Her heart would shrink. But she would at once correct herself. "What nonsense I'm inventing!" The idea had to be repressed at once. How could one live with it? No, it wasn't true. . . . The good little creature she was accusing! She hastily sought among her memories for the best she had, for the pretty tricks of the child, for his lovable ways. At the images she called up she would have liked to snatch him out of his bed and kiss him. . . . But hush! She mustn't wake him up. That delicious little breath. . . . My treasure! . . . How good it will all be later!
For as the present was decidedly meagre, Annette made up for it by inventing a future of motherly intimacy with her son that conformed with her desires. She needed an idol to absorb the energies of her nature. For some time now they had been troubling her again.
It was no longer a restless melancholy, that neurasthenic depression which had preceded her child's illness and which the illness had dissipated—those days of a life that was at a standstill, in which she felt emptied of energy and interest: the becalmed sea before the flow of the tide.
This was the return of the oceanic flood. It announced itself by a roaring of the waves, a nocturnal resurgence. For a time maternity had satisfied the passionate elements of her nature. The material fatigue of a working life had set up a dam against them. But, gathering in the shadow, they beat against the rock. The soul, which as it grows climbs up the spiral of life, found itself returning to a state bordering on that from which it had passed, four or five years before, between the burning summer of the hotel in the Grisons and the spring of love with Roger Brissot. Bordering on it, but not the same. One returns on the spiral above the past; one does not descend to it again. Annette's nature had ripened. There was no longer in her agitation any of the blind ingenuousness of the young girl. She was a woman; her desires were keen and definite. She knew whither they led. And if she did not wish to know, it was precisely because she did know. Her will had matured no less than her flesh. Everything about her had become richer, and everything had assumed an accent of passion.
The reappearance of these familiar demons, these dreaded demons, was like a midday when a storm is gathering. A heavy silence, a silence big with the tempest to come. It followed the careless joys and the careless sorrows of the young morning. The shadows slipped unceasingly over Annette's face. She had become tense. When she was in company or off her guard, when she was not distracted by the child's presence, she would fall into a dