something new!  A journey, an extraordinary journey\ninto which to throw myself headlong and bring variety into my life.\nLuxurious, bustling departures surrounded by solicitous inferiors, a\nlazy leaning back in railway trains that thunder along through wild\nlandscapes and past cities rising up and growing as if blown by the\nwind.\n\nSteamers, masts, orders given in barbarous tongues, landings on golden\nquays, then strange, exotic faces in the sunlight, puzzlingly alike,\nand monuments, familiar from pictures, which, in my tourist's pride,\nseem to have come close to me.\n\nMy brain was empty, my heart arid.  I had never found anything, not\neven a friend.  I was a poor man stranded for a day in a boarding-house\nroom where everybody comes and everybody goes.  And yet I longed for\nglory!  For glory bound to me like a miraculous wound that I should\nfeel and everybody would talk about.  I longed for a following of which\nI should be the leader, my name acclaimed under the heavens like a new\nclarion call.\n\nBut I felt my grandeur slip away.  My childish imagination played in\nvain with those boundless fancies.  There was nothing more for me to\nexpect from life.  There was only I, who, stripped by the night, rose\nupward like a cry.\n\nI could hardly see any more in the dark.  I guessed at, rather than\nsaw, myself in the mirror.  I had a realising sense of my weakness and\ncaptivity.  I held my hands out toward the window, my outstretched\nfingers making them look like something torn.  I lifted my face up to\nthe sky.  I sank back and leaned on the bed, a huge object with a vague\nhuman shape, like a corpse.  God, I was lost!  I prayed to Him to have\npity on me.  I thought that I was wise and content with my lot.  I had\nsaid to myself that I was free from the instinct of theft.  Alas, alas,\nit was not true, since I longed to take everything that was not mine.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n\nThe sound of the horn had ceased for some time.  The street and the\nhouses had quieted down.  Silence.  I passed my hand over my forehead.\nMy fit of emotion was over.  So much the better.  I recovered my\nbalance by an effort of will-power.\n\nI sat down at the table and took some papers out of my bag that I had\nto look over and arrange.\n\nSomething spurred me on.  I wanted to earn a little money.  I could\nthen send some to my old aunt who had brought me up.  She always waited\nfor me in the low-ceilinged room, where her sewing-machine, afternoons,\nwhirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock, and where, evenings, there\nwas a lamp beside her which somehow seemed to look like herself.\n\nNotes--the notes from which I was to draw up the report that would show\nmy ability and definitely decide whether I would get a position in\nMonsieur Berton's bank--Monsieur Berton, who could do everything for me,\nwho had but to say a word, the god of my material life.\n\nI started to light the lamp.  I scratched a match.  It did not catch\nfire, the phosphorous end breaking off.  I threw it away and waited a\nmoment, feeling a little tired.\n\nThen I heard a song hummed quite close to my ear.\n\n. . . . .\n\nSome one seemed to be leaning on my shoulder, singing for me, only for\nme, in confidence.\n\nAh, an hallucination!  Surely my brain was sick--my punishment for\nhaving thought too hard.\n\nI stood up, and my hand clutched the edge of the table.  I was\noppressed by a feeling of the supernatural.  I sniffed the air, my\neyelids blinking, alert and suspicious.\n\nThe singing kept on.  I could not get rid of it.  My head was beginning\nto go round.  The singing came from the room next to mine.  Why was it\nso pure, so strangely near?  Why did it touch me so?  I looked at the\nwall between the two rooms, and stifled a cry of surprise.\n\nHigh up, near the ceiling, above the door, always kept locked, there\nwas a light.  The song fell from that star.\n\nThere was a crack in the partition at that spot, through which the\nlight of the next room entered the night of mine.\n\nI climbed up on the bed, and my face was on a level with the crack.\nRotten woodwork, two loose bricks.  The plaster gave way and an opening\nappeared as large as my hand, but invisible from below, because of the\nmoulding.\n\nI looked.  I beheld.  The next room presented itself to my sight\nfreely.\n\nIt spread out before me, this room which was not mine.  The voice that\nhad been singing had gone, and in going had left the door open, and it\nalmost seemed as though the door were still swinging on its hinges.\nThere was nothing in the room but a lighted candle, which trembled on\nthe mantelpiece.\n\nAt that distance the table looked like an island, the bluish and\nreddish pieces of furniture, in their vague outline, like the organs of\na body almost alive.\n\nI looked at the wardrobe.  Bright, confused lines going straight up,\nits feet in darkness.  The ceiling, the reflection of the ceiling in\nthe glass, and the pale window like a human face against the sky.\n\nI returned to my room--as if I had really left it--stunned at first, my\nthoughts in a whirl, almost forgetting who I was.\n\nI sat down on my bed, thinking things over quickly and trembling a\nlittle, oppressed by what was to come.\n\nI dominated, I possessed that room.  My eyes entered it.  I was in it.\nAll who would be there would be there with me without knowing it.  I\nshould see them, I should hear them, I should be as much in their\ncompany as though the door were open.\n\n. . . . .\n\nA moment later I raised my face to the hole and looked again.\n\nThe candle was out, but some one was there.  It was the maid.  No doubt\nshe had come in to put the room in order.  Then she paused.\n\nShe was alone.  She was quite near me.  But I did not very well see the\nliving being who was moving about, perhaps because I was dazzled by\nseeing it so truly--a dark blue apron, falling down from her waist like\nrays of evening, white wrists, hands darker than her wrists from toil,\na face undecided yet striking, eyes hidden yet shining, cheeks\nprominent and clear, a knot on top of her head gleaming like a crown.\n\nA short time before I had seen the girl on the staircase bending over\ncleaning the banisters, her reddened face close to her large hands.  I\nhad found her repulsive because of those blackened hands of hers and\nthe dusty chores that she stooped over.  I had also seen her in a\nhallway walking ahead of me heavily, her hair hanging loose and her\nbody giving out an unpleasant odour, so that you felt it was obnoxious\nand wrapped in dirty underwear.\n\n. . . . .\n\nAnd now I looked at her again.  The evening gently dispelled the\nugliness, wiped out the misery and the horror, changed the dust into\nshadow, like a curse turned into a blessing.  All that remained of her\nwas colour, a mist, an outline; not even that; a thrill and the beating\nof her heart.  Every trace of her had disappeared save her true self.\n\nThat was because she was alone.  An extraordinary thing, a dash of the\ndivine in it, to be actually alone.  She was in that perfect innocence,\nthat purity which is solitude.\n\nI desecrated her solitude with my eyes, but she did not know it, and so\n/she/ was not desecrated.\n\nShe went over to the window with brightening eyes and swinging hands in\nher apron of the colour of the nocturnal sky.  Her face and the upper\npart of her body were illuminated.  She seemed to be in heaven.\n\nShe sat down on the sofa, a great low red shadow in the depths of the\nroom near the window.  She leaned her broom beside her.  Her dust cloth\nfell to the floor and was lost from sight.\n\nShe took a letter from her pocket and read it.  In the twilight the\nletter was the whitest thing in the world.  The double sheet trembled\nbetween her fingers, which held it carefully, like a dove in the air.\nShe put the trembling letter to her lips, and kissed it.  From whom was\nthe letter?  Not from her family.  A servant girl is not likely to have\nso much filial devotion as to kiss a letter from her parents.  A lover,\nher betrothed, yes.  Many, perhaps, knew her lover's name.  I did not,\nbut I witnessed her love as no other person had.  And that simple\ngesture of kissing the paper, that gesture buried in a room, stripped\nbare by the dark, had something sublime and awesome in it.\n\nShe rose and went closer to the window, the white letter folded in her\ngrey hand.\n\nThe night thickened--and it seemed to me as if I no longer knew her age,\nnor her name, nor the work she happened to be doing down here, nor\nanything about her--nothing at all.  She gazed at the pale immensity,\nwhich touched her.  Her eyes gleamed.  You would say she was crying,\nbut no, her eyes only shed light.  She would be an angel if reality\nflourished upon the earth.\n\nShe sighed and walked to the door slowly.  The door closed behind her\nlike something falling.\n\nShe had gone without doing anything but reading her letter and kissing\nit.\n\n. . . . .\n\nI returned to my corner lonely, more terribly alone than before.  The\nsimplicity of this meeting stirred me profoundly.  Yet there had been\nno one there but a human being, a human being like myself.  Then there\nis nothing sweeter and stronger than to approach a human being, whoever\nthat human being may be.\n\nThis woman entered into my intimate life and took a place in my heart.\nHow?  Why?  I did not know.  But what importance she assumed!  Not of\nherself.  I did not know her, and I did not care to know her.  She\nassumed importance by the sole value of the momentary revelation of her\nexistence, by the example she gave, by the wake of her actual presence,\nby the true sound of her steps.\n\nIt seemed to me as if the supernatural dream I had had a short while\nbefore had been granted, and that what I called the infinite had come.\nWhat that woman, without knowing it, had given me by showing me her\nnaked kiss--was it not the crowning beauty the reflection of which\ncovers you with glory?\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe dinner bell rang.\n\nThis summons to everyday reality and one's usual occupations changed\nthe course of my thoughts for the moment.  I got ready to go down to\ndinner.  I put on a gay waistcoat and a dark coat, and I stuck a pearl\nin my cravat.  Then I stood still and listened, hoping to hear a\nfootstep or a voice.\n\nWhile doing these conventional things, I continued to be obsessed by\nthe great event that had happened--this apparition.\n\nI went downstairs and joined the rest of my fellow-boarders in the\nbrown and gold dining-room.  There was a general stir and bustle and\nthe usual empty interest before a meal.  A number of people seated\nthemselves with the good manners of polite society.  Smiles, the sound\nof chairs being drawn up to the table, words thrown out, conversations\nstarted.  Then the concert of plates and dishes began and grew steadily\nlouder.\n\nMy neighbours talked to those beside them.  I heard their murmur, which\naccentuated my aloneness.  I lifted my eyes.  In front of me a shining\nrow of foreheads, eyes, collars, shirtfronts, waists, and busy hands\nabove a table of glistening whiteness.  All these things attracted my\nattention and distracted it at the same time.\n\nI did not know what these people were thinking about.  I did not know\nwho they were.  They hid themselves from one another.  Their shining\nfronts made a wall against which I dashed in vain.\n\nBracelets, necklaces, rings.  The sparkling of the jewels made me feel\nfar away from them as do the stars.  A young girl looked at me with\nvague blue eyes.  What could I do against that kind of sapphire?\n\nThey talked, but the noise left each one to himself, and deafened me,\nas the light blinded me.\n\nNevertheless, at certain moments these people, because in the course of\nconversation they thought of things they had at heart, revealed\nthemselves as if they were alone.  I recognized the revelation of this\ntruth, and felt myself turning pale on remembering that other\nrevelation.\n\nSome one spoke of money, and the subject became general.  The assembly\nwas stirred by an ideal.  A dream of grasping and touching shone\nthrough their eyes, just as a little adoration had come into the eyes\nof the servant when she found herself alone.\n\nThey recalled military heroes triumphantly, and some men thought, \"Me,\ntoo!\" and worked themselves up into a fever, showing what they were\nthinking of, in spite of their ridiculously low station and the slavery\nof their social position.  One young girl seemed dazzled, looked\noverwhelmed.  She could not restrain a sigh of ecstasy.  She blushed\nunder the effect of an inscrutable thought.  I saw the surge of blood\nmount to her face.  I saw her heart beaming.\n\nThey discussed the phenomena of occultism and the Beyond.  \"Who knows?\"\nsome one said.  Then they discussed death.  Two diners, at opposite\nends of the table, a man and a woman who had not spoken to each other\nand seemed not to be acquainted, exchanged a glance that I caught.  And\nseeing that glance leap from their eyes at the same time, under the\nshock of the idea of death, I understood that these two loved each\nother.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe meal was over.  The young people went into the parlour.  A lawyer\nwas telling some people around him about a murder case that had been\ndecided that day.  The nature of the subject was such that he expressed\nhimself very cautiously, as though confiding a secret.  A man had\ninjured and then murdered a little girl and had kept singing at the top\nof his voice to prevent the cries of his little victim from being\nheard.  One by one the people stopped talking and listened with the air\nof really not listening, while those not so close to the speaker felt\nlike drawing up right next to him.  About this image risen in their\nmidst, this paroxysm so frightful to our timid instincts, the silence\nspread in a circle in their souls like a terrific noise.\n\nThen I heard the laugh of a woman, of an honest woman, a dry crackling\nlaugh, which she thought innocent perhaps, but which caressed her whole\nbeing, a burst of laughter, which, made up of formless instinctive\ncries, was almost fleshy.  She stopped and turned, silent again.  And\nthe speaker, sure of his effect, continued in a calm voice to hurl upon\nthese people the story of the monster's confession.\n\nA young mother, whose daughter was sitting beside her, half got up, but\ncould not leave.  She sat down again and bent forward to conceal her\ndaughter.  She was eager and yet ashamed to listen.\n\nAnother woman was sitting motionless, with her head leaning forward,\nbut her mouth compressed as if she were defending herself tragically.\nAnd beneath the worldly mask of her face, I saw a fanatical martyr's\nsmile impress itself like handwriting.\n\nAnd the men!  I distinctly heard one man, the man who was so calm and\nsimple, catch his breath.  Another man, with a characterless business\nman's face, was making a great effort to talk of this and that to a\nyoung girl sitting next to him, while he watched her with a look of\nwhich he was ashamed and which made him blink.  And everybody condemned\nthe satyr in terms of the greatest abuse.\n\nAnd so, for a moment, they had not lied.  They had almost confessed,\nperhaps unconsciously, and even without knowing what they had\nconfessed.  They had almost been their real selves.  Desire had leaped\ninto their eyes, and the reflection passed--and I had seen what happened\nin the silence, sealed by their lips.\n\nIt is this, it is this thought, this kind of living spectre, that I\nwished to study.  I rose, shrugging my shoulders, and hurried out,\nimpelled by eagerness to see the sincerity of men and women unveiled\nbefore my eyes, beautiful as a masterpiece in spite of its ugliness.\nSo, back in my room again, I placed myself against the wall as if to\nembrace it and look down into the Room.\n\nThere it was at my feet.  Even when empty, it was more alive than the\npeople one meets and associates with, the people who have the vastness\nof numbers to lose themselves in and be forgotten in, who have voices\nfor lying and faces to hide themselves behind.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n\nNight, absolute night.  Shadows thick as velvet hung all around.\n\nEverything sank into darkness.  I sat down and leaned my elbow on the\nround table, lighted by the lamp.  I meant to work, but as a matter of\nfact I only listened.\n\nI had looked into the Room a short time before.  No one had been there,\nbut no doubt some one was going to come.\n\nSome one was going to come, that evening perhaps, or the next day, or\nthe day after.  Some one was bound to come.  Then other human beings\nwould follow in succession.  I waited, and it seemed to me as if that\nwas all I was made for.\n\nI waited a long time, not daring to go to sleep.  Then, very late, when\nsilence had been reigning so long that it paralysed me, I made an\neffort.  I leaned up against the wall once more and looked prayerfully.\nThe Room was black, all things blending into one, full of the night,\nfull of the unknown, of every possible thing.  I dropped back into my\nown room.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe next day I saw the Room in the simplicity of daylight.  I saw the\ndawn spread over it.  Little by little, it began to come out of its\nruins and to rise.\n\nIt was arranged and furnished on the same plan as my own room.\nOpposite me was the mantelpiece with the looking-glass above.  On the\nright was the bed, and on the left, on the same side as the window, a\nsofa, chairs, armchairs, table, wardrobe.  The rooms were identical,\nbut the history of mine was finished while the history of the other one\nhad not yet begun.\n\nAfter an insipid breakfast, I returned to the spot that attracted me,\nthe hole in the partition.  Nothing.  I climbed down again.\n\nIt was close.  A faint smell from the kitchen lingered even here.  I\npaused in the infinite vastness of my empty room.\n\nI opened my door a little bit, then all the way.  In the hall the door\nof each room was painted brown, with numbers carved on brass plates.\nAll were closed.  I took a few steps, which I alone heard--heard echoing\ntoo loudly in that house, huge and immobile.\n\nThe passage was very long and narrow.  The wall was hung with imitation\ntapestry of dark green foliage, against which shone the copper of a gas\nfixture.  I leaned over the banister.  A servant (the one who waited at\nthe table and was wearing a blue apron now, hardly recognisable with\nher hair in disorder) came skipping down from the floor above with\nnewspapers under her arm.  Madame Lemercier's little girl, with a\ncareful hand on the banister, was coming upstairs, her neck thrust\nforward like a bird, and I compared her little footsteps to fragments\nof passing seconds.  A lady and a gentleman passed in front of me,\nbreaking off their conversation to keep me from catching what they were\nsaying, as if they refused me the alms of their thoughts.\n\nThese trifling events disappeared like scenes of a comedy on which the\ncurtain falls.\n\nI passed the whole afternoon disheartened.  I felt as if I were alone\nagainst them all, while roaming about inside this house and yet outside\nof it.\n\nAs I passed through the hallway, a door went shut hastily, cutting off\nthe laugh of a woman taken by surprise.  A senseless noise oozed from\nthe walls, worse than silence.  From under each door a broken ray of\nlight crept out, worse than darkness.\n\nI went downstairs to the parlour, attracted by the sound of\nconversation.\n\nA group of men were talking, I no longer remember about what.  They\nwent out, and I was alone.  I heard them talking in the hall.  Then\ntheir voices died away.\n\nA fashionable lady came in, with a rustle of silk and the smell of\nflowers and perfume.  She took up a lot of room because of her\nfragrance and elegance.  She carried her head held slightly forward and\nhad a beautiful long face set off by an expression of great sweetness.\nBut I could not see her well, because she did not look at me.  She\nseated herself, picked up a book, and turned the pages, and the leaves\ncast upon her face a reflection of whiteness and thoughtfulness.\n\nI watched her bosom rising and falling, and her motionless face, and\nthe living book that was merged with her.  Her complexion was so\nbrilliant that her mouth seemed almost dark.  Her beauty saddened me.\nI looked at this unknown woman with sublime regret.  She caressed me by\nher presence.  A woman always caresses a man when she comes near him\nand they are alone.  In spite of all sorts of separation, there is\nalways an awful beginning of happiness between them.\n\nBut she went out.  That was the end of her.  Nothing had happened, and\nnow it was over.  All this was too simple, too hard, too true.\n\nA gentle despair that I had never experienced before troubled me.\nSince the previous day I had changed.  Human life, its living truth, I\nknew it as we all know it.  I had been familiar with it all my life.  I\nbelieved in it with a kind of fear now that it had appeared to me in a\ndivine form.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\n\nI went for several days without seeing anything.  Those days were\nfrightfully warm. At first the sky was grey and rainy.  Now September\nwas flaming to a close.  Friday!  Why, I had been in that house a week\nalready.\n\nOne sultry morning I sat in my room and sank into dreamy musings and\nthought of a fairy tale.\n\nThe edge of a forest.  In the undergrowth on the dark emerald carpet,\ncircles of sunlight.  Below, a hill rising from the plain, and above\nthe thick yellow and dark-green foliage, a bit of wall and a turret as\nin a tapestry.  A page advanced dressed like a bird.  A buzzing.  It\nwas the sound of the royal chase in the distance.  Unusually pleasant\nthings were going to happen.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe next afternoon was also hot and sunny.  I remembered similar\nafternoons, years before and the present seemed to be that past, as if\nthe glowing heat had effaced time and had stifled all other days\nbeneath its brooding wings.\n\nThe room next to mine was almost dark.  They had closed the shutters.\nThrough the double curtains made out of some thin material I saw the\nwindow streaked with shining bars, like the grating in front of a fire.\n\nIn the torrid silence of the house, in the large slumber it enclosed,\nbursts of laughter mounted and broke, voices died away, as they had the\nday before and as they always would.\n\nFrom out of these remoter sounds emerged the distinct sound of\nfootsteps, coming nearer and nearer.  I propped myself up against the\nwall and looked.  The door of the Room opened, as if pushed in by the\nflood of light that streamed through it, and two tiny shadows appeared,\nengulfed in the brightness.\n\nThey acted as though they were being pursued.  They hesitated on the\nthreshold, the doorway making a frame around those little creatures.\nAnd then they entered.\n\nThe door closed.  The Room was now alive.  I scrutinised the newcomers.\nI saw them indistinctly through the dark red and green spots dancing in\nfront of my eyes, which had been dazzled by the flood of light.  A\nlittle boy and a little girl, twelve or thirteen years old.\n\nThey sat down on the sofa, and looked at each other in silence.  Their\nfaces were almost alike.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe boy murmured:\n\n\"You see, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne, there is no one here.\"\n\nAnd a hand pointed to the uncovered bed, and to the empty table and\nempty clothes-racks--the careful denudation of unoccupied rooms.\n\nThen the same hand began to tremble like a leaf.  I heard the beating\nof my heart.  The voices whispered:\n\n\"We are alone.  They did not see us.\"\n\n\"This is about the first time we've ever been alone together.\"\n\n\"Yet we have always known each other.\"\n\nA little laugh.\n\nThey seemed to need solitude, the first step to a mystery toward which\nthey were travelling together.  They had fled from the others.  They\nhad created for themselves the forbidden solitude.  But you could\nclearly tell that now that they had found solitude, they did not know\nwhat else to look for.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThen I heard one of them stammer and say sadly, with almost a sob:\n\n\"We love each other dearly.\"\n\nThen a tender phrase rose breathlessly, groping for words, timidly,\nlike a bird just learning to fly:\n\n\"I'd like to love you more.\"\n\nTo see them thus bent toward each other, in the warm shadow, which\nbathed them and veiled the childishness of their features, you would\nhave thought them two lovers meeting.\n\nTwo lovers!  That was their dream, though they did not yet know what\nlove meant.\n\nOne of them had said \"the first time.\"  It was the time that they felt\nthey were alone, although these two cousins had been living close\ntogether.\n\nNo doubt it was the first time that the two had sought to leave\nfriendship and childhood behind them.  It was the first time that\ndesire had come to surprise and trouble two hearts, which until now had\nslept.\n\n. . . . .\n\nSuddenly they stood up, and the slender ray of sunlight, which passed\nover them and fell at their feet, revealed their figures, lighted up\ntheir faces and hair, so that their presence brightened the room.\n\nWere they going away?  No, they sat down again.  Everything fell back\ninto shadow, into mystery, into truth.\n\nIn beholding them, I felt a confused mingling of my past and the past\nof the world.  Where were they?  Everywhere, since they existed.  They\nwere on the banks of the Nile, the Ganges, or the Cydnus, on the banks\nof the eternal river of the ages.  They were Daphnis and Chlo\u00eb, under a\nmyrtle bush, in the Greek sunshine, the shimmer of leaves on their\nfaces, and their faces mirroring each other.  Their vague little\nconversation hummed like the wings of a bee, near the freshness of\nfountains and the heat that consumed the meadows, while in the distance\na chariot went by, laden with sheaves.\n\nThe new world opened.  The panting truth was there.  It confused them.\nThey feared the brusque intrusion of some divinity.  They were happy\nand unhappy.  They nestled as close together as they could.  They\nbrought to each other as much as they could.  But they did not suspect\nwhat it was that they were bringing.  They were too small, too young.\nThey had not lived long enough.  Each was to self a stifling secret.\n\nLike all human beings, like me, like us, they wished for what they did\nnot have.  They were beggars.  But they asked /themselves/ for charity.\nThey asked for help from their /own/ persons.\n\nThe boy, a man already, impoverished already by his feminine companion,\nturned, drawn towards her, and held out his awkward arms, without\ndaring to look at her.\n\nThe girl, a woman already, leaned her face on the back of the sofa, her\neyes shining.  Her cheeks were plump and rosy, tinted and warmed by her\nheart.  The skin of her neck, taut and satiny, quivered.  Half-blown\nand waiting, a little voluptuous because voluptuousness already\nemanated from her, she was like a rose inhaling sunlight.\n\nAnd I--I could not tear my eyes from them.\n\n. . . . .\n\nAfter a long silence, he murmured:\n\n\"Shall we stop calling each other by our first names?\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nHe seemed absorbed in thought.\n\n\"So as to begin over again,\" he said at last.\n\n\"Shall we, Miss Janvier?\" he asked again.\n\nShe gave a visible start at the touch of this new manner of address, at\nthe word \"Miss,\" as if it were a kind of embrace.\n\n\"Why, Mr. Lecoq,\" she ventured hesitatingly, \"it is as though something\nhad covered us, and we were removing--\"\n\nNow, he became bolder.\n\n\"Shall we kiss each other on our mouths?\"\n\nShe was oppressed, and could not quite smile.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said.\n\nThey caught hold of each other's arms and shoulders and held out their\nlips, as if their mouths were birds.\n\n\"Jean!\"  \"H\u00e9l\u00e8ne!\" came softly.\n\nIt was the first thing they had found out.  To embrace the embracer, is\nit not the tiniest caress and the least sort of a bond?  And yet it is\nso sternly prohibited.\n\nAgain they seemed to me to be without age.\n\nThey were like all lovers, while they held hands, their faces joined,\ntrembling and blind, in the shadow of a kiss.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThey broke off, and disengaged themselves from their embrace, whose\nmeaning they had not yet learned.\n\nThey talked with their innocent lips.  About what?  About the past,\nwhich was so near and so short.\n\nThey were leaving their paradise of childhood and ignorance.  They\nspoke of a house and a garden where they had both lived.\n\nThe house absorbed them.  It was surrounded by a garden wall, so that\nfrom the road all you could see was the tip of the eaves, and you\ncouldn't tell what was going on inside of it.\n\nThey prattled:\n\n\"The rooms, when we were little and they were so big--\"\n\n\"It was easier to walk there than anywhere else.\"\n\nTo hear the children talk, you would have thought there was something\nbenevolent and invisible, something like the good God of the past,\nbehind those walls.  She hummed an air she had heard there, and said\nthat music was easier to remember than people.  They dropped back into\nthe past easily and naturally.  They wrapped themselves up in their\nmemories as though they were cold.\n\n\"The other day, just before we left, I took a candle and walked alone\nthrough the rooms, which scarcely woke up to watch me pass.\"\n\nIn the garden, so prim and well kept, they thought only of the flowers,\nand little else.  They saw the pool, the shady walk, and the cherry\ntree, which, in winter when the lawn was white, they made believe had\ntoo many blossoms--snow blossoms.\n\nThe day before they had still been in the garden, like brother and\nsister.  Now life seemed to have grown serious all at once, and they no\nlonger knew how to play.  I saw that they wanted to kill the past.\nWhen we are old, we let it die; when we are young and strong, we kill\nit.\n\nShe sat up straight.\n\n\"I don't want to remember any more,\" she said.\n\nAnd he:\n\n\"I don't want us to be like each other any more.  I don't want us to be\nbrother and sister any more.\"\n\nGradually their eyes opened.\n\n\"To touch nothing but each other's hands,\" he muttered, trembling.\n\n\"Brother--sister--that's nothing.\"\n\nIt had come--the hour of beautiful, troubled decisions, of forbidden\nfruits.  They had not belonged to each other before.  The hour had come\nwhen they sought to be all in all to each other.\n\nThey were a little self-conscious, a little ashamed of themselves\nalready.  A few days before, in the evening, it had given them profound\npleasure to disobey their parents and go out of the garden although\nthey had been forbidden to leave it.\n\n\"Grandmother came to the top of the steps and called to us to come in.\"\n\n\"But we were gone.  We had slipped through the hole in the hedge where\na bird always sang.  There was no wind, and scarcely any light.  Even\nthe trees didn't stir.  The dust on the ground was dead.  The shadows\nstole round us so softly that we almost spoke to them.  We were\nfrightened to see night coming on.  Everything had lost its colour.\nBut the night was clear, and the flowers, the road, even the wheat were\nsilver.  And it was then that my mouth came closest to your mouth.\"\n\n\"The night,\" she said, her soul carried aloft on a wave of beauty, \"the\nnight caresses the caresses.\"\n\n\"I took your hand, and I knew that you would live life whole.  When I\nused to say 'H\u00e9l\u00e8ne,' I did not know what I was saying.  Now, when I\nshall say 'she,' it will be everything.\"\n\nOnce more their lips joined.  Their mouths and their eyes were those of\nAdam and Eve.  I recalled the ancestral lesson from which sacred\nhistory and human history flow as from a fountain.  They wandered in\nthe penetrating light of paradise without knowledge.  They were as if\nthey did not exist.  When--through triumphant curiosity, though\nforbidden by God himself--they learned the secret, the sky was darkened.\nThe certainty of a future of sorrow had fallen upon them.  Angels\npursued them like vultures.  They grovelled on the ground from day to\nday, but they had created love, they had replaced divine riches by the\npoverty of belonging to each other.\n\nThe two little children had taken their parts in the eternal drama.  By\ntalking to each other as they did they had restored to their first\nnames their full significance.\n\n\"I should like to love you more.  I should like to love you harder.\nHow could I?\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nThey said no more, as though there were no more words for them.  They\nwere completely absorbed in themselves, and their hands trembled.\n\nThen they rose, and as they did so, the door opened.  There stood the\nold stooping grandmother.  She came out of the grey, out of the realm\nof phantoms, out of the past.  She was looking for them as if they had\ngone astray.  She called them in a low voice.  She put into her tone a\ngreat gentleness, almost sadness, strangely harmonising with the\nchildren's presence.\n\n\"You are here, children?\" she said, with a kind little laugh.  \"What\nare you doing here?  Come, they are looking for you.\"\n\nShe was old and faded, but she was angelic, with her gown fastened up\nto her neck.  Beside these two, who were preparing for the large life,\nshe was, thenceforth, like a child, inactive, useless.\n\nThey rushed into her arms, and pressed their foreheads against her\nsaintly mouth.  They seemed to be saying good-by to her forever.\n\n. . . . .\n\nShe went out.  And a moment afterwards they followed her, hastily, as\nthey had come, united now by an invisible and sublime bond.  On the\nthreshold, they looked at each other once more.\n\nAnd now that the room was empty like a deserted sanctuary, I thought of\ntheir glance, their first glance of love, which I had seen.\n\nNo one before me had ever seen a first glance of love.  I was beside\nthem, but, far away.  I understood and read it without being part of\nthe infatuation myself, without being lost in the sensation.  That is\nwhy I saw that glance.  They did not know when it began, they did not\nknow that it was the first.  Afterwards they would forget.  The urgent\nflowering of their hearts would destroy those preludes.  We can no more\nknow our first glance of love than our last.  I shall remember it when\nthey will have forgotten it.\n\nI do not recall my own first glance of love, my own first gift of love.\nYet it happened.  Those divine simplicities are erased from my heart.\nGood God, then what do I retain that is of value?  The little boy that\nI was is dead forever, before my eyes.  I survived him, but\nforgetfulness tormented me, then overcame me, the sad process of living\nruined me, and I scarcely know what he knew.  I remember things at\nrandom only, but the most beautiful, the sweetest memories are gone.\n\nWell, this tender canticle that I overheard, full of infinity and\noverflowing with fresh laughter, this precious song, I take and hold\nand cherish.  It pulses in my heart.  I have stolen, but I have\npreserved truth.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\n\nFor a day, the Room remained vacant.  Twice I had high hopes, then\ndisillusionment.\n\nWaiting had become a habit, an occupation.  I put off appointments,\ndelayed my walks, gained time at the risk of losing my position.  I\narranged my life as for a new love.  I left my room only to go down to\ndinner, where nothing interested me any more.\n\nThe second day, I noticed that the Room was ready to receive a new\noccupant.  It was waiting.  I had a thousand dreams of who the guest\nwould be, while the Room kept its secret, like some one thinking.\n\nTwilight came, then evening, which magnified the room but did not\nchange it.  I was already in despair, when the door opened in the\ndarkness, and I saw on the threshold the shadow of a man.\n\n. . . . .\n\nHe was scarcely to be distinguished in the evening light.\n\nDark clothing, milky white cuffs from which his grey tapering hands\nhung down; a collar a little whiter than the rest.  In his round\ngreyish face I could see the dusky hollows of his eyes and mouth, under\nthe chin a cavity of shadow.  The yellow of his forehead shone\nunclearly.  His cheekbone made an obscure bar in the dusk.  You would\nhave called him a skeleton.  What was this being whose physiognomy was\nso monstrously simple?\n\nHe came nearer, and his face kindled, assumed life.  I saw that he was\nhandsome.\n\nHe had a charming serious face, fringed with a fine black beard, a high\nforehead and sparkling eyes.  A haughty grace guided and refined his\nmovements.\n\nHe came forward a step or two, then returned to the door, which was\nstill open.  The shadow of the door trembled, a silhouette appeared and\ntook shape.  A little black-gloved hand grasped the knob, and a woman\nstole into the room, with a questioning face.\n\nShe must have been a few steps behind him in the street.  They had not\nwished to enter the room together, in which they both sought refuge to\nescape pursuit.\n\nShe closed the door, and leaned her whole weight against it, to close\nit still tighter.  Slowly she turned her head to him, paralysed for a\nmoment, it seemed to me, with fear that it was not he.  They stared\ninto each other's faces.  A cry burst from them, passionate,\nrestrained, almost mute, echoing from one to the other.  It seemed to\nopen up their wound.\n\n\"You!\"\n\n\"You!\"\n\nShe almost fainted.  She dropped on his breast as though swept by a\nstorm.  She had just strength enough to fall into his arms.  I saw the\nman's two large pale hands, opened but slightly crooked, resting on the\nwoman's back.  A sort of desperate palpitation seized them, as if an\nimmense angel were in the Room, struggling and making vain efforts to\nescape.  And it seemed to me that the Room was too small for this\ncouple, although it was full of the evening.\n\n\"They didn't see us!\"\n\nIt was the same phrase which had come the other day from the two\nchildren.\n\nHe said, \"Come!\" leading her over to the sofa, near the window, and\nthey seated themselves on the red velvet.  I saw their arms joined\ntogether as though by a cord.  They remained there, engrossed,\ngathering about them all the shadow of the world, reviving, beginning\nto live again in their element of night and solitude.\n\nWhat an entry, what an entry!  What an irruption of anathema!\n\nI had thought, when this form of sin presented itself before me, when\nthe woman appeared at the door, plainly driven toward him, that I\nshould witness bliss in its plenitude, a savage and animal joy, as\nmomentous as nature.  On the contrary, I found that this meeting was\nlike a heart-rending farewell.\n\n\"Then we shall always be afraid?\"\n\nShe seemed just a little more tranquil, and said this with an anxious\nglance at him, as if really expecting a reply.\n\nShe shuddered, huddled in the shadows, feverishly stroking and pressing\nthe man's hand, sitting upright, stiffly.  I saw her throat rising and\nfalling like the sea.  They stayed there, touching one another; but a\nlingering terror mingled with their caresses.\n\n\"Always  afraid--always  afraid,  always.  Far from the street, far from\nthe sun, far from everything.  I who had so much wanted full daylight\nand sunlight!\" she said, looking at the sky.\n\nThey were afraid.  Fear moulded them, burrowed into their hearts.\nTheir eyes, their hearts were afraid.  Above all, their love was\nafraid.\n\nA mournful smile glided across the man's face.  He looked at his friend\nand murmured:\n\n\"You are thinking of /him.\"/\n\nShe was sitting with her cheeks in her hands and her elbows on her\nknees and her face thrust forward.  She did not reply.\n\nShe /was/ thinking of him.  Doubled up, small as a child, she gazed\nintently into the distance, at the man who was not there.  She bowed to\nthis image like a suppliant, and felt a divine reflection from it\nfalling upon her--from the man who was not there, who was being\ndeceived, from the offended man, the wounded man, from the master, from\nhim who was everywhere except where they were, who occupied the immense\noutside, and whose name made them bow their heads, the man to whom they\nwere a prey.\n\nNight fell, as if shame and terror were in its shadows, over this man\nand woman, who had come to hide their embraces in this room, as in a\ntomb where dwells the Beyond.\n\n. . . . .\n\nHe said to her:\n\n\"I love you!\"\n\nI distinctly heard those grand words.\n\nI love you!  I shuddered to the depths of my being on hearing the\nprofound words which came from those two human beings.  I love you!\nThe words which offer body and soul, the great open cry of the creature\nand the creation.  I love you!  I beheld love face to face.\n\nThen it seemed to me that sincerity vanished in the hasty incoherent\nthings he next said while clasping her to him.  It was as though he had\na set speech to make and was in a hurry to get through with it.\n\n\"You and I were born for each other.  There is a kinship in our souls\nwhich must triumph.  It was no more possible to prevent us from meeting\nand belonging to each other than to prevent our lips from uniting when\nthey came together.  What do moral conventions or social barriers\nmatter to us?  Our love is made of infinity and eternity.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, lulled by his voice.\n\nBut I knew he was lying or was letting his words run away with him.\nLove had become an idol, a thing.  He was blaspheming, he was invoking\ninfinity and eternity in vain, paying lip service to it by daily prayer\nthat had become perfunctory.\n\nThey let the banality drop.  The woman remained pensive for a while,\nthen she shook her head and she--/she/ pronounced the word of excuse, of\nglorification; more than that, the word of truth:\n\n\"I was so unhappy!\"\n\n. . . . .\n\n\"How long ago it was!\" she began.\n\nIt was her work of art, her poem and her prayer, to repeat this story,\nlow and precipitately, as if she were in the confessional.  You felt\nthat she came to it quite naturally, without transition, so completely\ndid it possess her whenever they were alone.\n\nShe was simply dressed.  She had removed her black gloves and her coat\nand hat.  She wore a dark skirt and a red waist upon which a thin gold\nchain was hanging.\n\nShe was a woman of thirty, perhaps, with regular features and smooth\nsilken hair.  It seemed to me that I knew her, but could not place her.\n\nShe began to speak of herself quite loudly, and tell of her past which\nhad been so hard.\n\n\"What a life I led!  What monotony, what emptiness!  The little town,\nour house, the drawing-room with the furniture always arranged just so,\ntheir places never changed, like tombstones.  One day I tried to put\nthe table that stood in the centre in another place.  I could not do\nit.\"\n\nHer face paled, grew more luminous.\n\nHe listened to her.  A smile of patience and resignation, which soon\nwas like a pained expression of weariness, crept across his handsome\nface.  Yes, he was really handsome, though a little disconcerting, with\nhis large eyes, which women must have adored, his drooping moustache,\nhis tender, distant air.  He seemed to be one of those gentle people\nwho think too much and do evil.  You would have said that he was above\neverything and capable of everything.  Listening to her with a certain\nremoteness, but stirred by desire for her, he had the air of waiting.\n\nAnd suddenly the veil fell from my eyes, and reality lay stripped\nbefore me.  I saw that between these two people there was an immense\ndifference, like an infinite discord, sublime to behold because of its\ndepths, but so painful that it bruised my heart.\n\n/He/ was moved only by his longing for her; /she,/ by her need of\nescaping from her ordinary life.  Their desires were not the same.\nThey seemed united, but they dwelt far apart.\n\nThey did not talk the same language.  When they spoke of the same\nthings, they scarcely understood each other, and to my eyes, from the\nvery first, their union appeared to be broken more than if they had\nnever known each other.\n\nBut he did not say what was really in his mind.  You felt it in the\nsound of his voice, the very charm of his intonation, his lyrical\nchoice of words.  He thought to please her, and he lied.  He was\nevidently her superior, but she dominated him by a kind of inspired\nsincerity.  While he was master of his words, she offered her whole\nself in her words.\n\nShe described her former life.\n\n\"From the windows in my room and the dining-room, I could look out on\nthe square.  The fountain in the centre, with its shadow at its base.\nI watched the day go round there, on that little, white, round place,\nlike a sundial.\n\n\"The postman crossed it regularly, without thinking.  At the arsenal\ngate stood a soldier doing nothing.  Nobody else ever came there.  When\nnoon rang like a knell, still no one.  What I remember best of all was\nthe way noon rang like a knell--the middle of the day, absolute ennui.\n\n\"Nothing ever happened to me, nothing ever would happen to me.  There\nwas nothing for me.  The future no longer existed for me.  If my days\nwere to go on like that, nothing would separate me from my death--\nnothing!  Not a thing!  To be bored is to die!  My life was dead, and\nyet I had to live.  It was suicide.  Others killed themselves with\npoison or with a revolver.  I killed myself with minutes and hours.\"\n\n\"Amy!\" said the man.\n\n\"Then, by dint of seeing the days born in the morning and miscarrying\nin the evening, I became afraid to die, and this fear was my first\npassion.\n\n\"Often, in the middle of a visit I was paying, or in the night, or when\nI came home after a walk, the length of the convent wall, I shuddered\nwith hope because of this passion.\n\n\"But who would free me from it?  Who would save me from this invisible\nshipwreck, which I perceived only from time to time?  Around me was a\nsort of conspiracy, composed of envy, meanness and indifference.\nWhatever I saw, whatever I heard, tended to throw me back into the\nnarrow road, that stupid narrow road along which I was going.\n\n\"Madame Martet, the one friend with whom I was a little bit intimate,\nyou know, only two years older than I am, told me that I must be\ncontent with what I had.  I replied, 'Then, that is the end of\neverything, if I must be content with what I have.  Do you really\nbelieve what you say?'  She said she did.  Oh, the horrid woman!\n\n\"But it was not enough to be afraid.  I had to hate my ennui.  How did\nI come to hate it?  I do not know.\n\n\"I no longer knew myself.  I no longer was myself.  I had such need of\nsomething else.  In fact, I did not know my own name any more.\n\n\"One day, I remember (although I am not wicked) I had a happy dream\nthat my husband was dead, my poor husband who had done nothing to me,\nand that I was free, free, as large as the world!\n\n\"It could not last.  I couldn't go on forever hating monotony so much.\nOh, that emptiness, that monotony!  Of all the gloomy things in the\nworld monotony is the darkest, the gloomiest.  In comparison night is\nday.\n\n\"Religion?  It is not with religion that we fill the emptiness of our\ndays, it is with our own life.  It was not with beliefs, with ideas\nthat I had to struggle, it was with myself.\n\n\"Then I found the remedy!\"\n\nShe almost cried, hoarsely, ecstatically:\n\n\"Sin, sin!  To rid myself of boredom by committing a crime, to break up\nmonotony by deceiving.  To sin in order to be a new person, another\nperson.  To hate life worse than it hated me.  To sin so as not to die.\n\n\"I met you.  You wrote verses and books.  You were different from the\nrest.  Your voice vibrated and gave the impression of beauty, and above\nall, you were there, in my existence, in front of me!  I had only to\nhold out my arms.  Then I loved you with all my heart, if you can call\nit love, my poor little friend!\"\n\nShe spoke now in a low quick voice, both oppressed and enthusiastic,\nand she played with her companion's hand as if it were a child's toy.\n\n\"And you, too, you loved me, naturally.  And when we slipped into a\nhotel one evening, the first time, it seemed to me as if the door\nopened of itself, and I was grateful for having rebelled and having\nbroken my destiny.  And then the deceit--from which we suffer sometimes,\nbut which, after reflection, we no longer detest--the risks, the dangers\nthat give pleasure to each minute, the complications that add variety\nto life, these rooms, these hiding-places, these black prisons, which\nhave fled from the sunlight I once knew!\n\n\"Ah!\" she said.\n\nIt seemed to me that she sighed as if, now that her aspiration was\nrealized, she had nothing so beautiful to hope for any more.\n\n. . . . .\n\nShe thought a moment, and then said:\n\n\"See what we are.  I too may have believed at first in a sort of\nthunderbolt, a supernatural and fatal attraction, because of your\npoetry.  But in reality I came to you--I see myself now--with clenched\nfists and closed eyes.\"\n\nShe added:\n\n\"We deceive ourselves a good deal about love.  It is almost never what\nthey say it is.\n\n\"There may be sublime affinities, magnificent attractions.  I do not\nsay such a love may not exist between two human beings.  But we are not\nthese two.  We have never thought of anything but ourselves.  I know,\nof course, that I am in love with you.  So are you with me.  There is\nan attraction for you which does not exist for me, since I do not feel\nany pleasure.  You see, we are making a bargain.  You give me a dream,\nI give you joy.  But all this is not love.\"\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders, half in doubt, half in protest.  He did not\nwant to say anything.  All the same, he murmured feebly:\n\n\"Even in the purest of loves we cannot escape from ourselves.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she said with a gesture of pious protest, the vehemence of which\nsurprised me, \"that is not the same thing.  Don't say that, don't say\nthat!\"\n\nIt seemed to me there was a vague regret in her voice and the dream of\na new dream in her eyes.\n\nShe dispelled it with a shake of her head.\n\n\"How happy I was!  I felt rejuvenated, like a new being.  I had a sense\nof modesty again.  I remember that I did not dare to show the tip of my\nfoot from under my dress.  I even had a feeling about my face, my\nhands, my very name.\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nThen the man continued the confession from the point where she had left\noff, and spoke of their first meetings.  He wished to caress her with\nwords, to win her over gradually with phrases and with the charm of\nmemories.\n\n\"The first time we were alone--\"\n\nShe looked at him.\n\n\"It was in the street, one evening,\" he said.  \"I took your arm.  You\nleaned more and more upon my shoulder.  People swarmed around us, but\nwe seemed to be quite alone.  Everything around us changed into\nabsolute solitude.  It seemed to me that we were both walking on the\nwaves of the sea.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" she said.  \"How good you were!  That first evening your face was\nlike what it never was afterwards, even in our happiest moments.\"\n\n\"We spoke of one thing and another, and while I held you close to me,\nclasped like a bunch of flowers, you told me about people we knew, you\nspoke of the sunlight that day and the coolness of the evening.  But\nreally you were telling me that you were mine.  I felt your confession\nrunning through everything you said, and even if you did not express\nit, you actually gave me a confession of love.\n\n\"Ah, how great things are in the beginning!  There is never any\npettiness in the beginning.\n\n\"Once when we met in the public garden, I took you back at the end of\nthe afternoon through the suburbs.  The road was so peaceful and quiet\nthat our footsteps seemed to disturb nature.  Benumbed by emotion, we\nslackened our pace.  I leaned over and kissed you.\"\n\n\"There,\" she said.\n\nShe put her finger on his neck.\n\n\"Gradually the kiss grew warmer.  It crept toward your lips and stopped\nthere.  The first time it went astray, the second time it pretended it\nwent astray.  Soon I felt against my mouth\"--he lowered his voice--\"your\nmouth.\"\n\nShe bowed her head, and I saw her rosy mouth.\n\n\"It was all so beautiful in the midst of the watchfulness imprisoning\nme,\" she sighed, ever returning to her mild, pathetic preoccupation.\n\nHow she needed the stimulus of remembering her emotions, whether\nconsciously or not!  The recalling of these little dramas and former\nperils warmed her movements, renewed her love.  That was the reason why\nshe had had the whole story told her.\n\nAnd he encouraged her.  Their first enthusiasm returned, and now they\ntried to evoke the most exciting memories.\n\n\"It was sad, the day after you became mine, to see you again at a\nreception in your own home--inaccessible, surrounded by other people,\nmistress of a regular household, friendly to everybody, a bit timid,\ntalking commonplaces.  You bestowed the beauty of your face on\neverybody, myself included.  But what was the use?\n\n\"You were wearing that cool-looking green dress, and they were teasing\nyou about it.  I did not dare to look at you when you passed me, and I\nthought of how happy we had been the day before.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" she sighed, as the beauty widened before her of all her memories,\nher thoughts, of all her soul, \"love is not what they say it is.  I,\ntoo, was stirred with anguish.  How I had to conceal it, dissimulating\nevery sign of my happiness, locking it hastily away within the coffer\nof my heart.  At first I was afraid to go to sleep for fear of saying\nyour name in a dream, and often, fighting against the stealthy invasion\nof sleep, I have leaned on my elbow, and remained with wide-open eyes,\nwatching heroically over my heart.\n\n\"I was afraid of being recognised.  I was afraid people would see the\npurity in which I was bathed.  Yes, purity.  When in the midst of life\none wakes up from life, and sees a different brilliance in the\ndaylight, and recreates everything, I call that purity.\n\n. . . . .\n\n\"Do you remember the day we lost our way in the cab in Paris--the day he\nthought he recognised us from a distance, and jumped into another cab\nto follow us?\"\n\nShe gave a start of ecstasy.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" she murmured, \"that was the great day!\"\n\nHis voice quivered as if shaken by the throbbing of his heart, and his\nheart said:\n\n\"Kneeling on the seat, you looked out of the little window in the back\nof the cab and cried to me, 'He is nearer!  He is further off!  He will\ncatch us.  I do not see him any more.  He has lost us.'  Ah!\"\n\nAnd with one and the same movement their lips joined.\n\nShe breathed out like a sigh:\n\n\"That was the one time I enjoyed.\"\n\n\"We shall always be afraid,\" he said.\n\nThese words interlaced and changed into kisses.  Their whole life\nsurged into their lips.\n\nYes, they had to revive their past so as to love each other, they had\nconstantly to be reassembling the pieces so as to keep their love from\ndying through staleness, as if they were undergoing, in darkness and in\ndust, in an icy ebbing away, the ruin of old age, the impress of death.\n\nThey clasped each other.\n\nThey were drowned in the darkness.  They fell down, down into the\nshadows, into the abyss that they had willed.\n\nHe stammered:\n\n\"I will love you always.\"\n\nBut she and I both felt that he was lying again.  We did not deceive\nourselves.  But what matter, what matter?\n\nHer lips on his lips, she murmured like a thorny caress among the\ncaresses:\n\n\"My husband will soon be home.\"\n\nHow little they really were at one!  How, actually, there was nothing\nbut their fear that they had in common, and how they stirred their fear\nup desperately.  But their tremendous effort to commune somehow was\nsoon to be over.\n\nThey stopped talking.  Words had already accomplished the work of\nreviving their love.  She merely murmured:\n\n\"I am yours, I am yours.  I give myself to you.  No, I do not give\nmyself to you.  How can I give myself when I do not belong to myself?\"\n\n\"Are you happy?\" she asked again.\n\n\"I swear you are everything in the world to me.\"\n\n*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *\n\nNow, she felt, their bliss had already become a mere memory, and she\nsaid almost plaintively:\n\n\"May God bless the bit of pleasure one has.\"\n\nA doleful lament, the first signal of a tremendous fall, a prayer\nblasphemous yet divine.\n\nI saw him look at the clock and at the door.  He was thinking of\nleaving.  He turned his face gently away from a kiss she was about to\ngive him.  There was a suggestion of uneasiness, almost disgust, in his\nexpression.\n\n\"No,\" she said, \"you are not going to love me always.  You are going to\nleave me.  But I regret nothing.  I never will regret anything.\nAfterwards, when I return from--/this/--for good, to the great sorrow\nthat will never leave me again, I shall say, 'I have had a lover,' and\nI shall come out from my nothingness to be happy for a moment.\"\n\nHe did not want to answer.  He could not answer any more.  He\nstammered:\n\n\"Why do you doubt me?\"\n\nBut they turned their eyes toward the window.  They were afraid, they\nwere cold.  They looked down at the space between the two houses and\nsaw a vague remnant of twilight slip away like a ship of glory.\n\nIt seemed to me that the window beside them entered the scene.  They\ngazed at it, dim, immense, blotting out everything around it.  After\nthe brief interval of sinful passion, they were overwhelmed as if,\nlooking at the stainless azure of the window, they had seen a vision.\nThen their eyes met.\n\n\"See, we stay here,\" she said, \"looking at each other like two\nmiserable curs.\"\n\nThey separated.  He seated himself on a chair, a sorry figure in the\ndusk.\n\nHis mouth was open, his face was contracted.  His eyes and his jaw were\nself-condemnatory.  You expected that in a few moments he would become\nemaciated, and you would see the eternal skeleton.\n\nAnd at last both were alike in their setting, made so as much by their\nmisery as by their human form.  The night swallowed them up.  I no\nlonger saw them.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThen, where is God, where is God?  Why does He not intervene in this\nfrightful, regular crisis?  Why does He not prevent, by a miracle, that\nfearful miracle by which one who is adored suddenly or gradually comes\nto be hated?  Why does he not preserve man from having to mourn the\nloss of all his dreams?  Why does he not preserve him from the distress\nof that sensuousness which flowers in his flesh and falls back on him\nagain like spittle?\n\nPerhaps because I am a man like the man in the room, like all other\nmen, perhaps because what is bestial engrosses my attention now, I am\nutterly terrified by the invincible recoil of the flesh.\n\n\"It is everything in the world,\" he had said.  \"It is nothing,\" he had\nalso said, but later.  The echo of those two cries lingered in my ears.\nThose two cries, not shouted but uttered in a low scarcely audible\nvoice, who shall declare their grandeur and the distance between them?\n\nWho shall say?  Above all, who shall know?\n\nThe man who can reply must be placed, as I am, above humanity, he must\nbe both among and apart from human beings to see the smile turn into\nagony, the joy become satiety, and the union dissolve.  For when you\ntake full part in life you do not see this, you know nothing about it.\nYou pass blindly from one extreme to the other.  The man who uttered\nthe two cries that I still hear, \"Everything!\" and \"Nothing!\" had\nforgotten the first when he was carried away by the second.\n\nWho shall say?  I wish some one would tell.  What do words matter or\nconventions?  Of what use is the time-honoured custom of writers of\ngenius or mere talent to stop at the threshold of these descriptions,\nas if full descriptions were forbidden?  The thing ought to be sung in\na poem, in a masterpiece.  It ought to be told down to the very bottom,\nif the purpose be to show the creative force of our hopes, of our\nwishes, which, when they burst into light, transform the world,\noverthrow reality.\n\nWhat richer alms could you bestow on these two lovers, when again love\nwill die between them?  For this scene is not the last in their double\nstory.  They will begin again, like every human being.  Once more they\nwill try together, as much as they can, to seek shelter from life's\ndefeats, to find ecstasy, to conquer death.  Once more they will seek\nsolace and deliverance.  Again they will be seized by a thrill, by the\nforce of sin, which clings to the flesh like a shred of flesh.\n\nYet once again, when once again they see that they put infinity into\ndesire all in vain, they will be punished for the grandeur of their\naspiration.\n\nI do not regret having surprised this simple, terrible secret.  Perhaps\nmy having taken in and retained this sight in all its breadth, my\nhaving learned that the living truth is sadder and more sublime than I\nhad ever believed, will be my sole glory.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\n\nAll was silent.  They were gone.  They had hidden elsewhere.  The\nhusband was coming.  I gathered that from what they had said.  But did\nI really know what they had said?\n\nI paced up and down in my room, then dined, as in a dream, and went\nout, lured by humanity.\n\nA cafe!  The bright lighting beckoned to me to enter.  Calm, simple,\ncare-free people, who have no task like mine to accomplish.\n\nSitting by herself at a table, constantly looking around, was a girl\nwith a painted face.  A full glass was set in front of her and she held\na little dog on her lap.  His head reached over the edge of the marble\ntable, and he comically sued on behalf of his mistress for the glances,\neven the smiles of the passersby.\n\nThe woman looked at me with interest.  She saw I was not waiting for\nanybody or anything.\n\nA sign, a word, and she, who was waiting for everybody, would come over\nto me with a smile.  But no!  I was simpler than that.  If love\ntroubled me, it was because of a great thought and not a mere instinct.\n\nIt was my misfortune to have a dream greater and stronger than I could\nbear.\n\nWoe to those who dream of what they do not possess!  They are right,\nbut they are too right, and so are outside of nature.  The simple, the\nweak, the humble pass carelessly by what is not meant for them.  They\ntouch everything lightly, without anguish.  But the others!  But I!\n\nI wanted to take what was not mine.  I wanted to steal.  I wanted to\nlive all lives, to dwell in all hearts.\n\nAh!  I saw now how I should be punished for having entered into the\nliving secrets of man.  My punishment would fit my crime.  I was\ndestined to undergo the infinite misery I read in the others.  I was to\nbe punished by every mystery that kept its secret, by every woman who\nwent by.\n\nInfinity is not what we think.  We associate it with heroes of legend\nand romance, and we invest fiery, exceptional characters, like a\nHamlet, with infinity as with a theatrical costume.  But infinity\nresides quietly in that man who is just passing by on the street.  It\nresides in me, just as I am, with my ordinary face and name, in me, who\nwant everything I have not.  And there is no reason why there should be\nany limits to what I want.\n\nSo, step by step, I followed the track of the infinite.  It made me\nsuffer.  Ah, if I did wrong, that great misery of mine, the tragedy of\nstriving for the impossible, redeemed me.  But I do not believe in\nredemption.  I was suffering, and doubtless I looked like a martyr.\n\nI had to go home to fulfil my martyrdom in the whole of its wretched\nduration.  I had to go on looking.  I was losing time in the world\noutside.  I returned to my room, which welcomed me like a living being.\n\n. . . . .\n\nI passed two idle days, watching fruitlessly.\n\nI took to my hasty pacing to and fro again and succeeded, not without\ndifficulty, in gaining a few days of respite, in making myself forget\nfor a while.\n\nI dwelt within these walls quiet in a feverish sort of way and inactive\nas a prisoner.  I walked up and down my room a great part of the day,\nattracted by the opening in the wall and not daring to go away to a\ndistance from it again.\n\nThe long hours went by, and in the evening I was worn out by my\nindefatigable hope.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe room was in disorder.  Amy was there with her husband.  They had\ncome back from a journey.\n\nI had not heard them enter.  I must have been too tired.\n\nHe had his hat on and was sitting on a chair beside the bed.  She was\ndressing.  I saw her disappear behind the washroom door.  I looked at\nthe husband.  His features were regular and even seemed to show a\ncertain nobility.  The line of his forehead was clear cut.  Only his\nmouth and moustache were somewhat coarse.  He had a healthier, stronger\nappearance than her lover.  His hand, which was toying with a cane, was\nfine, and there was a forceful elegance about his whole personality.\n\nThat was the man she hated and was deceiving.  It was that head, that\nface, that expression which had lowered and disfigured themselves in\nher eyes, and were synonymous with her unhappiness.\n\nAll at once she was there in full view.  My heart stood still and\ncontracted and drew me toward her.  She had nothing on but a short,\nthin chemise.  She had come back a bit tired out by the thousands of\nlittle nothings she had already done.  She had a toothbrush in her\nhand, her lips were moist and red, her hair dishevelled.  Her legs were\ndainty, and the arch of her little feet was accentuated by her high-\nheeled shoes.\n\nThe air in the closed room was heavy with a mixture of odours--soap,\nface powder, the pungent scent of cologne.\n\nShe went out and came back again, warm and soapy, drying her face.\nThis time she was all fresh and rosy.\n\nHe was talking about something, with his legs stretched out a little,\nsometimes looking at her, sometimes not looking at her.\n\n\"You know, the Bernards have not accepted.\"\n\nHe glanced at her, then looked down at the carpet and gave a\ndisappointed cluck with his tongue, absorbed in this matter that\ninterested him, while she kept going and coming, showing the lovely\ncurves of her body.\n\nShe /was/ lovely.  But her husband went on droning his commonplaces,\nphrases that meant nothing to her, that were strange to her, and that\nseemed blasphemous in the room which held her beauty.\n\nShe put her garments on, one by one.  Her husband continued in his\nbestial indifference, and dropped back into his reflections.\n\nShe went to the mirror over the mantelpiece with toilet articles spread\nout before her.  Probably the mirror in the washroom was too small.\n\nWhile keeping on with her toilet, she spoke as if to herself in a gay,\nanimated, chatty way, because it was still the springtime of the day.\nShe gave herself careful attention and took much time to groom herself.\nBut this was an important matter, and the time was not lost.  Besides,\nshe was really hurrying.\n\nNow she went to a wardrobe and took out a light dress of delicate\ntexture, which she held out in her arms carefully.\n\nShe started to put the dress on, then an idea suddenly occurred to her\nand she stopped.\n\n\"No, no, no, decidedly not,\" she said.\n\nShe put the dress back and looked for another one, a dark skirt and a\nblouse.\n\nShe took a hat, fluffed the ribbon a bit, then held the trimming of\nroses close to her face in front of the mirror.  Then she began to\nsing, evidently satisfied.\n\n. . . . .\n\nHe did not look at her, and when he did look at her, he did not see\nher.\n\nIt was a solemn spectacle, a drama, but a drama dismal and depressing.\nThat man was not happy, and yet I envied him his happiness.  How\nexplain this except by the fact that happiness is within us, within\neach of us, and is the desire for what we do not possess?\n\nThese two were together, but in reality far apart.  They had left each\nother without leaving each other.  A sort of intrigue about nothing\nheld them together.  They would never come nearer again, for between\nthem lay the impassable barrier of love over and done with.  This\nsilence and this mutual ignorance are the cruelest things in the world.\nTo cease to love is worse than to hate, for say what you will, death is\nworse than suffering.\n\nI am sorry for the men and women who go through life together in the\nchains of indifference.  I am sorry for the poor heart that has what it\nhas for so short a time.  I am sorry for the men who have the heart not\nto love any more.\n\nAnd for a moment, seeing this simple harrowing scene, I underwent a\nlittle of the enormous suffering of those innumerable people who suffer\nall.\n\n. . . . .\n\nAmy finished dressing.  She put on a coat to match her skirt, leaving\nit partly open to show her transparent flesh-coloured lingerie waist.\nThen she left us--her husband and me.\n\nHe, too, made ready to leave, but the door opened again.  Was it Amy\ncoming back?  No, it was the maid, who, seeing the room was occupied,\nstarted to withdraw.\n\n\"Excuse me, sir.  I came to put the room in order, but I don't want to\ndisturb you.\"\n\n\"You may stay.\"\n\nShe began to pick things up and close drawers.  He raised his head and\nlooked at her out of the corner of his eye.  Then he rose and went over\nto her awkwardly, as though fascinated.  A scuffling and an outcry,\nstifled by a coarse laugh.  She dropped her brush and the gown she was\nholding.  He caught her from behind and put his arms around her waist.\n\n\"Oh, go on!  Stop!  What-che doing?\"\n\nHe did not say anything, but pressed her closer to him.\n\nShe laughed.  Her hair came partly undone and fell down over her blowsy\nface.  He trod on Amy's gown, which had dropped from the girl's hand.\nThen she felt the thing had gone far enough.\n\n\"Now, that'll do, that'll do,\" she said.\n\nSince he still said nothing and brought his jaw close to her neck, she\ngot angry.\n\n\"I told you, that'll do.  Stop, I say.  What's the matter with you?\"\n\nAt length he let her go, and left, laughing a devilish laugh of shame\nand cynicism.\n\nHe went out, his passion still seething.  But it was not only the\noverwhelming instinct that was stirring in him.  A moment before that\nexquisite woman had unfolded herself in his presence in all her\nexquisite beauty, and he had not desired her.\n\nPerhaps she denied herself to him.  Perhaps they had an agreement with\neach other.  But I plainly saw that even his eyes did not care, those\nsame eyes which kindled at the sight of the servant girl, that ignoble\nVenus with untidy hair and dirty finger nails.\n\nBecause he did not know her, because she was different from the one\nwhom he knew.  To have what one has not.  So, strange as it may seem,\nit was an idea, a lofty, eternal idea that guided his instinct.\n\nI understood--I to whom it was given to behold these human crises--I\nunderstood that many things which we place outside ourselves are really\ninside ourselves, and that this was the secret.\n\nHow the veils drop off!  How the intricacies unravel, and simplicity\nappears!\n\n. . . . .\n\nOne dark stormy night two women came and occupied the Room.  I could\nnot see them and caught only fragments of their strange, whispered talk\nof love.  From that time on the meals of the boarding-house had a magic\nattraction for me.  I studied all the faces, trying to identify those\ntwo beings.\n\nBut I questioned pairs of faces in vain.  I made efforts to detect\nresemblances.  There was nothing to guide me.  I knew them no more than\nif they had been buried in the dark night outside.\n\nThere were five girls or young women in the dining-room.  One of them,\nat least, must have been an occupant of the Room that night.  But a\nstronger will than mine shut off her countenance.  I did not know, and\nI was overwhelmed by the nothingness of what I saw.\n\nThey left, one at a time.  I did not know.  My hands twitched in the\ninfinity of uncertainty, and my fingers pressed the void.  My face was\nthere, my face, which was a definite thing, confronting everything\npossible, everything indefinite.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe lady there!  I recognised Amy.  She was talking to the landlady\nbeside the window.  I did not notice her at first, because of the other\nboarders between us.\n\nShe was eating grapes, daintily, with a rather studied manner.\n\nI turned towards her.  Her name was Madame Montgeron or Montgerot.  It\nsounded funny to me.  Why did she have that name?  It seemed not to\nsuit her, or to be useless.  It struck me how artificial words and\nsigns are.\n\nThe meal was over.  Almost everybody had gone out.  Coffee cups and\nsticky little liqueur glasses were scattered on the table on which a\nsunbeam shone, mottling the tablecloth and making the glasses sparkle.\nA coffee stain had dried on the cloth and gave out fragrance.\n\nI joined in the conversation between Amy and Madame Lemercier.  She\nlooked at me.  I scarcely recognised her look, which I had seen so\nclearly before.\n\nThe man-servant came in and whispered a few words to Madame Lemercier.\nShe rose, excused herself, and went out of the room.  I was left with\nAmy.  There were only two or three people in the dining-room, who were\ndiscussing what they were going to do in the afternoon.\n\nI did not know what to say to her.  The conversation flagged and died\nout.  She must have thought that she did not interest me--this woman,\nwhose heart I had seen, and whose destiny I knew as well as God\nHimself.\n\nShe reached for a newspaper lying on the table, read a line or two,\nthen folded it, rose and also left the room.\n\nSickened by the commonplaceness of life and dull from the heaviness of\nthe after-lunch hour, I leaned drowsily on the long, long table, the\nsunlit table disappearing into infinity, and I made an effort to keep\nmy arms from giving way, my chin from dropping, and my eyes from\nclosing.\n\nAnd in that disorderly room, where the servants were already hastening\nquietly to clear the table and make ready for the evening meal, I\nlingered almost alone, not knowing whether I was happy or unhappy, not\nknowing what was real and what was supernatural.\n\nThen I understood.  It came upon me softly, heavily.  I looked around\nat all those simple, peaceful things.  Then I closed my eyes, and said\nto myself, like a seer who gradually becomes conscious of the nature of\nthe revelation he has seen, \"The infinite--why, this is the infinite.\nIt is true.  I can no longer doubt.\"  It came upon me with force that\nthere is nothing strange on earth, that the supernatural does not\nexist, or, rather, that it is everywhere.  It is in reality, in\nsimplicity, in peace.  It is here, inside these walls.  The real and\nthe supernatural are one and the same.  There can no more be mystery in\nlife than there can be a fourth dimension.\n\nI, like other men, am moulded out of infinity.  But how confused it all\nwas to me!  And I dreamed of myself, who could neither know myself well\nnor rid me of myself--myself who was like a deep shadow between my heart\nand the sun.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\n\nThe same background, the same half-light tarnishing them as when I\nfirst saw them together.  Amy and her lover were seated beside each\nother, not far from me.\n\nThey seemed to have been talking for some time already.\n\nShe was sitting behind him, on the sofa, concealed by the shadow of the\nevening and the shadow of the man.  He was bending over, pale and\nvaguely outlined, with his hands on his knees.\n\nThe night was still cloaked in the grey silken softness of evening.\nSoon it would cast off this mantle and appear in all its bare darkness.\nIt was coming on them like an incurable illness.  They seemed to have a\npresentiment of it and sought refuge from the fatal shadows in talking\nand thinking of other things.\n\nThey talked apathetically about this and that.  I heard the names of\nplaces and people.  They mentioned a railway station, a public walk, a\nflorist.\n\nAll at once she stopped and hid her face in her hands.\n\nHe took her wrists, with a sad slowness that showed how much he was\nused to these spells, and spoke to her without knowing what to say,\nstammering and drawing as close as he could to her.\n\n\"Why are you crying?  Tell me why you are crying.\"\n\nShe did not answer.  Then she took her hands away from her eyes and\nlooked at him.\n\n\"Why?  Do I know?  Tears are not words.\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nI watched her cry--drown herself in a flood of tears.  It is a great\nthing to be in the presence of a rational being who cries.  A weak,\nbroken creature shedding tears makes the same impression as an all-\npowerful god to whom one prays.  In her weakness and defeat Amy was\nabove human power.\n\nA kind of superstitious admiration seized me before this woman's face\nbathed from an inexhaustible source, this face sincere and truthful.\n\n. . . . .\n\nShe stopped crying and lifted her head.  Without his questioning her\nagain she said:\n\n\"I am crying because one is alone.\n\n\"One cannot get away from one's self.  One cannot even confess\nanything.  One is alone.  And then everything passes, everything\nchanges, everything takes flight, and as soon as everything takes\nflight one is alone.  There are times when I see this better than at\nother times.  And then I cannot help crying.\"\n\nShe was getting sadder and sadder, but then she had a little access of\npride, and I saw a smile gently stir her veil of melancholy.\n\n\"I am more sensitive than other people.  Things that other people would\nnot notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of\nlucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all\nalone.\"\n\nDisturbed to see her growing distress, he tried to raise her spirits.\n\n\"We cannot say that, we who have reshaped our destiny.  You, who have\nachieved a great act of will--\"\n\nBut what he said was borne away like chaff.\n\n\"What good was it?  Everything is useless.  In spite of what I have\ntried to do, I am alone.  My sin cannot change the face of things.\n\n\"It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor is\nit by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctive\ndecisions and which is neither good nor evil.  It is by none of these\nthings that one reaches happiness.  One /never/ reaches happiness.\"\n\nShe paused, and said, as if she felt her fate recoiling upon her:\n\n\"Yes, I know I have done wrong, that those who love me most would\ndetest me if they knew.  My mother, if she knew--she who is so\nindulgent--would be so unhappy.  I know that our love exists with the\nreprobation of all that is wise and just and is condemned by my\nmother's tears.  But what's the use of being ashamed any more?  Mother,\nif you knew, you would have pity on my happiness.\"\n\n\"You are naughty,\" he murmured feebly.\n\nShe stroked the man's forehead lightly, and said in a tone of\nextraordinary assurance:\n\n\"You know I don't deserve to be called naughty.  You know what I am\nsaying is above a personal application.  You know better than I do that\none is alone.  One day when I was speaking about the joy of living and\nyou were as sad as I am to-day, you looked at me, and said you did not\nknow what I was thinking, in spite of my explanations.  You showed me\nthat love is only a kind of festival of solitude, and holding me in\nyour arms, you ended by exclaiming, 'Our love--I am our love,' and I\ngave the inevitable answer, alas, 'Our love--I am our love.'\"\n\nHe wanted to speak, but she checked him.\n\n\"Stop!  Take me, squeeze my hands, hold me close, give me a long, long\nkiss, do with me what you want--just to bring yourself close to me,\nclose to me!  And tell me that you are suffering.  Why, don't you feel\n/my/ grief?\"\n\nHe said nothing, and in the twilight shroud that wrapped them round, I\nsaw his head make the needless gesture of denial.  I saw all the misery\nemanating from these two, who for once by chance in the shadows did not\nknow how to lie any more.\n\nIt was true that they were there together, and yet there was nothing to\nunite them.  There was a void between them.  Say what you will, do what\nyou will, revolt, break into a passion, dispute, threaten--in vain.\nIsolation will conquer you.  I saw there was nothing to unite them,\nnothing.\n\nShe kept on in the same strain.\n\nHe seemed to be used to these sad monologues, uttered in the same tone,\ntremendous invocations to the impossible.  He did not answer any more.\nHe held her in his arms, rocked her quietly, and caressed her with\ndelicate tenderness.  He treated her as if she were a sick child he was\nnursing, without telling her what was the matter.\n\nBut he was disturbed by her contact.  Even when prostrate and desolate,\nshe quivered warm in his arms.  He coveted this prey even though\nwounded.  I saw his eyes fixed on her, while she gave herself up freely\nto her sadness.  He pressed his body against hers.  It was she whom he\nwanted.  Her words he threw aside.  He did not care for them.  They did\nnot caress him.  It was she whom he wanted, she!\n\nSeparation!  They were very much alike in ideas and temperament, and\njust then they were helping each other as much as they could.  But I\nsaw clearly--I who was a spectator apart from men and whose gaze soared\nabove them--that they were strangers, and that in spite of all\nappearances they did not see nor hear each other any more.  They\nconversed as best they could, but neither could yield to the other, and\neach tried to conquer the other.  And this terrible battle broke my\nheart.\n\n. . . . .\n\nShe understood his desire.  She said plaintively, like a child at\nfault:\n\n\"I am not feeling well.\"\n\nThen, in a sudden change of mood, she gave herself up to love, offering\nher whole self with her wounded woman's heart.\n\n*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *\n\nThey rose and shook off the dream that had cast them to the ground.\n\nHe was as dejected as she.  I bent over to catch what he was saying.\n\n\"If I had only known!\" he breathed in a whisper.\n\nProstrated but more distrustful of each other with a crime between\nthem, they went slowly over to the grey window, cleansed by a streak of\ntwilight.\n\nHow much they were like themselves on the other evening.  It /was/ the\nother evening.  Never had the impression been borne in upon me so\nstrongly that actions are vain and pass like phantoms.\n\nThe man was seized with a trembling.  And, vanquished, despoiled of all\nhis pride, of all his masculine reserve, he no longer had the strength\nto keep back the avowal of shamed regret.\n\n\"One can't master one's self,\" he stammered, hanging his head.  \"It is\nfate.\"\n\nThey caught hold of each other's hands, shuddered slightly, panting,\ndispirited, tormented by their hearts.\n\n. . . . .\n\nFate!\n\nIn so speaking they saw further than the flesh.  In their remorse and\ndisgust it was not mere physical disillusionment that so crushed them.\nThey saw further.  They were overcome by an impression of bleak truth,\nof aridity, of growing nothingness, at the thought that they had so\nmany times grasped, rejected, and vainly grasped again their frail\ncarnal ideal.\n\nThey felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that\neverything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties\nholding them together would not endure.  Their sadness did not bring\nthem together.  On the contrary, they were separated by all the force\nof their two sorrows.  To suffer together, alas, what disunion!\n\nAnd the condemnation of love itself came from her, in a cry of agony:\n\n\"Oh, our great, our immense love!  I feel that little by little I am\nrecovering from it!\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nShe threw back her head, and raised her eyes.\n\n\"Oh, the first time!\" she said.\n\nShe went on, while both of them saw that first time when their hands\nhad found each other.\n\n\"I knew that some day all that emotion would die, and, in spite of our\npromises, I wanted time to stand still.\n\n\"But time did not stand still, and now we scarcely love each other.\"\n\nHe made a gesture as of denial.\n\n\"It is not only you, my dear, who are drifting away,\" she continued.\n\"I am, too.  At first I thought it was only you.  But then I understood\nmy poor heart and realised that in spite of you, I could do nothing\nagainst time.\"\n\nShe went on slowly, now with her eyes turned away, now looking at him.\n\n\"Alas, some day, I may say to you, 'I no longer love you.'  Alas, alas,\nsome day I may say to you, 'I have never loved you!'\n\n\"This is the wound--time, which passes and changes us.  The separation\nof human beings that deceive themselves is nothing in comparison.  One\ncan live even so.  But the passage of time!  To grow old, to think\ndifferently, to die.  I am growing old and I am dying, I.  It has taken\nme a long time to understand it.  I am growing old.  I /am/ not old,\nbut I am growing old.  I have a few grey hairs already.  The first grey\nhair, what a blow!\n\n\"Oh, this blotting out of the colour of your hair.  It gives you the\nfeeling of being covered with your shroud, of dry bones, and\ntombstones.\"\n\nShe rose and cried out into the void:\n\n\"Oh, to escape the network of wrinkles!\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nShe continued:\n\n\"I said to myself, 'By slow degrees you will get there.  Your skin will\nwither.  Your eyes, which smile even in repose, will always be\nwatering. Your breasts will shrink and hang on your skeleton like loose\nrags.  Your lower jaw will sag from the tiredness of living.  You will\nbe in a constant shiver of cold, and your appearance will be\ncadaverous.  Your voice will be cracked, and people who now find it\ncharming to listen to you will be repelled.  The dress that hides you\ntoo much now from men's eyes will not sufficiently hide your monstrous\nnudity, and people will turn their eyes away and not even dare to think\nof you.'\"\n\nShe choked and put her hands to her mouth, overcome by the truth, as if\nshe had too much to say.  It was magnificent and terrifying.\n\nHe caught her in his arms, in dismay.  But she was as in a delirium,\ntransported by a universal grief.  You would have thought that this\nfunereal truth had just come to her like a sudden piece of bad news.\n\n\"I love you, but I love the past even more.  I long for it, I long for\nit, I am consumed with longing for it.  The past!  I shall cry, I shall\nsuffer because the past will never come back again.\n\n\"But love the past as much as you will, it will never come back.  Death\nis everywhere, in the ugliness of what has been too long beautiful, in\nthe tarnishing of what has been clean and pure, in the forgetfulness of\nwhat is long past, in daily habits, which are the forgetfulness of what\nis near.  We catch only glimpses of life.  Death is the one thing we\nreally have time to see.  Death is the only palpable thing.  Of what\nuse is it to be beautiful and chaste?  They will walk over our graves\njust the same.\n\n\"A day is coming when I shall be no more.  I am crying because I shall\nsurely die.  There is an invincible nothingness in everything and\neverybody.  So when one thinks of that, dear, one smiles and forgives.\nOne does not bear grudges.  But goodness won in that way is worse than\nanything else.\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nHe bent over and kissed her hands.  He enveloped her in a warm,\nrespectful silence, but, as always, I felt he was master of himself.\n\n\"I have always thought of death,\" she continued in a changed voice.\n\"One day I confessed to my husband how it haunted me.  He launched out\nfuriously.  He told me I was a neurasthenic and that he must look after\nme.  He made me promise to be like himself and never think of such\nthings, to be healthy and well-balanced, as he was.\n\n\"That was not true.  It was he who suffered from the disease of\ntranquillity and indifference, a paralysis, a grey malady, and his\nblindness was an infirmity, and his peace was that of a dog who lives\nfor the sake of living, of a beast with a human face.\n\n\"What was I to do?  Pray?  No.  That eternal dialogue in which you are\nalways alone is crushing.  Throw yourself into some occupation?  Work?\nNo use.  Doesn't work always have to be done over again?  Have children\nand bring them up?  That makes you feel both that you are done and\nfinished and that you are beginning over again to no purpose.  However,\nwho knows?\"\n\nIt was the first time that she softened.\n\n\"I have not been given the chance to practise the devotion, the\nsubmission, the humiliation of a mother.  Perhaps that would have\nguided me in life.  I was denied a little child.\"\n\nFor a moment, lowering her eyes, letting her hands fall, yielding to\nthe maternal impulse, she only thought of loving and regretting the\nchild that had not been vouchsafed to her--without perceiving that if\nshe considered it her only possible salvation, it was because she did\nnot have it.\n\n\"Charity?  They say that it makes us forget everything.  Oh, yes, to go\ndistributing alms on the snowy streets, in a great fur cloak,\" she\nmurmured and made a tired gesture, while the lover and I felt the\nshiver of the cold rainy evening and of all the winters past and yet to\ncome.\n\n\"All that is diversion, deception.  It does not alter the truth a\nparticle.  We shall die, we are going to die.\"\n\nShe stopped crying, dried her eyes and assumed a tone so positive and\ncalm that it gave the impression that she was leaving the subject.\n\n\"I want to ask you a question.  Answer me frankly.  Have you ever\ndared, dear, even in the depths of your heart, to set a date, a date\nrelatively far off, but exact and absolute, with four figures, and to\nsay, 'No matter how old I shall live to be, on that day I shall be\ndead--while everything else will go on, and little by little my empty\nplace will be destroyed or filled again?'\"\n\nThe directness of her question disturbed him.  But it seemed to me that\nhe tried most to avoid giving her a reply that would heighten her\nobsession.\n\nAnd all at once, she remembered something he had once said to her, and\ncleverly reminded him of it so as to close his mouth in advance and\ntorture herself still more.\n\n\"Do you remember?  One evening, by lamplight.  I was looking through a\nbook.  You were watching me.  You came to me, you knelt down and put\nyour arms around my waist, and laid your head in my lap.  There were\ntears in your eyes.  I can still hear you.  'I am thinking,' you said,\n'that this moment will never come again.  I am thinking that you are\ngoing to change, to die, and go away.  I am thinking so truly, so\nhotly, how precious these moments are, how precious you are, you who\nwill never again be just what you are now, and I adore your ineffable\npresence as it is now.'  You looked at my hand, you found it small and\nwhite, and you said it was an extraordinary treasure, which would\ndisappear.  Then you repeated, 'I adore you,' in a voice which trembled\nso, that I have never heard anything truer or more beautiful, for you\nwere right as a god is right.\n\n\"Alas!\" he said.\n\nHe saw the tears in her eyes.  Then he bowed his head.  When he lifted\nit again, I had a vague intuition that he would know what to answer,\nbut had not yet formulated how to say it.\n\n\"Poor creatures, a brief existence, a few stray thoughts in the depths\nof a room--that is what we are,\" she said, lifting her head and looking\nat him, hoping for an impossible contradiction, as a child cries for a\nstar.\n\nHe murmured:\n\n\"Who knows what we are?\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nShe interrupted him with a gesture of infinite weariness.\n\n\"I know what you are going to say.  You are going to talk to me about\nthe beauty of suffering.  I know your noble ideas.  I love them, my\nlove, your beautiful theories, but I do not believe in them.  I would\nbelieve them if they consoled me and effaced death.\"\n\nWith a manifest effort, as uncertain of himself as she was of herself,\nfeeling his way, he replied:\n\n\"They would efface it, perhaps, if you believed in them.\"\n\nShe turned toward him and took one of his hands in both of hers.  She\nquestioned him with inexorable patience, then she slipped to her knees\nbefore him, like a lifeless body, humbled herself in the dust, wrecked\nin the depths of despair, and implored him:\n\n\"Oh, answer me!  I should be so happy if you could answer me.  I feel\nas though you really could!\"\n\nHe bent over her, as if on the edge of an abyss of questioning:\n\"Do you know what we are?\" he murmured.  \"Everything we say, everything\nwe think, everything we believe, is fictitious.  We know nothing.\nNothing is sure or solid.\"\n\n\"You are wrong,\" she cried.  \"There /is/ something absolute, our\nsorrow, our need, our misery.  We can see and touch it.  Deny\neverything else, but our beggary, who can deny that?\"\n\n\"You are right,\" he said, \"it is the only absolute thing in the world.\"\n\n. . . . .\n\n\"Then, /we/ are the only absolute thing in the world,\" he deduced.\n\nHe caught at this.  He had found a fulcrum.  \"We--\" he said.  He had\nfound the cry against death, he repeated it, and tried again.  \"We--\"\n\nIt was sublime to see him beginning to resist.\n\n\"It is we who endure forever.\"\n\n\"Endure forever!  On the contrary, it is we who pass away.\"\n\n\"We see things pass, but we endure.\"\n\nShe shrugged her shoulders with an air of denial.  There almost was\nhatred in her voice as she said:\n\n\"Yes--no--perhaps.  After all, what difference does it make to me?  That\ndoes not console me.\"\n\n\"Who knows--maybe we need sadness and shadow, to make joy and light.\"\n\n\"Light would exist without shadow,\" she insisted.\n\n\"No,\" he said gently.\n\n\"That does not console me,\" she said again.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThen he remembered that he had already thought out all these things.\n\n\"Listen,\" he said, in a voice tremulous and rather solemn as if he were\nmaking a confession.  \"I once imagined two beings who were at the end\nof their life, and were recalling all they had suffered.\"\n\n\"A poem!\" she said, discouraged.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, \"one of those which might be so beautiful.\"\n\nIt was remarkable to see how animated he became.  For the first time he\nappeared sincere--when abandoning the living example of their own\ndestiny for the fiction of his imagination.  In referring to his poem,\nhe had trembled.  You felt he was becoming his genuine self and that he\nhad faith.  She raised her head to listen, moved by her tenacious need\nof hearing something, though she had no confidence in it.\n\n\"The man and the woman are believers,\" he began.  \"They are at the end\nof their life, and they are happy to die for the reasons that one is\nsad to live.  They are a kind of Adam and Eve who dream of the paradise\nto which they are going to return.  The paradise of purity.  Paradise\nis light.  Life on earth is obscurity.  That is the motif of the song I\nhave sketched, the light that they desire, the shadow that they are.\"\n\n\"Like us,\" said Amy.\n\nHe told of the life of the man and the woman of his poem.  Amy listened\nto him, and accepted what he was saying.  Once she put her hands on her\nheart and said, \"Poor people!\"  Then she got a little excited.  She\nfelt he was going too far.  She did not wish so much darkness, maybe\nbecause she was tired or because the picture when painted by some one\nelse seemed exaggerated.\n\nDream and reality here coincided.  The woman of the poem also protested\nat this point.\n\nI was carried away by the poet's voice, as he recited, swaying\nslightly, in the spell of the harmony of his own dream:\n\n\"At the close of a life of pain and suffering the woman still looked\nahead with the curiosity she had when she entered life.  Eve ended as\nshe had begun.  All her subtle eager woman's soul climbed toward the\nsecret as if it were a kind of kiss on the lips of her life.  She\nwanted to be happy.\"\n\nAmy was now more interested in her companion's words.  The curse of the\nlovers in the poem, sister to the curse she felt upon herself, gave her\nconfidence.  But her personality seemed to be shrinking.  A few moments\nbefore she had dominated everything.  Now she was listening, waiting,\nabsorbed.\n\n\"The lover reproached the woman for contradicting herself in claiming\nearthly and celestial happiness at the same time.  She answered him\nwith profundity, that the contradiction lay not in herself, but in the\nthings she wanted.\n\n\"The lover then seized another healing wand and with desperate\neagerness, he explained, he shouted, 'Divine happiness has not the same\nform as human happiness.  Divine happiness is outside of ourselves.'\n\n\"The woman rose, trembling.\n\n\"'That is not true!  That is not true!' she exclaimed.  'No, my\nhappiness is not outside of me, seeing it is /my/ happiness.  The\nuniverse is God's universe, but I am the god of my own happiness.  What\nI want,' she added, with perfect simplicity, 'is to be happy, I, just\nas I am, and with all my suffering.'\"\n\nAmy started.  The woman in the poem had put her problem in a clearer\nand deeper manner, and Amy was more like that woman than herself.\n\n\"'I, with all my suffering,' the man repeated.\n\n\"Suffering--important word!  It leads us to the heart of reality. Human\nsuffering is a positive thing, which requires a positive answer, and\nsad as it is, the word is beautiful, because of the absolute truth it\ncontains.  'I, with all my suffering!'  It is an error to believe that\nwe can be happy in perfect calm and clearness, as abstract as a\nformula.  We are made too much out of shadow and some form of\nsuffering.  If everything that hurts us were to be removed, what would\nremain?\n\n\"And the woman said, 'My God, I do not wish for heaven!'\"\n\n\"Well, then,\" said Amy, trembling, \"it follows that we can be miserable\nin paradise.\"\n\n\"Paradise is life,\" said the poet.\n\nAmy was silent and remained with her head lifted, comprehending at last\nthat the whole poem was simply a reply to her question and that he had\nrevived in her soul a loftier and a juster thought.\n\n\"Life is exalted to perfection as it ends,\" the poet went on.  \"'It is\nbeautiful to reach the end of one's days,' said the lover.  'It is in\nthis way that we have lived paradise.'\n\n\"There is the truth,\" the poet concluded.  \"It does not wipe out death.\nIt does not diminish space, nor halt time.  But it makes us what we are\nin essential.  Happiness needs unhappiness.  Joy goes hand in hand with\nsorrow.  It is thanks to the shadow that we exist.  We must not dream\nof an absurd abstraction.  We must guard the bond that links us to\nblood and earth.  'Just as I am!'  Remember that.  We are a great\nmixture.  We are more than we believe.  Who knows what we are?\"\n\nOn the woman's face, which the terror of death had rigidly contracted,\na smile dawned.  She asked with childish dignity:\n\n\"Why did you not tell me this right away when I asked you?\"\n\n\"You would not have understood me then.  You had run your dream of\ndistress into a blind alley.  I had to take the truth along a different\nway so as to present it to you anew.\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nAfter that they fell silent.  For a fraction of time they had come as\nclose to each other as human beings can come down here below--because of\ntheir august assent to the lofty truth, to the arduous truth (for it is\nhard to understand that happiness is at the same time happy and\nunhappy).  She believed him, however, she, the rebel, she, the\nunbeliever, to whom he had given a true heart to touch.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\n\nThe window was wide open.  In the dusty rays of the sunset I saw three\npeople with their backs to the long reddish-brown beams of light.  An\nold man, with a care-worn, exhausted appearance and a face furrowed\nwith wrinkles, seated in the armchair near the window.  A tall young\nwoman with very fair hair and the face of a madonna.  And, a little\napart, a woman who was pregnant.\n\nShe held her eyes fixed in front of her, seeming to contemplate the\nfuture.  She did not enter into the conversation, perhaps because of\nher humbler condition, or because her thoughts were bent upon the event\nto come.  The two others were conversing.  The man had a cracked,\nuneven voice.  A slight feverish tremour sometimes shook his shoulders,\nand now and then he gave a sudden involuntary jerk.  The fire had died\nout of his eyes and his speech had traces of a foreign accent.  The\nwoman sat beside him quietly.  She had the fairness and gentle calm of\nthe northern races, so white and light that the daylight seemed to die\nmore slowly than elsewhere upon her pale silver face and the abundant\naureole of her hair.\n\nWere they father and daughter or brother and sister?  It was plain that\nhe adored her but that she was not his wife.\n\nWith his dimmed eyes he looked at the reflection of the sunlight upon\nher.\n\n\"Some one is going to be born, and some one is going to die,\" he said.\n\nThe other woman started, while the man's companion cried in a low tone,\nbending over him quickly.\n\n\"Oh, Philip, don't say that.\"\n\nHe seemed indifferent to the effect he had produced, as though her\nprotest had not been sincere, or else were in vain.\n\nPerhaps, after all, he was not an old man.  His hair seemed to me\nscarcely to have begun to turn grey.  But he was in the grip of a\nmysterious illness, which he did not bear well.  He was in a constant\nstate of irritation.  He had not long to live.  That was apparent from\nunmistakable signs--the look of pity in the woman's eyes mingled with\ndiscreetly veiled alarm, and an oppressive atmosphere of mourning.\n\n. . . . .\n\nWith a physical effort he began to speak so as to break the silence.\nAs he was sitting between me and the open window, some of the things he\nsaid were lost in the air.\n\nHe spoke of his travels, and, I think, also of his marriage, but I did\nnot hear well.\n\nHe became animated, and his voice rose painfully.  He quivered.  A\nrestrained passion enlivened his gestures and glances and warmed his\nlanguage.  You could tell that he must have been an active brilliant\nman before his illness.\n\nHe turned his head a little and I could hear him better.\n\nHe told of the cities and countries that he had visited.  It was like\nan invocation to sacred names, to far-off different skies, Italy,\nEgypt, India.  He had come to this room to rest, between two stations,\nand he was resting uneasily, like an escaped convict.  He said he would\nhave to leave again, and his eyes sparkled.  He spoke of what he still\nwanted to see.  But the twilight deepened, the warmth left the air, and\nall he thought of now was what he had seen in the past.\n\n\"Think of everything we have seen, of all the space we bring with us.\"\n\nThey gave the impression of a group of travellers, never in repose,\nforever in flight, arrested for a moment in their insatiable course, in\na corner of the world which you felt was made small by their presence.\n\n. . . . .\n\n\"Palermo--Sicily.\"\n\nNot daring to advance into the future, he intoxicated himself with\nthese recollections.  I saw the effort he was making to draw near to\nsome luminous point in the days gone by.\n\n\"Carpi, Carpi,\" he cried.  \"Anna, do you remember that wonderful\nbrilliant morning?  The ferryman and his wife were at table in the open\nair.  What a glow over the whole country!  The table, round and pale\nlike a star.  The stream sparkling.  The banks bordered with oleander\nand tamarisk.  The sun made a flower of every leaf.  The grass shone as\nif it were full of dew.  The shrubs seemed bejewelled.  The breeze was\nso faint that it was a smile, not a sigh.\"\n\nShe listened to him, placid, deep, and limpid as a mirror.\n\n\"The whole of the ferryman's family,\" he continued, \"was not there.\nThe young daughter was dreaming on a rustic seat, far enough away not\nto hear them.  I saw the light-green shadow that the tree cast upon\nher, there at the edge of the forest's violet mystery.\n\n\"And I can still hear the flies buzzing in that Lombardy summer over\nthe winding river which unfolded its charms as we walked along the\nbanks.\"\n\n\"The greatest impression I ever had of noonday sunlight,\" he continued,\n\"was in London, in a museum.  An Italian boy in the dress of his\ncountry, a model, was standing in front of a picture which represented\na sunlight effect on a Roman landscape.  The boy held his head\nstretched out.  Amid the immobility of the indifferent attendants, and\nin the dampness and drabness of a London day, this Italian boy radiated\nlight.  He was deaf to everything around him, full of secret sunlight,\nand his hands were almost clasped.  He was praying to the divine\npicture.\"\n\n\"We saw Carpi again,\" said Anna.  \"We had to pass through it by chance\nin November.  It was very cold.  We wore all our furs, and the river\nwas frozen.\"\n\n\"Yes, and we walked on the ice.\"\n\nHe paused for a moment, then asked:\n\n\"Why are certain memories imperishable?\"\n\nHe buried his face in his nervous hands and sighed:\n\n\"Why, oh, why?\"\n\n\"Our oasis,\" Anna said, to assist him in his memories, or perhaps\nbecause she shared in the intoxication of reviving them, \"was the\ncorner where the lindens and acacias were on your estate in the\ngovernment of Kiev.  One whole side of the lawn was always strewn with\nflowers in summer and leaves in winter.\"\n\n\"I can still see my father there,\" he said.  \"He had a kind face.  He\nwore a great cloak of shaggy cloth, and a felt cap pulled down over his\nears.  He had a large white beard, and his eyes watered a little from\nthe cold.\"\n\n\"Why,\" he wondered after a pause, \"do I think of my father that way and\nno other way?  I do not know, but that is the way he will live in me.\nThat is the way he will not die.\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe day was declining.  The woman seemed to stand out in greater relief\nagainst the other two and become more and more beautiful.\n\nI saw the man's silhouette on the faded curtains, his back bent, his\nhead shaking as in a palsy and his neck strained and emaciated.\n\nWith a rather awkward movement he drew a case of cigarettes from his\npocket and lit a cigarette.\n\nAs the eager little light rose and spread like a glittering mask, I saw\nhis ravaged features.  But when he started to smoke in the twilight,\nall you could see was the glowing cigarette, shaken by an arm as\nunsubstantial as the smoke that came from it.\n\nIt was not tobacco that he was smoking.  The odour of a drug sickened\nme.\n\nHe held out his hand feebly toward the closed window, modest with its\nhalf-lifted curtains.\n\n\"Look--Benares and Allahabad.  A sumptuous ceremony--tiaras--insignia,\nand women's ornaments.  In the foreground, the high priest, with his\nelaborate head-dress in tiers--a vague pagoda, architecture, epoch,\nrace.  How different we are from those creatures.  Are /they/ right or\nare /we/ right?\"\n\nNow he extended the circle of the past, with a mighty effort.\n\n\"Our travels--all those bonds one leaves behind.  All useless.\nTravelling does not make us greater.  Why should the mere covering of\nground make us greater?\"\n\nThe man bowed his wasted head.\n\n. . . . .\n\nHe who had just been in ecstasy now began to complain.\n\n\"I keep remembering--I keep remembering.  My heart has no pity on me.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" he mourned, a moment afterwards, with a gesture of resignation,\n\"we cannot say good-by to everything.\"\n\nThe woman was there, but she could do nothing, although so greatly\nadored.  She was there with only her beauty.  It was a superhuman\nvision that he evoked, heightened by regret, by remorse and greed.  He\ndid not want it to end.  He wanted it back again.  He loved his past.\n\nInexorable, motionless, the past is endowed with the attributes of\ndivinity, because, for believers as well as for unbelievers, the great\nattribute of God is that of being prayed to.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe pregnant woman had gone out.  I saw her go to the door, softly with\nmaternal carefulness of herself.\n\nAnna and the sick man were left alone.  The evening had a gripping\nreality.  It seemed to live, to be firmly rooted, and to hold its\nplace.  Never before had the room been so full of it.\n\n\"One more day coming to an end,\" he said, and went on as if pursuing\nhis train of thought:\n\n\"We must get everything ready for our marriage.\"\n\n\"Michel!\" cried the young woman instinctively, as if she could not hold\nthe name back.\n\n\"Michel will not be angry at us,\" the man replied.  \"He knows you love\nhim, Anna.  He will not be frightened by a formality, pure and simple--\nby a marriage /in extremis,\"/ he added emphatically, smiling as though\nto console himself.\n\nThey looked at each other.  He was dry, feverish.  His words came from\ndeep down in his being.  She trembled.\n\nWith his eyes on her, so white and tall and radiant, he made a visible\neffort to hold himself in, as if not daring to reach her with a single\nword.  Then he let himself go.\n\n\"I love you so much,\" he said simply.\n\n\"Ah,\" she answered, \"you will not die!\"\n\n\"How good you were,\" he replied, \"to have been willing to be my sister\nfor so long!\"\n\n\"Think of all you have done for me!\" she exclaimed, clasping her hands\nand bending her magnificent body toward him, as if prostrating herself\nbefore him.\n\nYou could tell that they were speaking open-heartedly.  What a good\nthing it is to be frank and speak without reticence, without the shame\nand guilt of not knowing what one is saying and for each to go straight\nto the other.  It is almost a miracle.\n\nThey were silent.  He closed his eyes, though continuing to see her,\nthen opened them again and looked at her.\n\n\"You are my angel who do not love me.\"\n\nHis face clouded.  This simple sight overwhelmed me.  It was the\ninfiniteness of a heart partaking of nature--this clouding of his face.\n\nI saw with what love he lifted himself up to her.  She knew it.  There\nwas a great gentleness in her words, in her attitude toward him, which\nin every little detail showed that she knew his love.  She did not\nencourage him, or lie to him, but whenever she could, by a word, by a\ngesture, or by some beautiful silence, she would try to console him a\nlittle for the harm she did him by her presence and by her absence.\n\nAfter studying her face again, while the shadow drew him still nearer\nto her in spite of himself, he said:\n\n\"You are the sad confidante of my love of you.\"\n\nHe spoke of their marriage again.  Since all preparations had been\nmade, why not marry at once?\n\n\"My fortune, my name, Anna, the chaste love that will be left to you\nfrom me when--when I shall be gone.\"\n\nHe wanted to transform his caress--too light, alas--into a lasting\nbenefit for the vague future.  For the present all he aspired to was\nthe feeble and fictitious union implied in the word marriage.\n\n\"Why speak of it?\" she said, instead of giving a direct answer, feeling\nan almost insurmountable repugnance, doubtless because of her love for\nMichel, which the sick man had declared in her stead.  While she had\nconsented in principle to marrying him and had allowed the preliminary\nsteps to be taken, she had never replied definitely to his urgings.\n\nBut it looked to me as if she were about to make a different decision,\none contrary to her material interests, in all the purity of her soul,\nwhich was so transparent--the decision to give herself to him freely.\n\n\"Tell me!\" he murmured.\n\nThere was almost a smile on her mouth, the mouth to which supplications\nhad been offered as to an altar.\n\nThe dying man, feeling that she was about to accept, murmured:\n\n\"I love life.\"  He shook his head.  \"I have so little time left, so\nlittle time that I do not want to sleep at night any more.\"\n\nThen he paused and waited for her to speak.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, and lightly touched--hardly grazed--the old man's hand\nwith her own.\n\nAnd in spite of myself, my inexorable, attentive eye could not help\ndetecting the stamp of theatrical solemnity, of conscious grandeur in\nher gesture.  Even though devoted and chaste, without any ulterior\nmotive, her sacrifice had a self-glorifying pride, which I perceived--I\nwho saw everything.\n\n. . . . .\n\nIn the boarding-house, the strangers were the sole topic of\nconversation.  They occupied three rooms and had a great deal of\nbaggage, and the man seemed to be very rich, though simple in his\ntastes.  They were to stay in Paris until the young woman's delivery,\nin a month or so.  She expected to go to a hospital nearby.  But the\nman was very ill, they said.  Madame Lemercier was extremely annoyed.\nShe was afraid he would die in her house.  She had made arrangements by\ncorrespondence, otherwise she would not have taken these people in--in\nspite of the tone that their wealth might give to her house.  She hoped\nhe would last long enough to be able to leave.  But when you spoke to\nher, she seemed to be worried.\n\nWhen I saw him again, I felt he was really going to die soon.  He sat\nin his chair, collapsed, with his elbows on the arms of the chair and\nhis hands drooping.  It seemed difficult for him to look at things, and\nhe held his face bowed down, so that the light from the window did not\nreveal his pupils, but only the edge of the lower lids, which gave the\nimpression of his eyes having been put out.  I remembered what the poet\nhad said, and I trembled before this man whose life was over, who\nreviewed almost his entire existence like a terrible sovereign, and was\nwrapped in a beauty that was of God.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\n\nSome one knocked at the door.\n\nIt was time for the doctor.  The sick man raised himself uncertainly in\nawe of the master.\n\n\"How have you been to-day?\"\n\n\"Bad.\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" the doctor said lightly.\n\nThey were left alone together.  The man dropped down again with a\nslowness and awkwardness that would have seemed ridiculous if it had\nnot been so sad.  The doctor stood between us.\n\n\"How has your heart been behaving?\"\n\nBy an instinct which seemed tragic to me, they both lowered their\nvoices, and in a low tone the sick man gave his daily account of the\nprogress of his malady.\n\nThe man of science listened, interrupted, and nodded his head in\napproval.  He put an end to the recital by repeating his usual\nmeaningless assurances, in a raised voice now and with his usual broad\ngesture.\n\n\"Well, well, I see there's nothing new.\"\n\nHe shifted his position and I saw the patient, his drawn features and\nwild eyes.  He was all shaken up by this talking about the dreadful\nriddle of his illness.\n\nHe calmed himself, and began to converse with the doctor, who let\nhimself down squarely into a chair, with an affable manner.  He started\nseveral topics, then in spite of himself returned to the sinister thing\nhe carried within him, his disease.\n\n\"Disgusting!\" he said.\n\n\"Bah!\" said the doctor, who was blas\u00e9.\n\nThen he rose.\n\n\"Well, till to-morrow!\"\n\n\"Yes, for the consultation.\"\n\n\"Yes.  Well, good-by!\"\n\nThe doctor went out, lightly carrying the burden of misery and cruel\nmemories, the weight of which he had ceased to feel.\n\n. . . . .\n\nEvidently the consulting physicians had just finished their examination\nof the patient in another room.  The door opened, and two doctors\nentered.\n\nTheir manner seemed to me to be stiff.  One of them was a young man,\nthe other an old man.\n\nThey looked at each other.  I tried to penetrate the silence of their\neyes and the night in their heads.  The older man stroked his beard,\nleaned against the mantelpiece, and stared at the ground.\n\n\"Hopeless,\" he said, lowering his voice, for fear of being overheard by\nthe patient.\n\nThe other nodded his head--in sign of agreement--of complicity, you might\nsay.  Both men fell silent like two guilty children.  Their eyes met\nagain.\n\n\"How old is he?\"\n\n\"Fifty-three.\"\n\n\"Lucky to live so long,\" the young doctor remarked.\n\nTo which the old man retorted philosophically:\n\n\"Yes, indeed.  But his luck won't hold out any longer.\"\n\nA silence.  The man with the grey beard murmured:\n\n\"I detected sarcoma.\"  He put his finger on his neck.  \"Right here.\"\n\nThe other man nodded--his head seemed to be nodding continually--and\nmuttered:\n\n\"Yes.  There's no possibility of operating.\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" said the old specialist, his eyes shining with a kind\nof sinister irony.  \"There's only one thing that could remove it--the\nguillotine.  Besides, the malignant condition has spread.  There is\npressure upon the submaxillary and subclavicular ganglia, and probably\nthe axillary ganglia also.  His respiration, circulation and digestion\nwill soon be obstructed and strangulation will be rapid.\"\n\nHe sighed and stood with an unlighted cigar in his mouth, his face\nrigid, his arms folded.  The young man sat down, leaning back in his\nchair, and tapped the marble mantelpiece with his idle fingers.\n\n\"What shall I tell the young woman?\"\n\n\"Put on a subdued manner and tell her it is serious, very serious, but\nno one can tell, nature is infinitely resourceful.\"\n\n\"That's so hackneyed.\"\n\n\"So much the better,\" said the old man.\n\n\"But if she insists on knowing?\"\n\n\"Don't give in.\"\n\n\"Shall we not hold out a little hope?  She is so young.\"\n\n\"No.  For that very reason we mustn't.  She'd become too hopeful.  My\nboy, never say anything superfluous at such a time.  There's no use.\nThe only result is to make them call us ignoramuses and hate us.\"\n\n\"Does he realise?\"\n\n\"I do not know.  While I examined him--you heard--I tried to find out by\nasking questions.  Once I thought he had no suspicion at all.  Then he\nseemed to understand his case as well as I did.\"\n\n\"Sarcoma forms like the human embryo,\" said the younger doctor.\n\n\"Yes, like the human embryo,\" the other assented and entered into a\nlong elaboration of this idea.\n\n\"The germ acts on the cell, as Lancereaux has pointed out, in the same\nway as a spermatozoon.  It is a micro-organism which penetrates the\ntissue, and selects and impregnates it, sets it vibrating, gives it\n/another life./  But the exciting agent of this intracellular activity,\ninstead of being the normal germ of life, is a parasite.\"\n\nHe went on to describe the process minutely and in highly scientific\nterms, and ended up by saying:\n\n\"The cancerous tissue never achieves full development.  It keeps on\nwithout ever reaching a limit.  Yes, cancer, in the strictest sense of\nthe word, is infinite in our organism.\"\n\nThe young doctor bowed assent, and then said:\n\n\"Perhaps--no doubt--we shall succeed in time in curing all diseases.\nEverything can change.  We shall find the proper method for preventing\nwhat we cannot stop when it has once begun.  And it is then only that\nwe shall dare to tell the ravages due to the spread of incurable\ndiseases.  Perhaps we shall even succeed in finding cures for certain\nincurable affections.  The remedies have not had time to prove\nthemselves.  We shall cure others--that is certain--but we shall not cure\nhim.\"  His voice deepened.  Then he asked:\n\n\"Is he a Russian or a Greek?\"\n\n\"I do not know.  I see so much into the inside of people that their\noutsides all look alike to me.\"\n\n\"They are especially alike in their vile pretense of being dissimilar\nand enemies.\"\n\nThe young man seemed to shudder, as if the idea aroused a kind of\npassion in him.  He rose, full of anger, changed.\n\n\"Oh,\" he said, \"what a disgraceful spectacle humanity presents.  In\nspite of its fearful wounds, humanity makes war upon humanity.  We who\ndeal with the sores afflicting mankind are struck more than others by\nall the evil men involuntarily inflict upon one another.  I am neither\na politician nor a propagandist.  It is not my business to occupy\nmyself with ideas.  I have too much else to do.  But sometimes I am\nmoved by a great pity, as lofty as a dream.  Sometimes I feel like\npunishing men, at other times, like going down on my knees to them.\"\n\nThe old doctor smiled sadly at this vehemence, then his smile vanished\nat the thought of the undeniable outrage.\n\n\"Unfortunately you are right.  With all the misery we have to suffer,\nwe tear ourselves with our own hands besides--the war of the classes,\nthe war of the nations, whether you look at us from afar or from above,\nwe are barbarians and madmen.\"\n\n\"Why, why,\" said the young doctor, who was getting excited, \"why do we\ncontinue to be fools when we recognise our own folly?\"\n\nThe old practitioner shrugged his shoulders, as he had a few moments\nbefore when they spoke of incurable diseases.\n\n\"The force of tradition, fanned by interested parties.  We are not\nfree, we are attached to the past.  We study what has always been done,\nand do it over again--war and injustice.  Some day perhaps humanity will\nsucceed in ridding itself of the ghost of the past.  Let us hope that\nsome day we shall emerge from this endless epoch of massacre and\nmisery.  What else is there to do than to hope?\"\n\nThe old man stopped at this.  The young man said:\n\n\"To will.\"\n\nThe other man made a gesture with his hand.\n\n\"There is one great general cause for the world's ulcer,\" the younger\none kept on.  \"You have said it--servility to the past, prejudice which\nprevents us from doing things differently, according to reason and\nmorality.  The spirit of tradition infects humanity, and its two\nfrightful manifestations are--\"\n\nThe old man rose from his chair, as if about to protest and as if to\nsay, \"Don't mention them!\"\n\nBut the young man could not restrain himself any more.\n\n\"--inheritance from the past and the fatherland.\"\n\n\"Hush!\" cried the old man.  \"You are treading on ground on which I\ncannot follow.  I recognise present evils.  I pray with all my heart\nfor the new era.  More than that, I believe in it.  But do not speak\nthat way about two sacred principles.\"\n\n\"You speak like everybody else,\" said the young man bitterly.  \"We must\ngo to the root of the evil, you know we must.  /You/ certainly do.\"\nAnd he added violently, \"Why do you act as if you did not know it?  If\nwe wish to cure ourselves of oppression and war, we have a right to\nattack them by all the means possible--all!--the principle of inheritance\nand the cult of the fatherland.\"\n\n\"No, we haven't the right,\" exclaimed the old man, who had risen in\ngreat agitation and threw a look at his interlocutor that was hard,\nalmost savage.\n\n\"We have the right!\" cried the other.\n\nAll at once, the grey head drooped, and the old man said in a low\nvoice:\n\n\"Yes, it is true, we have the right.  I remember one day during the\nwar.  We were standing beside a dying man.  No one knew who he was.  He\nhad been found in the debris of a bombarded ambulance--whether bombarded\npurposely or not, the result was the same.  His face had been mutilated\nbeyond recognition.  All you could tell was that he belonged to one or\nother of the two armies.  He moaned and groaned and sobbed and shrieked\nand invented the most appalling cries.  We listened to the sounds that\nhe made in his agony, trying to find one word, the faintest accent,\nthat would at least indicate his nationality.  No use.  Not a single\nintelligible sound from that something like a face quivering on the\nstretcher.  We looked and listened, until he fell silent.  When he was\ndead and we stopped trembling, I had a flash of comprehension.  I\nunderstood.  I understood in the depths of my being that man is more\nclosely knit to man than to his vague compatriots.\n\n\"Yes, we have a right to attack oppression and war, we have a right to.\nI saw the truth several times afterward again, but I am an old man, and\nI haven't the strength to stick to it.\"\n\n\"My dear sir,\" said the young man, rising, with respect in his voice.\nEvidently he was touched.\n\n\"Yes, I know, I know,\" the old scientist continued in an outburst of\nsincerity.  \"I know that in spite of all the arguments and the maze of\nspecial cases in which people lose themselves, the absolute, simple\ntruth remains, that the law by which some are born rich and others poor\nand which maintains a chronic inequality in society is a supreme\ninjustice.  It rests on no better basis than the law that once created\nraces of slaves.  I know patriotism has become a narrow offensive\nsentiment which as long as it lives will maintain war and exhaust the\nworld.  I know that neither work nor material and moral prosperity, nor\nthe noble refinements of progress, nor the wonders of art, need\ncompetition inspired by hate.  In fact, I know that, on the contrary,\nthese things are destroyed by arms.  I know that the map of a country\nis composed of conventional lines and different names, that our innate\nlove of self leads us closer to those that are like-minded than to\nthose who belong to the same geographical group, and we are more truly\ncompatriots of those who understand and love us and who are on the\nlevel of our own souls, or who suffer the same slavery than of those\nwhom we meet on the street.  The national groups, the units of the\nmodern world, are what they are, to be sure.  The love we have for our\nnative land would be good and praiseworthy if it did not degenerate, as\nwe see it does everywhere, into vanity, the spirit of predominance,\nacquisitiveness, hate, envy, nationalism, and militarism.  The\nmonstrous distortion of the patriotic sentiment, which is increasing,\nis killing off humanity.  Mankind is committing suicide, and our age is\nan agony.\"\n\nThe two men had the same vision and said simultaneously:\n\n\"A cancer, a cancer!\"\n\nThe older scientist grew animated, succumbing to the evidence.\n\n\"I know as well as you do that posterity will judge severely those who\nhave made a fetich of the institutions of oppression and have\ncultivated and spread the ideas supporting them.  I know that the cure\nfor an abuse does not begin until we refuse to submit to the cult that\nconsecrates it.  And I, who have devoted myself for half a century to\nthe great discoveries that have changed the face of the world, I know\nthat in introducing an innovation one encounters the hostility of\neverything that is.\n\n\"I know it is a vice to spend years and centuries saying of progress,\n'I should like it, but I do not want it.'  But as for me, I have too\nmany cares and too much work to do.  And then, as I told you, I am too\nold.  These ideas are too new for me.  A man's intelligence is capable\nof holding only a certain quantum of new, creative ideas.  When that\namount is exhausted, whatever the progress around you may be, one\nrefuses to see it and help it on.  I am incapable of carrying on a\ndiscussion to fruitful lengths.  I am incapable of the audacity of\nbeing logical.  I confess to you, my boy, I have not the strength to be\nright.\"\n\n\"My dear doctor,\" said the young man in a tone of reproach, meeting his\nolder colleague's sincerity with equal sincerity, \"you have publicly\ndeclared your disapproval of the men who publicly fought the idea of\npatriotism.  The influence of your name has been used against them.\"\n\nThe old man straightened himself, and his face coloured.\n\n\"I will not stand for our country's being endangered.\"\n\nI did not recognise him any more.  He dropped from his great thoughts\nand was no longer himself.  I was discouraged.\n\n\"But,\" the other put in, \"what you just said--\"\n\n\"That is not the same thing.  The people you speak of have defied us.\nThey have declared themselves enemies and so have justified all\noutrages in advance.\"\n\n\"Those who commit outrages against them commit the crime of ignorance,\"\nsaid the young man in a tremulous voice, sustained by a kind of vision.\n\"They fail to see the superior logic of things that are in the process\nof creation.\"  He bent over to his companion, and, in a firmer tone,\nasked, \"How can the thing that is beginning help being revolutionary?\nThose who are the first to cry out are alone, and therefore ignored or\ndespised.  You yourself just said so.  But posterity will remember the\nvanguard of martyrs.  It will hail those who have cast a doubt on the\nequivocal word 'fatherland,' and will gather them into the fold of all\nthe innovators who went before them and who are now universally\nhonoured.\"\n\n\"Never!\" cried the old man, who listened to this last with a troubled\nlook.  A frown of obstinacy and impatience deepened in his forehead,\nand he clenched his fists in hate.  \"No, that is not the same thing.\nBesides, discussions like this lead nowhere.  It would be better, while\nwe are waiting for the world to do its duty, for us to do ours and tell\nthis poor woman the truth.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\n\nThe two women were alone beside the wide open window.  In the full,\nwise light of the autumn sun, I saw how faded was the face of the\npregnant woman.\n\nAll of a sudden a frightened expression came into her eyes.  She reeled\nagainst the wall, leaned there a second, and then fell over with a\nstifled cry.\n\nAnna caught her in her arms, and dragged her along until she reached\nthe bell and rang and rang.  Then she stood still, not daring to budge,\nholding in her arms the heavy delicate woman, her own face close to the\nface with the rolling eyes.  The cries, dull and stifled at first,\nburst out now in loud shrieks.\n\nThe door opened.  People hurried in.  Outside the door the servants\nwere on the watch.  I caught sight of the landlady, who succeeded ill\nin concealing her comic chagrin.\n\nThey laid the woman on the bed.  They removed ornaments, unfolded\ntowels, and gave hurried orders.\n\nThe crisis subsided and the woman stopped shrieking.  She was so happy\nnot to be suffering any more that she laughed.  A somewhat constrained\nreflection of her laugh appeared on the faces bending over her.  They\nundressed her carefully.  She let them handle her like a child.  They\nfixed the bed.  Her legs looked very thin and her set face seemed\nreduced to nothing.  All you saw was her distended body in the middle\nof the bed.  Her hair was undone and spread around her face like a\npool.  Two feminine hands plaited it quickly.\n\nHer laughter broke and stopped.\n\n\"It is beginning again.\"\n\nA groan, which grew louder, a fresh burst of shrieks.  Anna, her only\nfriend, remained in the room.  She looked and listened, filled with\nthoughts of motherhood.  She was thinking that she, too, held within\nher such travail and such cries.\n\nThis lasted the whole day.  For hours, from morning until evening, I\nheard the heart-rending wail rising and falling from that pitiful\ndouble being.\n\nAt certain moments I fell back, overcome.  I could no longer look or\nlisten.  I renounced seeing so much truth.  Then once more, with an\neffort, I stood up against the wall and looked into the Room again.\n\nAnna kissed the woman on her forehead, in brave proximity to the\nimmense cry.\n\nWhen the cry was articulate, it was: \"No, no!  I do not want to!\"\n\nSerious, sickened faces, almost grown old in a few hours with fatigue,\npassed and repassed.\n\nI heard some one say:\n\n\"No need to help it along.  Nature must be allowed to take her course.\nWhatever nature does she does well.\"\n\nAnd in surprise my lips repeated this lie, while my eyes were fixed\nupon the frail, innocent woman who was a prey to stupendous nature,\nwhich crushed her, rolled her in her blood, and exacted all the\nsuffering from her that she could yield.\n\nThe midwife turned up her sleeves and put on her rubber gloves.  She\nwaved her enormous reddish-black, glistening hands like Indian clubs.\n\nAnd all this turned into a nightmare in which I half believed.  My head\ngrew heavy and I was sickened by the smell of blood and carbolic acid\npoured out by the bottleful.\n\nAt a moment when I, feeling too harrowed, was not looking, I heard a\ncry different from hers, a cry that was scarcely more than the sound of\na moving object, a light grating.  It was the new being that had\nunloosened itself, as yet a mere morsel of flesh taken from her flesh--\nher heart which had just been torn away from her.\n\nThis shook me to the depths of my being.  I, who had witnessed\neverything that human beings undergo, I, at this first signal of human\nlife, felt some paternal and fraternal chord--I do not know what--\nvibrating within me.\n\nShe laughed.  \"How quickly it went!\" she said.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe day was coming to a close.  Complete silence in the room.  A plain\nnight lamp was burning, the flame scarcely flickering.  The clock, like\na poor soul, was ticking faintly.  There was hardly a thing near the\nbed.  It was as in a real temple.\n\nShe lay stretched out in bed, in ideal quiet, her eyes turned toward\nthe window.  Bit by bit, she saw the evening descending upon the most\nbeautiful day in her life.\n\nThis ruined mass, this languid face shone with the glory of having\ncreated, with a sort of ecstasy which redeemed her suffering, and one\nsaw the new world of thoughts that grew out of her experience.\n\nShe thought of the child growing up.  She smiled at the joys and\nsorrows it would cause her.  She smiled also at the brother or sister\nit would have some day.\n\nAnd I thought of this at the same time that she did, and I saw her\nmartyrdom more clearly than she.\n\nThis massacre, this tragedy of flesh is so ordinary and commonplace\nthat every woman carries the memory and imprint of it, and yet nobody\nreally knows it.  The doctor, who comes into contact with so much of\nthe same sort of suffering, is not moved by it any more.  The woman,\nwho is too tender-hearted, never remembers it.  Others who look on at\ntravail have a sentimental interest, which wipes out the agony.  But I\nwho saw for the sake of seeing know, in all its horror, the agony of\nchildbirth.  I shall never forget the great laceration of life.\n\nThe night lamp was placed so that the bed was plunged in shadow.  I\ncould no longer see the mother.  I no longer knew her.  I believed in\nher.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\n\nThe woman who had been confined was moved with exquisite care into the\nnext room, which she had occupied previously.  It was larger and more\ncomfortable.\n\nThey cleaned the room from top to bottom, and I saw Anna and Philip\nseated in the room again.\n\n\"Take care, Philip,\" Anna was saying, \"you do not understand the\nChristian religion.  You really do not know /exactly/ what it is.  You\nspeak of it,\" she added, with a smile, \"as women speak of men, or as\nmen when they try to explain women.  Its fundamental element is love.\nIt is a covenant of love between human beings who instinctively detest\none another.  It is also a wealth of love in our hearts to which we\nrespond naturally when we are little children.  Later all our\ntenderness is added to it bit by bit, like treasure to treasure.  It is\na law of outpouring to which we give ourselves up, and it is the source\nof that outpouring.  It is life, it is almost a work, it is almost a\nhuman being.\"\n\n\"But, my dear Anna, that is not the Christian religion.  That is you.\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nIn the middle of the night, I heard talking through the partition.  I\nstruggled with my sleepiness and got up.\n\nThe man was alone, in bed.  A lamp was burning dimly.  He was asleep\nand talking in his sleep.\n\nHe smiled and said \"No!\" three times with growing ecstasy.  Then his\nsmile at the vision he saw faded away.  For a moment his face remained\nset, as if he were waiting, then he looked terrified, and his mouth\nopened.  \"Anna! Ah, ah!--Ah, ah!\" he cried through gaping lips.  At this\nhe awoke and rolled his eyes.  He sighed and quieted down.  He sat up\nin bed, still struck and terrified by what had passed through his mind\na few seconds before.\n\nHe looked round at everything to calm himself and banish his nightmare\ncompletely.  The familiar sight of the room, with the lamp, so wise and\nmotionless, enthroned in the middle, reassured him.  It was balm to\nthis man who had just seen what does not exist, who had just smiled at\nphantoms and touched them, who had just been mad.\n\n. . . . .\n\nI rose the next morning, all broken up.  I was restless.  I had a\nsevere headache.  My eyes were bloodshot.  When I looked at them in the\nmirror, it was as if I saw them through a veil of blood.\n\nWhen I was alone, free from the visions and scenes to which I devoted\nmy life, all kinds of worries assailed me--worry about my position,\nwhich I was risking, worry about the steps I ought to be taking and yet\nwas not taking, worry over myself that I was so intent upon casting off\nall my obligations and postponing them, and repudiating my wage-earning\nlot, by which I was destined to be held fast in the slow wheelwork of\noffice routine.\n\nI was also worried by all kinds of minuti\u00e6, annoying because they kept\ncropping up every minute--not make any noise, not light a light when the\nRoom was dark, hide myself, and hide myself all the time.  One evening\nI got a fit of coughing while listening at the hole.  I snatched up my\npillow and buried my head in it to keep the sound from coming out of my\nmouth.\n\nEverything seemed to be in a league to avenge itself upon me for I did\nnot know what.  I felt as though I should not be able to hold out much\nlonger.  Nevertheless, I made up my mind to keep on looking as long as\nmy health and my courage lasted.  It might be bad for me, but it was my\nduty.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe man was sinking.  Death was evidently in the house.\n\nIt was quite late in the evening.  They were sitting at the table\nopposite each other.\n\nI knew their marriage had taken place that afternoon, and that its\npurpose had been only to solemnise their approaching farewell.  Some\nwhite blossoms, lilies and azaleas, were strewn on the table, the\nmantelpiece, and one armchair.  He was fading away like those cut\nflowers.\n\n\"We are married,\" he said.  \"You are my wife.  You are my wife, Anna!\"\n\nIt was for the sweetness of saying, \"You are my wife,\" that he had so\nlonged.  Nothing more.  But he felt so poor, with his few days of life,\nthat it was complete happiness to him.\n\nHe looked at her, and she lifted her eyes to him--to him who adored her\nsisterly tenderness--she who had become devoted to his adoration.  What\ninfinite emotion lay hidden in these two silences, which faced each\nother in a kind of embrace; in the double silence of these two human\nbeings, who, I had observed, never touched each other, not even with\nthe tips of their fingers.\n\nThe girl lifted her head, and said, in an unsteady voice:\n\n\"It is late.  I am going to sleep.\"\n\nShe got up.  The lamp, which she set on the mantelpiece, lit up the\nroom.\n\nShe trembled.  She seemed to be in a dream and not to know how to yield\nto the dream.  Then she raised her arm and took the pins out of her\nhair.  It fell down her back and looked, in the night, as if it were\nlit by the setting sun.\n\nThe man made a sudden movement and looked at her in surprise.  Not a\nword.\n\nShe removed a gold brooch from the top of her blouse, and a bit of her\nbosom appeared.\n\n\"What are you doing, Anna, what are you doing?\"\n\n\"Why, undressing.\"\n\nShe wanted to say this in a natural voice, but had not succeeded.  He\nreplied with an inarticulate exclamation, a cry from his heart, which\nwas touched to the quick.  Stupefaction, desperate regret, and also the\nflash of an inconceivable hope agitated him, oppressed him.\n\n\"You are my husband.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he said, \"you know I am nothing.\"  He spoke feebly in a tragic\ntone.  \"Married for form's sake,\" he went on, stammering out\nfragmentary, incoherent phrases.  \"I knew it, I knew it--formality--our\nconventions--\"\n\nShe stopped, with her hand hesitating on her blouse like a flower, and\nsaid:\n\n\"You are my husband.  It is your right.\"\n\nHe made a faint gesture of denial.  She quickly corrected herself.\n\n\"No, no, it is not your right.  I want to do it.\"\n\nI began to understand how kind she was trying to be.  She wished to\ngive this man, this poor man who was sinking at her feet, a reward that\nwas worthy of her.  She wanted to bestow upon him the gift of the sight\nof her body.\n\nBut the thing was harder than the mere bestowal of a gift.  It must not\nlook like the mere payment of a debt.  He would not have consented to\nthat.  She must make him believe it was a voluntary wifely act, a\nwilling caress.  She must conceal her suffering and repugnance like a\nvice.  Feeling the difficulty of giving this delicate shade to her\nsacrifice, she was afraid of herself.\n\n\"No, Anna--dear Anna--think--\"  He was going to say, \"Think of Michel,\"\nbut he did not have the strength at that moment to use this one\ndecisive argument, and only murmured, \"You, you!\"\n\n\"I want to do it,\" she repeated.\n\n\"But I do not want you to.  No, no.\"\n\nHe said this in a weaker voice now, overcome by love.  Through\ninstinctive nobility, he covered his eyes with his hand, but gradually\nhis hand surrendered and dropped.\n\nShe continued to undress, with uncertain movements that showed she\nhardly knew what she was doing.  She took off her black waist, and her\nbust emerged like the day.  When the light shone on her she quivered\nand crossed her shining arms over her chest.  Then she started to\nunhook the belt of her skirt, her arms curved, her reddened face bent\ndown and her lips tightly compressed, as if she had nothing in mind but\nthe unhooking of her skirt.  It dropped to the ground and she stepped\nout of it with a soft rustle, like the sound the wind makes in a leafy\ngarden.\n\nShe leaned against the mantelpiece.  Her movements were large,\nmajestic, beautiful, yet dainty and feminine.  She pulled off her\nstockings.  Her legs were round and large and smooth as in a statue of\nMichael Angelo's.\n\nShe shivered and stopped, overcome by repugnance.\n\n\"I feel a little cold,\" she said in explanation and went on undressing,\nrevealing her great modesty in violating it.\n\n\"Holy Virgin!\" the man breathed in a whisper, so as not to frighten\nher.\n\n. . . . .\n\nI have never seen a woman so radiantly beautiful.  I had never dreamed\nof beauty like it.  The very first day, her face had struck me by its\nregularity and unusual charm, and her tall figure--taller than myself--\nhad seemed opulent, yet delicate, but I had never believed in such\nsplendid perfection of form.\n\nIn her superhuman proportions she was like some Eve in grand religious\nfrescoes.  Big, soft and supple, broad-shouldered, with a full\nbeautiful bosom, small feet, and tapering limbs.\n\nIn a dreamy voice, going still further in the bestowal of her supreme\ngift, she said:\n\n\"No one\"--she stressed these words with an emphasis amounting to the\nmention of a certain name--\"/no one/--listen--no one, no matter what\nhappens, will ever know what I have just done.\"\n\nAnd now she, the giver of a gift, knelt--knelt to her adorer who was\nprostrated before her like a victim.  Her shining knees touched the\ncheap common carpet.  Her chastity clothed her like a beautiful\ngarment.  She murmured broken words of gratitude, as though she felt\nthat what she was doing was higher than her duty and more beautiful,\nand that it glorified her.\n\n. . . . .\n\nAfter she dressed and left the room without their having dared to say\nanything to each other, I wavered between two doubts.  Was she right,\nor was she wrong?  I saw the man cry and I heard him mutter:\n\n\"Now I shall not be able to die.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\n\nThe man was lying in bed.  They moved about him carefully.  He stirred\nfaintly, said a few words, asked for a drink, smiled and then became\nsilent under the rush of thoughts.\n\nThat morning they had seen him fold his hands, and they had asked him\nwhether he wanted them to send for a priest.\n\n\"Yes--no,\" he said.\n\nThey went out, and a few minutes later, as if he had been waiting\noutside the door, a dark-robed priest entered.  The two were left alone\ntogether.\n\nThe dying man turned his face toward the newcomer.\n\n\"I am going to die,\" he said.\n\n\"What is your religion?\" asked the priest.\n\n\"The religion of my own country, the Greek Orthodox Church.\"\n\n\"That is a heresy which you must instantly abjure.  There is only one\ntrue religion, the Roman Catholic religion.  Confess now.  I will\nabsolve you and baptise you.\"\n\nThe other did not reply.\n\n\"Tell me what sins you have committed.  You will repent and everything\nwill be forgiven you.\"\n\n\"My sins?\"\n\n\"Try to remember.  Shall I help you?\"  He nodded toward the door. \"Who\nis that person?\"\n\n\"My--wife,\" said the man with slight hesitation, which did not escape\nthe priest, who was leaning over him with ears pricked.  He smelt a\nrat.\n\n\"How long has she been your wife?\"\n\n\"Two days.\"\n\n\"Oh, two days!  Now I have struck it.  And before that, you sinned with\nher?\"\n\n\"No,\" said the man.\n\nThe priest was put out of countenance.\n\n\"Well, I suppose you are not lying.  Why didn't you sin?  It is\nunnatural.  After all,\" he insisted, \"you are a man.\"\n\nThe sick man was bewildered and began to get excited.  Seeing this, the\npriest said:\n\n\"Do not be surprised, my son, if my questions are direct and to the\npoint.  I ask you in all simplicity, as is my august duty as a priest.\nAnswer me in the same simple spirit, and you will enter into communion\nwith God,\" he added, not without kindness.\n\n\"She is a young girl,\" said the old man.  \"I took her under my\nprotection when she was quite a child.  She shared the hardships of my\ntraveller's life, and took care of me.  I married her before my death\nbecause I am rich and she is poor.\"\n\n\"Was that the only reason--no other reason at all?\"\n\nHe fixed his look searchingly on the dying man's face, then said, \"Eh?\"\nsmiling and winking an eye, almost like an accomplice.\n\n\"I love her,\" said the man.\n\n\"At last, you are confessing!\" cried the priest.  He buried his eyes in\nthe eyes of the dying man.  The things he said fairly hit him as he lay\nthere.\n\n\"So you desired this woman, the flesh of this woman, and for a long\ntime committed a sin in spirit?  Didn't you?  Eh?\n\n\"Tell me, when you were travelling together, how did you arrange for\nrooms and beds in the hotels?\n\n\"You say she took care of you?  What did she have to do for you?\"\n\nThe two men scanned each other's faces keenly, and I saw the\nmisunderstanding between them growing.\n\nThe dying man withdrew into himself and became hardened, incredulous\nbefore this stranger, with the vulgar appearance, in whose mouth the\nwords of God and truth assumed a grotesque aspect.\n\nHowever, he made an effort:\n\n\"If I have sinned in spirit, to use your words,\" he said, \"it proves\nthat I have not sinned in reality, and why should I repent of what was\nsuffering pure and simple?\"\n\n\"No theories now.  We are not here for theorising.  I tell you, a sin\ncommitted in spirit is committed in intention, and therefore in effect,\nand must be confessed and redeemed.  Tell me how often you succumbed to\nguilty thoughts.  Give me details.\"\n\n\"But I resisted,\" moaned the unfortunate man.  \"That is all I have to\nsay.\"\n\n\"That is not enough.  The stain--you are now convinced, I presume, of\nthe justice of the term--the stain ought to be washed out by the truth.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said the dying man.  \"I confess I have committed the sin,\nand I repent of it.\"\n\n\"That is not a confession, and is none of my business,\" retorted the\npriest.  \"Now tell me, under exactly what circumstances did you yield\nto temptation with that person, to the suggestions of the evil spirit?\"\n\nThe man was swept by a wave of rebellion.  He half rose and leaned on\nhis elbow, glaring at the stranger, who returned his look steadily.\n\n\"Why have I the evil spirit in me?\" he demanded.\n\n\"You are not the only one.  All men have it.\"\n\n\"Then it is God who put it into them, since it is God who made them.\"\n\n\"Ah, you are a debater!  Well, if it gives you pleasure, I will answer\nyou.  Man has both the spirit of good and the spirit of evil in him,\nthat is to say, the possibility of doing the one or the other.  If he\nsuccumbs to evil, he is damned.  If he triumphs over it, he is\nrewarded.  To be saved, he must earn salvation by struggling with all\nhis powers.\"\n\n\"What powers?\"\n\n\"Virtue and faith.\"\n\n\"And if he does not have enough virtue and faith, is that his fault?\"\n\n\"Yes, because that comes from his having too much iniquity and\nblindness in his soul.\"\n\nThe man sat up again, seized by a new fit of anger which consumed him\nlike a fever.\n\n\"Ah,\" he said, \"original sin!  There's nothing that can excuse the\nsuffering of good people on earth.  It is an abomination.\"\n\nThe priest looked at the rebellious man blankly.\n\n\"How else could souls be tried?\" he said quite calmly.\n\n\"Nothing can excuse the suffering of the good.\"\n\n\"God's designs are inscrutable.\"\n\nThe dying man flung out his emaciated arms.  His eyes became hollow.\n\n\"You are a liar!\"\n\n\"Enough,\" said the priest.  \"I have listened patiently to your\nramblings and feel sorry for you.  But there's no good arguing.  You\nmust prepare to appear before God, from whom you seem to have lived\napart.  If you have suffered, you will be consoled in His bosom.  Let\nthat suffice for you.\"\n\nThe invalid fell back and lay still for a while.  He remained\nmotionless under the white spread, like a reclining sepulchral statue\nof marble with a face of bronze.\n\nHe regained his voice.\n\n\"God cannot console me.\"\n\n\"My son, my son, what are you saying?\"\n\n\"God cannot console me, because He cannot give me what I want.\"\n\n\"Ah, my poor child, how far gone you are in your blindness!  Why did\nyou have me summoned?\"\n\n\"I had hopes, I had hopes.\"\n\n\"Hopes?  Hopes of what?\"\n\n\"I do not know.  The things we hope for are always the things we do not\nknow.\"\n\nHis hands wavered in the air, then fell down again.\n\n\"Time is passing,\" said the priest and began all over again.\n\n\"Tell me the circumstances of your sin.  Tell me.  When you were alone\nwith this person, when you two were close together, did you talk to\neach other, or did you keep quiet?\"\n\n\"I do not believe in you,\" said the man.\n\nThe priest frowned.\n\n\"Repent, and tell me that you believe in the Catholic religion, which\nwill save you.\"\n\nBut the other man shook his head in utter anguish and denied all his\nhappiness.\n\n\"Religion--\" he began.\n\nThe priest interrupted brutally.\n\n\"You are not going to start over again!  Keep quiet.  All your\narguments are worthless.  Begin by /believing/ in religion and then you\nwill see what it means.  I have come to force you to believe.\"\n\nIt was a duel to the end.  The two men at the edge of the grave glared\nat each other like enemies.\n\n\"You must believe.\"\n\n\"I do not believe.\"\n\n\"You must.\"\n\n\"You would make truth different from what it is by threats.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"  He stressed the clear, elementary command.  \"Whether you are\nconvinced or not, believe.  Evidence does not count.  The one important\nthing is faith.  God does not deign to convince the incredulous.  These\nare no longer the days of miracles.  The only miracle is in our hearts,\nand it is faith.  Believe!\"  He hurled the same word ceaselessly, like\nstones.\n\n\"My son,\" he continued, more solemnly, standing up, with his large fat\nhand uplifted, \"I exact of you an act of faith.\"\n\n\"Get out!\" said the man, with hatred.\n\nBut the priest did not stir.  Goaded by the urgence of the case,\nimpelled by the necessity of saving this soul in spite of itself, he\nbecame implacable.\n\n\"You are going to die,\" he said, \"you are going to die.  You have only\na few more minutes to live.  Submit.\"\n\n\"No,\" said the man.\n\nThe black-robed priest caught hold of both his hands.\n\n\"Submit.  No discussion.  You are losing precious time.  All your\nreasoning is of no account.  We are alone, you and I before God.\"\n\nHe shook his head with the low bulging forehead, the prominent fleshy\nnose, wide moist nostrils dark with snuff, thin yellow lips like twine\ntight across two projecting teeth that showed by themselves in the\ndarkness.  There were lines on his forehead and between his eyebrows\nand around his mouth.  His cheeks and chin were covered with a grey\nlayer.\n\n\"I represent God,\" he said.  \"You are in my presence as if you were in\nthe presence of God.  Simply say 'I believe,' and I will absolve you.\n'I believe,' that is all.  The rest makes no difference to me.\"\n\nHe bent lower and lower, almost gluing his face to that of the dying\nman, trying to plant his absolution like a blow.\n\n\"Simply say with me, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.'  I do not ask you\nto do anything else.\"\n\nThe sick man's face contracted.\n\n\"No--no!\"\n\nSuddenly the priest rose with a triumphant air.\n\n\"At last!  You have said it.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" muttered the priest between his teeth.\n\nHe twisted the man's hands in his.  You felt he would have put his arms\naround him to stifle him, assassinate him if his death rattle would\nhave brought a confession--so possessed was he with the desire to\npersuade him, to snatch from him the words he had come to seek on his\nlips.\n\nHe let the withered hands go, paced the room like a wild beast, then\ncame back and stationed himself in front of the bed again.\n\n\"Remember--you are going to die,\" he stammered to the miserable man.\n\"You will soon be in the earth.  Say, 'Our Father,' just these two\nwords, nothing else.\"\n\nHe hung over him with his eyes on his mouth, his dark, crouching figure\nlike a demon lying in wait for a soul, like the whole Church over dying\nhumanity.\n\n\"Say it!  Say it!  Say it!\"\n\nThe sick man tried to wrest himself free.  There was a rattle of fury\nin his throat.  With the remnant of his voice, in a low tone, he\ngasped:\n\n\"No!\"\n\n\"Scoundrel!\" cried the priest.\n\nAnd he struck him in the face.  After that neither man made a move for\na while.  Then the priest went at it again.\n\n\"At least you will die holding a crucifix,\" he snarled.\n\nHe drew a crucifix from his pocket, and put it down hard on his breast.\n\nThe other man shook himself in a dull horror, as if religion were\ncontagious, and threw the crucifix on the floor.\n\nThe priest stooped, mumbling insults.  \"Carrion, you want to die like a\ndog, but I am here!\"  He picked up the crucifix, and with a gleam in\nhis eyes, sure of crushing him, waited for his final chance.\n\nThe dying man panted, completely at the end of his strength.  The\npriest, seeing him in his power, laid the crucifix on his breast again.\nThis time the other man let it stay there, unable to do anything but\nlook at it with eyes of hatred.  But his eyes did not make it fall.\n\n. . . . .\n\nWhen the black man had gone out into the night, and the patient little\nby little recovered from the struggle and felt free once more, it\noccurred to me that the priest in his violence and coarseness was\nhorribly right.  A bad priest?  No, a good priest, who spoke strictly\naccording to his conscience and belief, and tried to apply his religion\nsimply, such as it was, without hypocritical concessions.  Ignorant,\nclumsy, gross--yes, but honest and logical even in his fearful attempt.\nIn the half-hour that I had listened to him, he had tried by all the\nmeans that religion uses and recommends to follow his calling of making\nconverts and giving absolution.  He had said everything that a priest\ncannot help saying.  Every dogma had come out clearly and definitely\nfrom the mouth of this rough, common hewer of wood and drawer of water\nfor his religion.  If the sick man was right, so was the priest.\n\n. . . . .\n\nWhat was that thing near the bed, that thing which loomed so high and\ndid not stir and had not been there a moment before?  It stood between\nme and the leaping flame of the candle placed near the sick man.\n\nI accidentally made a little noise in leaning against the wall, and\nvery slowly the thing turned a face toward me with a frightened look on\nit that frightened me.\n\nI knew that head.  Was it not the landlord himself, a man with peculiar\nways, whom we seldom saw?\n\nHe had been walking up and down the hall, waiting for the sick man to\nbe left alone.  And now he was standing beside him as he lay in bed\neither asleep or helpless from weakness.\n\nHe stretched his hand out toward a bag.  In doing so, he kept his eyes\non the dying man, so that his hand missed the bag twice.\n\nThere was a creaking on the floor above, and both the man and I\ntrembled.  A door slammed.  He rose as if to keep back an exclamation.\n\nHe opened the bag slowly, and I, no longer myself, I was afraid that he\nwould not have time.\n\nHe drew a package out of the bag.  It made a slight sound.  When he saw\nthe roll of banknotes in his hand, I observed the extraordinary gleam\non his face.  All the sentiments of love were there, adoration,\nmysticism, and also brutal love, a sort of supernatural ecstasy and the\ngross satisfaction that was already tasting immediate joys.  Yes, all\nthe loves impressed themselves for a moment on the profound humanity of\nthis thief's face.\n\nSome one was waiting for him behind the half-open door.  I saw an arm\nbeckoning to him.\n\nHe went out on tiptoe, first slowly, then quickly.\n\nI am an honest man, and yet I held my breath along with him.  I\n/understood/ him.  There is no use finding excuses for myself.  With a\nhorror and a joy akin to his, I was an accomplice in his robbery.\n\nAll thefts are induced by passion, even that one, which was cowardly\nand vulgar.  Oh, his look of inextinguishable love for the treasure\nsuddenly snatched up.  All offences, all crimes are outrages\naccomplished in the image of the immense desire for theft, which is the\nvery essence and form of our naked soul.\n\nDoes that mean that we must absolve criminals, and that punishment is\nan injustice?  No, we must protect ourselves.  Since society rests upon\nhonesty, we must punish criminals to reduce them to impotence, and\nabove all to strike them with terror, and halt others on the threshold\nof evil deeds.  But once the crime is established, we must not look for\nexcuses for it.  We run the danger then of always finding excuses.  We\nmust condemn it in advance, by virtue of a cold principle.  Justice\nshould be as cold as steel.\n\nBut justice is not a virtue, as its name seems to indicate.  It is an\norganisation the virtue of which is to be feelingless.  It does not aim\nat expiation.  Its function is to establish warning examples, to make\nof the criminal a thing to frighten off others.\n\nNobody, nothing has the right to exact expiation.  Besides, no one can\nexact it.  Vengeance is too remote from the act and falls, so to speak,\nupon another person.  Expiation, then, is a word that has no\napplication in the world.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\n\nHe was very, very weak and lay absolutely still and silent, chained\nfast by the baleful weight of his flesh.  Death had already put an end\nto even his faintest quiverings.\n\nHis wonderful companion sat exactly where his fixed eyes fell on her,\nat the foot of the bed.  She held her arms resting on the base board of\nthe bed with her beautiful hands drooping.  Her profile sloped downward\nslightly, that fine design, that delicate etching of eternal sweetness\nupon the gentle background of the evening.  Under the dainty arch of\nher eyebrows her large eyes swam clear and pure, miniature skies.  The\nexquisite skin of her cheeks and forehead gleamed faintly, and her\nluxuriant hair, which I had seen flowing, gracefully encircled her\nbrow, where her thoughts dwelt invisible as God.\n\nShe was alone with the man who lay there as if already in his grave--she\nwho had wished to cling to him by a thrill and to be his chaste widow\nwhen he died.  He and I saw nothing on earth except her face.  And in\ntruth, there was nothing else to be seen in the deep shadows of the\nevening.\n\nA voice came from the bed.  I scarcely recognised it.\n\n\"I haven't said everything yet that I want to say,\" said the voice.\n\nAnna bent over the bed as if it were the edge of a coffin to catch the\nwords that were to issue for the last time, no doubt, from the\nmotionless and almost formless body.\n\n\"Shall I have the time?  Shall I?\"\n\nIt was difficult to catch the whisper, which almost stuck in his\nthroat.  Then his voice accustomed itself to existence again and became\ndistinct.\n\n\"I should like to make a confession to you, Anna.  I do not want this\nthing to die with me.  I am sorry to let this memory be snuffed out.  I\nam sorry for it.  I hope it will never die.\n\n\"I loved once before I loved you.\n\n\"Yes, I loved the girl.  The image I have left of her is a sad, gentle\none.  I should like to snatch it from death.  I am giving it to you\nbecause you happen to be here.\"\n\nHe gathered himself together to have a clear vision of the woman of\nwhom he was speaking.\n\n\"She was fair-haired and fair-skinned,\" he said.\n\n\"You needn't be jealous, Anna.  (People are jealous sometimes even when\nthey are not in love.)  It was a few years after you were born.  You\nwere a little child then, and nobody turned to look at you on the\nstreets except the mothers.\n\n\"We were engaged in the ancestral park of her parents.  She had bright\ncurls tied with ribbons.  I pranced on horseback for her.  She smiled\nfor me.\n\n\"I was young and strong then, full of hope and full of the beginning of\nthings.  I thought I was going to conquer the world, and even had the\nchoice of the means to conquer it.  Alas, all I did was to cross\nhastily over its surface.  She was younger than I, a bud so recently,\nblown, that one day, I remember, I saw her doll lying on the bench that\nwe were sitting on.  We used to say to each other, 'We shall come back\nto this park when we are old, shall we not?'  We loved each other--you\nunderstand--I have no time to tell you, but you understand, Anna, that\nthese few relics of memory that I give you at random are beautiful,\nincredibly beautiful.\n\n\"She died the very day in spring when the date of our wedding was set.\nWe were both taken sick with a disease that was epidemic that year in\nour country, and she did not have the strength to escape the monster.\nThat was twenty-five years ago.  Twenty-five years, Anna, between her\ndeath and mine.\n\n\"And now here is the most precious secret, her name.\"\n\nHe whispered it.  I did not catch it.\n\n\"Say it over again, Anna.\"\n\nShe repeated it, vague syllables which I caught without being able to\nunite them into a word.\n\n\"I confide the name to you because you are here.  If you were not here,\nI should tell it to anyone, no matter whom, provided that would save\nit.\"\n\nHe added in an even, measured voice, to make it hold out until the end:\n\n\"I have something else to confess, a wrong and a misfortune.\"\n\n\"Didn't you confess it to the priest?\" she asked in surprise.\n\n\"I hardly told him anything,\" was all he replied.\n\nAnd he resumed, speaking calmly, with his full voice:\n\n\"I wrote poems during our engagement, poems about ourselves.  The\nmanuscript was named after her.  We read the poems together, and we\nboth liked and admired them.  'Beautiful, beautiful!' she would say,\nclapping her hands, whenever I showed her a new poem.  And when we were\ntogether, the manuscript was always with us--the most beautiful book\nthat had ever been written, we thought.  She did not want the poems to\nbe published and get away from us.  One day in the garden she told me\nwhat she wanted.  'Never! Never!' she said over and over again, like an\nobstinate, rebellious child, tossing her dainty head with its dancing\nhair.\"\n\nThe man's voice became at once surer and more tremulous, as he filled\nin and enlivened certain details in the old story.\n\n\"Another time, in the conservatory, when it had been raining\nmonotonously since morning, she asked, 'Philip'--she used to pronounce\nmy name just the way you do.\"\n\nHe paused, himself surprised by the primitive simplicity of what he had\njust expressed.\n\n\"'Do you know,' she asked, 'the story of the English painter Rossetti?'\nand she told me the episode, which had so vividly impressed her, how\nRossetti had promised the lady he loved to let her keep forever the\nmanuscript of the book he had written for her, and if she died, to lay\nit beside her in her coffin.  She died, and he actually carried out his\npromise and buried the manuscript with her.  But later, bitten by the\nlove of glory, he violated his promise and the tomb.  'You will let me\nhave your book if I die before you, and will not take it back, will\nyou, Philip?'  And I promised laughingly, and she laughed too.\n\n\"I recovered from my illness slowly.  When I was strong enough, they\ntold me that she had died.  When I was able to go out, they took me to\nthe tomb, the vast family sepulchre which somewhere hid her new little\ncoffin.\n\n\"There's no use my telling you how miserable I was and how I grieved\nfor her.  Everything reminded me of her.  I was full of her, and yet\nshe was no more!  As I recovered from the illness, during which my\nmemory had faded, each detail brought me a recollection.  My grief was\na fearful reawakening of my love.  The sight of the manuscript brought\nmy promise back to me.  I put it in a box without reading it again,\nalthough I had forgotten it, things having been blotted out of my mind\nduring my convalescence.  I had the slab removed and the coffin opened,\nand a servant put the book in her hands.\n\n\"I lived.  I worked.  I tried to write a book.  I wrote dramas and\npoems.  But nothing satisfied me, and gradually I came to want our book\nback.\n\n\"I knew it was beautiful and sincere and vibrant with the two hearts\nthat had given themselves to each other.  Then, like a coward, three\nyears afterward, I tried to re-write it--to show it to the world.  Anna,\nyou must have pity on us all!  But I must say it was not only the\ndesire for glory and praise, as in the case of the English artist,\nwhich impelled me to close my ears to the sweet, gentle voice out of\nthe past, so strong in its powerlessness, 'You will not take it back\nfrom me, will you, Philip?'  It was not only for the sake of showing\noff in a book of great beauty.  It was also to refresh my memory, for\nall our love was in that book.\n\n\"I did not succeed in reconstructing the poems.  The weakening of my\nfaculties soon after they were written, the three years afterward\nduring which I made a devout effort not to revive the poems even in\nthought, since they were not to keep on living--all this had actually\nwiped the book out of my mind.  It was with difficulty that I recalled--\nand then only by chance--the mere titles of some of the poems, or a few\nof the verses.  Of some parts, all I retained was just a confused echo.\nI needed the manuscript itself, which was in the tomb.\n\n\"One night, I felt myself going there.\n\n\"I felt myself going there after periods of hesitation and inward\nstruggles which it is useless to tell you about because the struggles\nthemselves were useless.  I thought of the other man, of the\nEnglishman, of my brother in misery and crime as I walked along the\nlength of the cemetery wall while the wind froze my legs.  I kept\nsaying to myself it was not the same thing, and this insane assurance\nwas enough to make me keep on.\n\n\"I asked myself if I should take a light.  With a light it would be\nquick.  I should see the box at once and should not have to touch\nanything else--but then I should see /everything!/  I preferred to grope\nin the dark.  I had rubbed a handkerchief sprinkled with perfume over\nmy face, and I shall never forget the deception of this odour.  For an\ninstant, in the stupefaction of my terror, I did not recognise the\nfirst thing I touched--her necklace--I saw it again on her living body.\nThe box!  The corpse gave it to me with a squashing sound.  Something\ngrazed me faintly.\n\n\"I had meant to tell you only a few things, Anna.  I thought I should\nnot have time to tell you how everything happened.  But it is better\nso, better for me that you should know all.  Life, which has been so\ncruel to me, is kind at this moment when you are listening, you who\nwill live.  And my desire to express what I felt, to revive the past,\nwhich made of me a being accursed during the days I am telling you\nabout, is a benefit this evening which passes from me to you, and from\nyou to me.\"\n\nThe young woman was bending toward him attentively.  She was motionless\nand silent.  What could she have said, what could she have done, that\nwould have been sweeter than her silent attention?\n\n\"The rest of the night I read the stolen manuscript.  Was it not the\nonly way to forget her death and think of her life?\n\n\"I soon saw that the poems were not what I had thought them to be.\n\n\"They game me a growing impression of being confused and much too\nlengthy.  The book so long adored was no better than what I had done\nafterwards.  I recalled, step by step, the background, the occasion,\nthe vanished gesture that had inspired these verses, and in spite of\ntheir resurrection, I found them undeniably commonplace and\nextravagant.\n\n\"An icy despair gripped me, as I bent my head over these remains of\nsong.  Their sojourn in the tomb seemed to have deformed and crushed\nthe life out of my verses.  They were as miserable as the wasted hand\nfrom which I had taken them.  They had been so sweet!  'Beautiful,\nbeautiful!' the happy little voice had cried so many times while she\nclasped her hands in admiration.\n\n\"It was because her voice and the poems had been vibrating with life\nand because the ardour and delirium of our love had adorned my rhymes\nwith all their charms, that they seemed so beautiful.  But all that was\npast, and in reality our love was no more.\n\n\"It was oblivion that I read at the same time as I read my book.  Yes,\ndeath had been contagious.  My verses had remained there too long,\nsleeping down below there in awful peace--in the sepulchre into which I\nshould never have dared to enter if love had still been alive.  She was\nindeed dead.\n\n\"I thought of what a useless and sacrilegious thing I had done and how\nuseless and sacrilegious everything is that we promise and swear to\nhere below.\n\n\"She was indeed dead.  How I cried that night.  It was my true night of\nmourning.  When you have just lost a beloved there is a wretched\nmoment, after the brutal shock, when you begin to understand that all\nis over, and blank despair surrounds you and looms like a giant.  That\nnight was a moment of such despair when I was under the sway of my\ncrime and the disenchantment of my poems, greater than the crime,\ngreater than everything.\n\n\"I saw her again.  How pretty she was, with her bright, lively ways,\nher animated charm, her rippling laugh, the endless number of questions\nshe was always asking.  I saw her again in the sunlight on the bright\nlawn.  She was wearing a dress of old rose satin, and she bent over and\nsmoothed the soft folds of her skirt and looked at her little feet.\n(Near us was the whiteness of a statue.)  I remembered how once I had\nfor fun tried to find a single flaw in her complexion.  Not a spot on\nforehead, cheek, chin--anywhere.  Her skin was as smooth as if it had\nbeen polished.  I felt as though that exquisite delicate face were\nsomething ever in flight that had paused for an instant for my sake,\nand I stammered, almost with tears in my voice, 'It is too much!  It is\ntoo much!'  Everybody looked on her as a princess.  In the streets of\nthe town the shopkeepers were glad to see her pass by.  Did she not\nhave a queenly air as she sat half-reclining on the great carved stone\nbench in the park, that great stone bench which was now a kind of empty\ntomb?\n\n\"For a moment in the midst of time I knew how much I had loved her, she\nwho had been alive and who was dead, who had been the sun and who was\nnow a kind of obscure spring under the earth.\n\n\"And I also mourned the human heart.  That night I understood the\nextremes of what I had felt.  Then the inevitable forgetfulness came,\nthe time came when it did not sadden me to remember that I had mourned.\n\n. . . . .\n\n\"That is the confession I wanted to make to you, Anna.  I wanted this\nstory of love, which is a quarter of a century old, never to end.  It\nwas so real and thrilling, it was such a big thing, that I told it to\nyou in all simplicity, to you who will survive.  After that I came to\nlove you and I do love you.  I offer to you as to a sovereign the image\nof the little creature who will always be seventeen.\"\n\nHe sighed.  What he said proved to me once more the inadequacy of\nreligion to comfort the human heart.\n\n\"Now I adore you and you alone--I who adored her, I whom she adored.\nHow can there possibly be a paradise where one would find happiness\nagain?\"\n\nHis voice rose, his inert arms trembled.  He came out of his profound\nimmobility for a moment.\n\n\"Ah, /you/ are the one, /you/ are the one--/you/ alone.\"\n\nAnd a great cry of impotence broke from him.\n\n\"Anna, Anna, if you and I had been really married, if we had lived\ntogether as man and wife, if we had had children, if you had been\nbeside me as you are this evening, but really beside me!\"\n\nHe fell back.  He had cried out so loud that even if there had been no\nbreach in the wall, I should have heard him in my room.  He voiced his\nwhole dream, he threw it out passionately.  This sincerity, which was\nindifferent to everything, had a definite significance which bruised my\nheart.\n\n\"Forgive me.  Forgive me.  It is almost blasphemy.  I could not help\nit.\"\n\nHe stopped.  You felt his will-power making his face calm, his soul\ncompelling him to silence, but his eyes seemed to mourn.\n\nHe repeated in a lower voice, as if to himself, \"You!  You!\"\n\nHe fell asleep with \"You\" on his lips.\n\n. . . . .\n\nHe died that night.  I saw him die.  By a strange chance he was alone\nat the last moment.\n\nThere was no death rattle, no death agony, properly speaking.  He did\nnot claw the bedclothes with his fingers, nor speak, nor cry.  No last\nsigh, no last flash.\n\nHe had asked Anna for a drink.  As there was no more water in the room\nand the nurse happened to be away at that moment, she had gone out to\nget some quickly.  She did not even shut the door.\n\nThe lamplight filled the room.  I watched the man's face and felt, by\nsome sign, that the great silence at that moment was drowning him.\n\nThen instinctively I cried out to him.  I could not help crying out so\nthat he should not be alone.\n\n\"I see you!\"\n\nMy strange voice, disused from speaking, penetrated into the room.\n\nBut he died at the very instant that I gave him my madman's alms.  His\nhead dropped back stiffly, his eyeballs rolled.  Anna came in again.\nShe must have caught the sound of my outcry vaguely, for she hesitated.\n\nShe saw him.  A fearful cry burst from her with all the force of her\nhealthy body, a true widow's cry.  She dropped on her knees at the\nbedside.\n\nThe nurse came in right after her and raised her arms.  Silence\nreigned, that flashing up of incredible misery into which you sink\ncompletely in the presence of the dead, no matter who you are or where\nyou are.  The woman on her knees and the woman standing up watched the\nman who was stretched there, inert as if he had never lived.  They were\nboth almost dead.\n\nThen Anna wept like a child.  She rose.  The nurse went to tell the\nothers.  Instinctively, Anna, who was wearing a light waist, picked up\na black shawl that the nurse had left on a chair and put it around her.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe room, so recently desolate, now filled with life.\n\nThey lit candles everywhere, and the stars, visible through the window,\ndisappeared.\n\nThey knelt down, and cried and prayed to him.  The dead man held\ncommand.  \"He\" was always on their lips.  Servants were there whom I\nhad not yet seen but whom he knew well.  These people around him all\nseemed to be lying, as though it was they who were suffering, they who\nwere dying, and he were alive.\n\n\"He must have suffered a great deal when he died,\" said the doctor, in\na low voice to the nurse, at a moment when he was quite near me.\n\n\"But he was so weak, the poor man!\"\n\n\"Weakness does not prevent suffering except in the eyes of others,\"\nsaid the doctor.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe next morning the drab light of the early day fell upon the faces\nand the melancholy funeral lights.  The coming of the day, keen and\ncold, had a depressing effect upon the atmosphere of the room, making\nit heavier, thicker.\n\nA voice in a low apologetic tone for a moment interrupted the silence\nthat had lasted for hours.\n\n\"You mustn't open the window.  It isn't good for the dead body.\"\n\n\"It is cold,\" some one muttered.\n\nTwo hands went up and drew a fur piece close.  Some one rose, and then\nsat down again.  Some one else turned his head.  There was a sigh.\n\nIt was as if they had taken advantage of these few words to come out of\nthe calm in which they had been concealed.  Then they glanced once more\nat the man on the bier--motionless, inexorably motionless.\n\nI must have fallen asleep when all at once I heard the church bells\nringing in the grey sky.\n\nAfter that harassing night there was a relaxation from rigid attention\nto the stillness of death, and an inexplicable sweetness in the ringing\nof the bells carried me back forcibly to my childhood.  I thought of\nthe countryside where I used to hear the bells ringing, of my native\nland, where everything was peaceful and good, and the snow meant\nChristmas, and the sun was a cool disk that one could and should look\nat.\n\nThe tolling of the bells was over.  The echo quietly died away, and\nthen the echo of the echo.  Another bell struck, sounding the hour.\nEight o'clock, eight sonorous detached strokes, beating with terrible\nregularity, with invincible calm, simple, simple.  I counted them, and\nwhen they had ceased to pulsate in the air, I could not help counting\nthem over again.  It was time that was passing--formless time, and the\nhuman effort that defined it and regularized it and made of it a work\nas of destiny.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\n\nI was alone.  It was late at night, and I was sitting at my table.  My\nlamp was buzzing like summer in the fields.  I lifted my eyes.  The\nstars studded the heavens above.  The city was plunged at my feet.  The\nhorizon escaped from nearby into eternity.  The lights and shadows\nformed an infinite sphere around me.\n\nI was not at ease that night.  I was a prey to an immense distress.  I\nsat as if I had fallen into my chair.  As on the first day I looked at\nmy reflection in the glass, and all I could do was just what I had done\nthen, simply cry, \"I!\"\n\nI wanted to know the secret of life.  I had seen men, groups, deeds,\nfaces.  In the twilight I had seen the tremulous eyes of beings as deep\nas wells.  I had seen the mouth that said in a burst of glory, \"I am\nmore sensitive than others.\"  I had seen the struggle to love and make\none's self understood, the refusal of two persons in conversation to\ngive themselves to each other, the coming together of two lovers, the\nlovers with an infectious smile, who are lovers in name only, who bury\nthemselves in kisses, who press wound to wound to cure themselves,\nbetween whom there is really no attachment, and who, in spite of their\necstasy deriving light from shadow, are strangers as much as the sun\nand the moon are strangers.  I had heard those who could find no crumb\nof peace except in the confession of their shameful misery, and I had\nseen faces pale and red-eyed from crying.  I wanted to grasp it all at\nthe same time.  All the truths taken together make only one truth.  I\nhad had to wait until that day to learn this simple thing.  It was this\ntruth of truths which I needed.\n\nNot because of my love of mankind.  It is not true that we love\nmankind.  No one ever has loved, does love, or will love mankind.  It\nwas for myself, solely for myself, that I sought to attain the full\ntruth, which is above emotion, above peace, even above life, like a\nsort of death.  I wanted to derive guidance from it, a faith.  I wanted\nto use it for my own good.\n\nI went over the things I had seen since living in the boarding-house.\nThey were so numerous that I had become a stranger to myself.  I\nscarcely had a name any more.  I fairly listened to the memory of them,\nand in supreme concentration I tried to see and understand what I was.\nIt would be so beautiful to know who I was.\n\nI thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who had\nsuffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth.  I thought of the\nLatin poet who wished to reassure and console men by showing them truth\nas unveiled as a statue.  A fragment of his prelude came to my mind,\nlearned long ago, then dismissed and lost like almost everything that I\nhad taken the pains to learn up till then.  He said he kept watch in\nthe serene nights to find the words, the poem in which to convey to men\nthe ideas that would deliver them.  For two thousand years men have\nalways had to be reassured and consoled.  For two thousand years I have\nhad to be delivered.  Nothing has changed the surface of things.  The\nteachings of Christ have not changed the surface of things, and would\nnot even if men had not ruined His teachings so that they can no longer\nfollow them honestly.  Will the great poet come who shall settle the\nboundaries of belief and render it eternal, the poet who will be, not a\nfool, not an ignorant orator, but a wise man, the great inexorable\npoet?  I do not know, although the lofty words of the man who died in\nthe boarding-house have given me a vague hope of his coming and the\nright to adore him already.\n\nBut what about me--me, who am only a glance from the eye of destiny?  I\nam like a poet on the threshold of a work, an accursed, sterile poet\nwho will leave no glory behind, to whom chance /lent/ the truth that\ngenius would have /given/ him, a frail work which will pass away with\nme, mortal and sealed to others like myself, but a sublime work\nnevertheless, which will show the essential outlines of life and relate\nthe drama of dramas.\n\n. . . . .\n\nWhat am I?  I am the desire not to die.  I have always been impelled--\nnot that evening alone--by the need to construct the solid, powerful\ndream that I shall never leave again.  We are all, always, the desire\nnot to die.  This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life's\ncomplexity, but at bottom this is what it is:  To continue to /be,/ to\n/be/ more and more, to develop and to endure.  All the force we have,\nall our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves in\none way or another.  We intensify ourselves with new impressions, new\nsensations, new ideas.  We endeavour to take what we do not have and to\nadd it to ourselves.  Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon\nthe fear of death.  That is what it is.  I have seen it myself.\nInstinctive movements, untrammelled utterances always tend the same\nway, and the most dissimilar utterances are all alike.\n\n. . . . .\n\nBut afterwards!  Where are the words that will light the way?  What is\nhumanity in the world, and what is the world?\n\nEverything is within me, and there are no judges, and there are no\nboundaries and no limits to me.  The /de profundis,/ the effort not to\ndie, the fall of desire with its soaring cry, all this has not stopped.\nIt is part of the immense liberty which the incessant mechanism of the\nhuman heart exercises (always something different, always!).  And its\nexpansion is so great that death itself is effaced by it.  For how\ncould I imagine my death, except by going outside of myself, and\nlooking at myself as if I were not I but somebody else?\n\nWe do not die.  Each human being is alone in the world.  It seems\nabsurd, contradictory to say this, and yet it is so.  But there are\nmany human beings like me.  No, we cannot say that.  In saying that, we\nset ourselves outside the truth in a kind of abstraction.  All we can\nsay is:  I am alone.\n\nAnd that is why we do not die.\n\nOnce, bowed in the evening light, the dead man had said, \"After my\ndeath, life will continue.  Every detail in the world will continue to\noccupy the same place quietly.  All the traces of my passing will die\nlittle by little, and the void I leave behind will be filled once\nmore.\"\n\nHe was mistaken in saying so.  He carried all the truth with him.  Yet\nwe, /we/ saw him die.  He was dead for us, but not for himself.  I feel\nthere is a fearfully difficult truth here which we must get, a\nformidable contradiction.  But I hold on to the two ends of it, groping\nto find out what formless language will translate it.  Something like\nthis:  \"Every human being is the whole truth.\"  I return to what I\nheard.  We do not die since we are alone.  It is the others who die.\nAnd this sentence, which comes to my lips tremulously, at once baleful\nand beaming with light, announces that death is a false god.\n\nBut what of the others?  Granted that I have the great wisdom to rid\nmyself of the haunting dread of my own death, there remains the death\nof others and the death of so many feelings and so much sweetness.  It\nis not the conception of truth that will change sorrow.  Sorrow, like\njoy, is absolute.\n\nAnd yet!  The infinite grandeur of our misery becomes confused with\nglory and almost with happiness, with cold haughty happiness.  Was it\nout of pride or joy that I began to smile when the first white streaks\nof dawn turned my lamp pale and I saw I was alone in the universe?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\n\nIt was the first time I had seen her in mourning, and that evening her\nyouth shone more resplendent than ever.\n\nHer departure was close at hand.  She looked about to see if she had\nleft anything behind in the room, which had been made ready for other\npeople, the room which was already formless, already abandoned.\n\nThe door opened.  The young woman turned her head.  A man appeared in\nthe sunny doorway.\n\n\"Michel, Michel, Michel!\" she cried.\n\nShe stretched out her arms, hesitated, and for a few seconds remained\nmotionless as light, with her full gaze upon him.\n\nThen, in spite of where she was and the purity of her heart and the\nchastity of her whole life, her legs shook and she was on the verge of\nfalling over.\n\nHe threw his hat on the bed with a sweeping romantic gesture.  He\nfilled the room with his presence, with his weight.  His footsteps made\nthe floor creak.  He kept her from falling.  Tall as she was, he was a\nwhole head taller.  His marked features were hard and remarkably fine.\nHis face under a heavy head of black hair was bright and clean, as\nthough new.  He had a drooping moustache and full red lips.\n\nHe put his hands on the young woman's shoulders, and looked at her, in\nreadiness for his eager embrace.\n\nThey held each other close, staggering.  They said the same word at the\nsame time, \"At last!\"  That was all they said, but they said it over\nand over again in a low voice, chanting it together.  Their eyes\nuttered the same sweet cry.  Their breasts communicated it to each\nother.  It seemed to be tying them together and making them merge into\none.  At last!  Their long separation was over.  Their love was victor.\nAt last they were together.  And I saw her quiver from head to foot.  I\nsaw her whole body welcome him while her eyes opened and then closed on\nhim again.  They made a great effort to speak to each other.  The few\nshreds of conversation held them back a moment.\n\n\"How I waited for you!  How I longed for you!\" he stammered.  \"I\nthought of you all the time.  I saw you all the time.  Your smile was\neverywhere.\"  He lowered his voice and added, \"Sometimes when people\nwere talking commonplaces and your name happened to be mentioned, it\nwould go through my heart like an electric current.\"\n\nHe panted.  His deep voice burst into sonorous tones.  He seemed unable\nto speak low.\n\n\"Often I used to sit on the brick balustrade at the top of the terrace\nof our house overlooking the Channel, with my face in my hands,\nwondering where you were.  But it did not matter how far away you were,\nI could not help seeing you all the same.\"\n\n\"And often I,\" said Anna, bending her head, \"would sit at the open\nwindow warm evenings, thinking of you.  Sometimes the air was of a\nsuffocating sweetness, as it was two months ago at the Villa of the\nRoses.  Tears would come to my eyes.\"\n\n\"You used to cry?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said in a low voice, \"for joy.\"\n\nTheir mouths joined, their two small purple mouths of exactly the same\ncolour.  They were almost indistinguishable from each other, tense in\nthe creative silence of the kiss, a single dark stream of flesh.\n\nThen he drew away a little to get a better look at her, and the next\nmoment caught her in his arms and held her close.\n\nHis words fell on her like hammer blows.\n\n\"Down there the scent of the sap and the flowers from the many gardens\nnear the coast used to intoxicate me, and I wanted to burrow my fingers\nin the dark burning earth.  I would roam about and try to remember your\nface, and draw in the perfume of your body.  I would stretch my arms\nout in the air to touch as much as possible of your sunlight.\"\n\n\"I knew you were waiting for me and that you loved me,\" she said, in a\nvoice gentler but just as deep with emotion.  \"I saw you in your\nabsence.  And often, when the light of dawn entered my room and touched\nme, I thought of how completely consecrated I was to your love.\nThinking of you sometimes in my room in the evening, I would admire\nmyself.\"\n\nA thrill went through him, and he smiled.\n\nHe kept saying the same things in scarcely different words, as if he\nknew nothing else.  He had a childish soul and a limited mind behind\nthe perfect sculpture of his forehead and his great black eyes, in\nwhich I saw distinctly the white face of the woman floating like a\nswan.\n\nShe listened to him devoutly, her mouth half open, her head thrown back\nlightly.  Had he not held her, she would have slipped to her knees\nbefore this god who was as beautiful as she.\n\n\"The memory of you saddened my joys, but consoled my sorrows.\"\n\nI did not know which of the two said this.  They embraced vehemently.\nThey reeled.  They were like two tall flames.  His face burned hers,\nand he cried:\n\n\"I love you, I love you!  All through my sleepless nights of longing\nfor you--oh, what a crucifixion my solitude was!\n\n\"Be mine, Anna!\"\n\nShe radiated consent, but her eyes faltered, and she glanced round the\nroom.\n\n\"Let us respect this room,\" she breathed.  Then she was ashamed at\nhaving refused, and immediately stammered, \"Excuse me.\"\n\nThe man also looked around the room.  His forehead darkened with a\nsavage frown of suspicion, and the superstition of his race shone in\nhis eyes.\n\n\"It was here--that he died?\"\n\n\"No,\" she said.\n\n*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *\n\nAfterwards they did as the others had done, as human beings always do,\nas they themselves would do many times again in the strange future--they\nsat with their eyes half-closed and the same uneasy look of shame and\nterror in them as Amy and her lover.\n\nBut these two required no artificial stimulus for their love.  They had\nno need of the night.  And they felt no culpability.  They were two\ngrand young creatures, driven together naturally by the very force of\ntheir love, and their ardour cleansed everything, like fire.  They were\ninnocent.  They had no regrets and felt no remorse.  They thought they\nwere united.\n\nHe took her soft hand in his dark hand, and said: \"Now you are mine for\nalways.  You have made me know divine ecstasy.  You have my heart and I\nhave yours.  You are my wife forever.\"\n\n\"You are everything to me,\" she answered.\n\nThey went forth into life like a couple in legend, inspired and rosy\nwith anticipation--he, the knight with no shadows falling on him except\nthe dark of his hair, helmeted or plumed, and she, the priestess of the\npagan gods, the spirit of nature.\n\nThey would shine in the sunlight.  They would see nothing around them,\nblinded by the daylight.  They would undergo no struggles except the\nstrife of the sexes and the spying of jealousy; for lovers are enemies\nrather than friends.\n\nI followed them with my eyes going through life, which would be nothing\nto them but fields, mountains, or forests.  I saw them veiled in a kind\nof light, sheltered from darkness, protected for a time against the\nfearful spell of memory and thought.\n\n. . . . .\n\nI sat down and leaned on my elbows.  I thought of myself.  Where was I\nnow after all this?  What was I going to do in life?  I did not know.\nI would look about and would surely find something.\n\nSo, sitting there, I quietly indulged in hopes.  I must have no more\nsadness, no more anguish and fever.  If the rest of my life was to pass\nin calm, in peace, I must go far, far away from all those awful serious\nthings, the sight of which was terrible to bear.\n\nSomewhere I would lead a wise, busy life--and earn my living regularly.\n\nAnd you, you will be beside me, my sister, my child, my wife.\n\nYou will be poor so as to be more like all other women.  In order for\nus to be able to live together I shall work all day and so be your\nservant.  You will work affectionately for us both in this room, and in\nmy absence there will be nothing beside you but the pure, simple\npresence of your sewing machine.  You will keep the sort of order by\nwhich nothing is forgotten, you will practice patience which is as long\nas life, and maternity which is as heavy as the world.\n\nI shall come in, I shall open the door in the dark, I shall hear you\ncome from the next room, bringing the lamp.  A dawn will announce you.\nYou will tell me the quiet story of your day's work, without any object\nexcept to give me your thoughts and your life.  You will speak of your\nchildhood memories.  I shall not understand them very well because you\nwill be able to give me, perforce, only insufficient details, but I\nshall love your sweet strange language.\n\nWe shall speak of the child we shall have, and you will bend your head\nand your neck, white as milk, and in our minds we shall hear the\nrocking of the cradle like a rustling of wings.  And when we are tired\nout, and even after we have grown old, we shall dream afresh along with\nour child.\n\nAfter this revery our thoughts will not stray, but linger tenderly.  In\nthe evening we shall think of the night.  You will be full of a happy\nthought.  Your inner life will be gay and shining, not because of what\nyou see, but because of your heart.  You will beam as blind people\nbeam.\n\nWe shall sit up facing each other.  But little by little, as it gets\nlate, our words will become fewer and less intelligible.  Sleep will\nlay bare your soul.  You will fall asleep over the table, you will feel\nme watching over you more and more.\n\nTenderness is greater than love.  I do not admire carnal love when it\nis by itself and bare.  I do not admire its disorderly selfish\nparoxysms, so grossly short-lived.  And yet without love the attachment\nof two human beings is always weak.  Love must be added to affection.\nThe things it contributes to a union are absolutely needed--exclusiveness,\nintimacy, and simplicity.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\n\nI went out on the street like an exile, I who am an everyday man, who\nresemble everybody else so much, too much.  I went through the streets\nand crossed the squares with my eyes fixed upon things without seeing\nthem.  I was walking, but I seemed to be falling from dream to dream,\nfrom desire to desire.  A door ajar, an open window gave me a pang.  A\nwoman passing by grazed against me, a woman who told me nothing of what\nshe might have told me.  I dreamed of her tragedy and of mine.  She\nentered a house, she disappeared, she was dead.\n\nI stood still, a prey to a thousand thoughts, stifled in the robe of\nthe evening.  From a closed window on the ground floor floated a strain\nof music.  I caught the beauty of a sonata as I would catch distinct\nhuman words, and for a moment I listened to what the piano was\nconfiding to the people inside.\n\nThen I sat down on a bench.  On the opposite side of the avenue lit by\nthe setting sun two men also seated themselves on a bench.  I saw them\nclearly.  They seemed overwhelmed by the same destiny, and a mutual\nsympathy seemed to unite them.  You could tell they liked each other.\nOne was speaking, the other was listening.\n\nI read a secret tragedy.  As boys they had been immensely fond of each\nother.  They had always been of the same mind and shared their ideas.\nOne of them got married, and it was the married one who was now\nspeaking.  He seemed to be feeding their common sorrow.\n\nThe bachelor had been in the habit of visiting his home, always keeping\nhis proper distance, though perhaps vaguely loving the young wife.\nHowever, he respected her peace and her happiness.  The married man was\ntelling him that his wife had ceased to love him, while he still adored\nher with his whole being.  She had lost interest in him, and turned\naway from him.  She did not laugh and did not smile except when there\nwere other people present.  He spoke of this grief, this wound to his\nlove, to his right.  His right!  He had unconsciously believed that he\nhad a right over her, and he lived in this belief.  Then he found out\nthat he had no right.\n\nHere the friend thought of certain things she had said to him, of a\nsmile she had given him.  Although he was good and modest and still\nperfectly pure, a warm, irresistible hope insinuated itself into his\nheart.  Listening to the story of despair that his friend confided to\nhim, he raised his face bit by bit and gave the woman a smile.  And\nnothing could keep that evening, now falling grey upon those two men,\nfrom being at once an end and a beginning.\n\nA couple, a man and a woman--poor human beings almost always go in\npairs--approached, and passed.  I saw the empty space between them.  In\nlife's tragedy, separation is the only thing one sees.  They had been\nhappy, and they were no longer happy.  They were almost old already.\nHe did not care for her, although they were growing old together.  What\nwere they saying?  In a moment of open-heartedness, trusting to the\npeacefulness reigning between them at that time, he owned up to an old\ntransgression, to a betrayal scrupulously and religiously hidden until\nthen.  Alas, his words brought back an irreparable agony.  The past,\nwhich had gently lain dead, rose to life again for suffering.  Their\nformer happiness was destroyed.  The days gone by, which they had\nbelieved happy, were made sad; and that is the woe in everything.\n\nThis couple was effaced by another, a young one, whose conversation I\nalso imagined.  They were beginning, they were going to love.  Their\nhearts were so shy in finding each other.  \"Do you want me to go on\nthat trip?\"  \"Shall I do this and that?\"  She answered, \"No.\"  An\nintense feeling of modesty gave this first avowal of love so humbly\nsolicited the form of a disavowal.  But yet they were already thinking\nof the full flower of their love.\n\nOther couples passed by, and still others.  This one now--he talking,\nshe saying nothing.  It was difficult for him to master himself.  He\nbegged her to tell him what she was thinking of.  She answered.  He\nlistened.  Then, as if she had said nothing, he begged her again, still\nharder, to tell him.  There he was, uncertain, oscillating between\nnight and day.  All he needed was for her to say one word, if he only\nbelieved it.  You saw him, in the immense city, clinging to that one\nbeing.  The next instant I was separated from these two lovers who\nwatched and persecuted each other.\n\nTurn where you will, everywhere, the man and the woman ever confronting\neach other, the man who loves a hundred times, the woman who has the\npower to love so much and to forget so much.  I went on my way again.\nI came and went in the midst of the naked truth.  I am not a man of\npeculiar and exceptional traits.  I recognise myself in everybody.  I\nhave the same desires, the same longings as the ordinary human being.\nLike everybody else I am a copy of the truth spelled out in the Room,\nwhich is, \"I am alone and I want what I have not and what I shall never\nhave.\"  It is by this need that people live, and by this need that\npeople die.\n\nBut now I was tired of having desired too much.  I suddenly felt old.\nI should never recover from the wound in my breast.  The dream of peace\nthat I had had a moment before attracted and tempted me only because it\nwas far away.  Had I realised it, I should simply have dreamed another\ndream.\n\n. . . . .\n\nNow I looked for a word.  The people who live my truth, what do they\nsay when they speak of themselves?  Does the echo of what I am thinking\nissue from their mouths, or error, or falsehood?\n\nNight fell.  I looked for a word like mine, a word to lean upon, a word\nto sustain me.  And it seemed to me that I was going along groping my\nway as if expecting some one to come from round the corner and tell me\neverything.\n\nI did not return to my room.  I did not want to leave the crowds that\nevening.  I looked for a place that was alive.\n\nI went into a large restaurant so as to hear voices around me.  There\nwere only a few vacant places, and I found a seat in a corner near a\ntable at which three people were dining.  I gave my order, and while my\neyes mechanically followed the white-gloved hand pouring soup into my\nplate from a silver cup, I listened to the general hubbub.\n\nAll I could catch was what my three neighbours were saying.  They were\ntalking of people in the place whom they knew, then of various friends.\nTheir persiflage and the consistent irony of their remarks surprised\nme.\n\nNothing they said was worth the while, and the evening promised to be\nuseless like the rest.\n\nA few minutes later, the head waiter, while serving me with filets of\nsole, nodded his head and winked his eye in the direction of one of the\nguests.\n\n\"M. Villiers, the famous writer,\" he whispered proudly.\n\nI recognised M. Villiers.  He resembled his portraits and bore his\nyoung glory gracefully.  I envied that man his ability to write and say\nwhat he thought.  I studied his profile and admired its worldly\ndistinction.  It was a fine modern profile, the straightness of it\nbroken by the silken point of his well-kept moustache, by the perfect\ncurve of his shoulder, and by the butterfly's wing of his white\nnecktie.\n\nI lifted my glass to my lips when suddenly I stopped and felt all my\nblood rush to my heart.\n\nThis is what I heard:\n\n\"What's the theme of the novel you're working on?\"\n\n\"Truth,\" replied Pierre Villiers.\n\n\"What?\" exclaimed his friend.\n\n\"A succession of human beings caught just as they are.\"\n\n\"What subject?\" somebody asked.\n\nPeople turned and listened to him.  Two young diners not far away\nstopped talking and put on an idling air, evidently with their ears\npricked.  In a sumptuous purple alcove, a man in evening clothes, with\nsunken eyes and drawn features, was smoking a fat cigar, his whole life\nconcentrated in the fragrant glow of his tobacco.  His companion, her\nbare elbow on the table, enveloped in perfume and sparkling with\njewels, and overloaded with the heavy artificiality of luxury, turned\nher simple moon-like face toward the speaker.\n\n\"This is the subject,\" said Pierre Villiers.  \"It gives me scope to\namuse and tell the truth at the same time.  A man pierces a hole in the\nwall of a boarding-house room, and watches what is going on in the next\nroom.\"\n\n. . . . .\n\nI must have looked at the speakers just then with a rather sorry\nexpression of bewilderment.  Then I quickly lowered my head like a\nchild afraid to be seen.\n\nThey had spoken for /me,/ and I sensed a strange secret service\nintrigue around me.  Then, in an instant this impression, which had got\nthe better of my common sense, gave way.  Evidently a pure coincidence.\nStill I was left with the vague apprehension that they were going to\nnotice that I /knew,/ and were going to recognise me.\n\nOne of the novelist's friends begged him to tell more of his story.  He\nconsented.\n\nHe was going to tell it in my presence!\n\n. . . . .\n\nWith admirable art in the use of words, gestures, and mimicry, and with\na lively elegance and a contagious laugh, he described a series of\nbrilliant, surprising scenes.  Under cover of his scheme, which brought\nall the scenes out into peculiar relief and gave them a special\nintensity, he retailed a lot of amusing oddities, described comical\npersons and things, heaped up picturesque and piquant details, coined\ntypical and witty proper names, and invented complicated and ingenious\nsituations.  He succeeded in producing irresistible effects, and the\nwhole was in the latest style.\n\nThey said, \"Ah!\" and \"Oh!\" and opened their eyes wide.\n\n\"Bravo!  A sure success!  A corking funny idea!\"\n\n\"All the characters who pass before the eyes of the man spying upon\nthem are amusing, even the man who kills himself.  Nothing forgotten.\nThe whole of humanity is there.\"\n\nBut I had not recognized a single thing in the entire show.\n\nA stupor and a sort of shame overwhelmed me as I heard that man trying\nto extract the utmost entertainment possible from the dark happenings\nthat had been torturing me for a month.\n\nI thought of that great voice, now silenced, which had said so clearly\nand forcefully that the writers of to-day imitate the caricaturists.\nI, who had penetrated into the heart of humanity and returned again,\nfound nothing human in this jiggling caricature!  It was so superficial\nthat it was a lie.\n\nHe said in front of me--of me the awful witness:\n\n\"It is man stripped of all outward appearances that I want people to\nsee.  Others are fiction, I am the truth.\"\n\n\"It has a philosophical bearing, too.\"\n\n\"Perhaps.  But that wasn't my object.  Thank God, I am a writer, and\nnot a thinker.\"\n\nAnd he continued to travesty the truth, and I was impotent--the truth,\nthat profound thing whose voice was in my ears, whose shadow was in my\neyes, and whose taste was in my mouth.\n\nWas I so utterly forsaken?  Would no one speak the word I was in search\nof?\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe Room was flooded with moonlight.  In that magnificent setting there\nwas an obscure white couple, two silent human beings with marble faces.\n\nThe fire was out.  The clock had finished its work and had stopped, and\nwas listening with its heart.\n\nThe man's face dominated.  The woman was at his feet.  They did\nnothing.  An air of tenderness hovered over them.  They looked like\nmonuments gazing at the moon.\n\nHe spoke.  I recognised his voice.  It lit up his face for me, which\nhad been shrouded from my sight before.  It was /he,/ the nameless\nlover and poet whom I had seen twice before.\n\nHe was telling Amy that on his way that evening he had met a poor\nwoman, with her baby in her arms.\n\nShe walked, jostled and borne along by the crowd returning home from\nwork, and finally was tossed aside up against a post under a porch, and\nstopped as though nailed there.\n\n\"I went up to her,\" he said, \"and saw she was smiling.\n\n. . . . .\n\n\"What was she smiling at?  At life, on account of her child.  Under the\nrefuge where she was cowering, facing the setting sun, she was thinking\nof the growth of her child in the days to come.  However terrible they\nmight be, they would be around him, for him, in him.  They would be the\nsame thing as her breath, her walk, her look.\n\n\"So profound was the smile of this creator who bore her burden and who\nraised her head and gazed into the sun, without even looking down at\nthe child or listening to its babbling.\n\n\"I worked this woman and child up into a poem.\"\n\nHe remained motionless for a moment, then said gently without pausing,\nin that voice from the Beyond which we assume when we recite, obeying\nwhat we say and no longer mastering it:\n\n\"The woman from the depths of her rags, a waif, a martyr--smiled.  She\nmust have a divine heart to be so tired and yet smile.  She loved the\nsky, the light, which the unformed little being would love some day.\nShe loved the chilly dawn, the sultry noontime, the dreamy evening.\nThe child would grow up, a saviour, to give life to everything again.\nStarting at the dark bottom he would ascend the ladder and begin life\nover again, life, the only paradise there is, the bouquet of nature.\nHe would make beauty beautiful.  He would make eternity over again with\nhis voice and his song.  And clasping the new-born infant close, she\nlooked at all the sunlight she had given the world.  Her arms quivered\nlike wings.  She dreamed in words of fondling.  She fascinated all the\npassersby that looked at her.  And the setting sun bathed her neck and\nhead in a rosy reflection.  She was like a great rose that opens its\nheart to the whole world.\"\n\nThe poet seemed to be searching for something, to be seeing things, and\nbelieving infinitely.  He was in another world where everything we see\nis true and everything we say is unforgettable.\n\nAmy was still on her knees with eyes upraised to his.  She was all\nattention, filled with it like a precious vase.\n\n\"But her smile,\" he went on, \"was not only in wonder about the future.\nThere was also something tragic in it, which pierced my heart.  I\nunderstood it perfectly.  She adored life, but she detested men and was\nafraid of them, always on account of the child.  She already disputed\nover him with the living, although he himself was as yet scarcely among\nthe living.  She defied them with her smile.  She seemed to say to\nthem, 'He will live in spite of you, he will use you, he will subdue\nyou either to dominate you or to be loved by you.  He is already\nbraving you with his tiny breath, this little one that I am holding in\nmy maternal grasp.'  She was terrible.  At first, I had seen her as an\nangel of goodness.  Now, although she had not changed, she was like an\nangel of mercilessness and vengeance.  I saw a sort of hatred for those\nwho would trouble him distort her face, resplendent with superhuman\nmaternity.  Her cruel heart was full of one heart only.  It foresaw sin\nand shame.  It hated men and settled accounts with them like a\ndestroying angel.  She was the mother with fearful nails, standing\nerect, and laughing with a torn mouth.\"\n\nAmy gazed at her lover in the moonlight.  It seemed to me that her\nlooks and his words mingled.\n\n\"I come back as I always do to the greatness of mankind's curse, and I\nrepeat it with the monotony of those who are always right--oh, without\nGod, without a harbour, without enough rags to cover us, all we have,\nstanding erect on the land of the dead, is the rebellion of our smile,\nthe rebellion of being gay when darkness envelops us.  We are divinely\nalone, the heavens have fallen on our heads.\"\n\nThe heavens have fallen on our heads!  What a tremendous idea!  It is\nthe loftiest cry that life hurls.  That was the cry of deliverance for\nwhich I had been groping until then.  I had had a foreboding it would\ncome, because a thing of glory like a poet's song always gives\nsomething to us poor living shadows, and human thought always reveals\nthe world.  But I needed to have it said explicitly so as to bring\nhuman misery and human grandeur together.  I needed it as a key to the\nvault of the heavens.\n\nThese heavens, that is to say, the azure that our eyes enshrine,\npurity, plenitude--and the infinite number of suppliants, the sky of\ntruth and religion.  All this is within us, and has fallen upon our\nheads.  And God Himself, who is all these kinds of heavens in one, has\nfallen on our heads like thunder, and His infinity is ours.\n\nWe have the divinity of our great misery.  And our solitude, with its\ntoilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine.  However wrong\nwe may go in the dark, whatever our efforts in the dark and the useless\nwork of our hearts working incessantly, and whatever our ignorance left\nto itself, and whatever the wounds that other human beings are, we\nought to study ourselves with a sort of devotion.  It is this sentiment\nthat lights our foreheads, uplifts our souls, adorns our pride, and, in\nspite of everything, will console us when we shall become accustomed to\nholding, each at his own poor task, the whole place that God used to\noccupy.  The truth itself gives an effective, practical, and, so to\nspeak, religious caress to the suppliant in whom the heavens spread.\n\n. . . . .\n\n\"I have such respect for the actual truth that there are moments when I\ndo not dare to call things by their name,\" the poet ended.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Amy, very softly, and nothing else.  She had been listening\nintently.  Everything seemed to be carried away in a sort of gentle\nwhirlwind.\n\n\"Amy,\" he whispered.\n\nShe did not stir.  She had fallen asleep with her head on her lover's\nknees.  He looked at her and smiled.  An expression of pity and\nbenevolence flitted across his face.  His hands stretched out part way\ntoward the sleeping woman with the gentleness of strength.  I saw the\nglorious pride of condescension and charity in this man whom a woman\nprostrate before him deified.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\n\nI have given notice.  I am going away to-morrow evening, I with my\ntremendous memory.  Whatever may happen, whatever tragedies may be\nreserved for me in the future, my thought will not be graver or more\nimportant when I shall have lived my life with all its weight.\n\nBut my whole body is one pain.  I cannot stand on my legs any more.  I\nstagger.  I fall back on my bed.  My eyes close and fill with smarting\ntears.  I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot.  My body\nbecomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain.  My flesh is\nenraged against me.\n\nI hear voices through the wall.  The next room vibrates with a distant\nsound, a mist of sound which scarcely comes through the wall.\n\nI shall not be able to listen any more, or look into the room, or hear\nanything distinctly.  And I, who have not cried since my childhood, I\ncry now like a child because of all that I shall never have.  I cry\nover lost beauty and grandeur.  I love everything that I should have\nembraced.\n\nHere they will pass again, day after day, year after year, all the\nprisoners of rooms will pass with their kind of eternity.  In the\ntwilight when everything fades, they will sit down near the light, in\nthe room full of haloes.  They will drag themselves to the window's\nvoid.  Their mouths will join and they will grow tender.  They will\nexchange a first or a last useless glance.  They will open their arms,\nthey will caress each other.  They will love life and be afraid to\ndisappear.  Here below they will seek a perfect union of hearts.  Up\nabove they will seek everlastingness among the shades and a God in the\nclouds.\n\n. . . . .\n\nThe monotonous murmur of voices comes through the wall steadily, but I\ndo not catch what is being said.  I am like anybody else in a room.\n\nI am lost, just as I was the evening I came here when I took possession\nof this room used by people who had disappeared and died--before this\ngreat change of light took place in my destiny.\n\nPerhaps because of my fever, perhaps because of my lofty pain, I\nimagine that some one there is declaiming a great poem, that some one\nis speaking of Prometheus.  He has stolen light from the gods.  In his\nentrails he feels the pain, always beginning again, always fresh,\ngathering from evening to evening, when the vulture steals to him as it\nwould steal to its nest.  And you feel that we are all like Prometheus\nbecause of desire, but there is neither vulture nor gods.\n\nThere is no paradise except that which we create in the great tomb of\nthe churches.  There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy of\nliving.\n\nThere is no mysterious fire.  I have stolen the truth.  I have stolen\nthe whole truth.  I have seen sacred things, tragic things, pure\nthings, and I was right.  I have seen shameful things, and I was right.\nAnd so I have entered the kingdom of truth, if, while preserving\nrespect to truth and without soiling it, we can use the expression that\ndeceit and religious blasphemy employ.\n\n. . . . .\n\nWho shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simple\nBible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of our\ndoings, our goings, our original fall?  Who will dare to tell\neverything, who will have the genius to see everything?\n\nI believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will\nbe mingled with beliefs.  The more incapable of it I feel myself, the\nmore I believe it to be possible.  The sad splendour with which certain\nmemories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible.  Sometimes\nI myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece.\nSometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so\nstrong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a\nforest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried\nout.\n\nBut I have stolen all this, and I have profited by it, thanks to the\nshamelessness of the truth revealed.  At the point in space in which,\nby accident, I found myself, I had only to open my eyes and to stretch\nout my mendicant hands to accomplish more than a dream, to accomplish\nalmost a work.\n\nWhat I have seen is going to disappear, since I shall do nothing with\nit.  I am like a mother the fruit of whose womb will perish after it\nhas been born.\n\nWhat matter?  I have heard the annunciation of whatever finer things\nare to come.  Through me has passed, without staying me in my course,\nthe Word which does not lie, and which, said over again, will satisfy.\n\n. . . . .\n\nBut I have finished.  I am lying stretched out, and now that I have\nceased to see, my poor eyes close like a healing wound and a scar forms\nover them.\n\nAnd I seek assuagement for myself.  I!  The last cry, as it was the\nfirst.\n\nAs for me, I have only one recourse, to remember and to believe.  To\nhold on with all my strength to the memory of the tragedy of the Room.\n\nI believe that the only thing which confronts the heart and the reason\nis the shadow of that which the heart and the reason cry for.  I\nbelieve that around us there is only one word, the immense word which\ntakes us out of our solitude, NOTHING.  I believe that this does not\nsignify our nothingness or our misfortune, but, on the contrary, our\nrealisation and our deification, since everything is within us.\n\n\nTHE END","title":"The Inferno","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":42138}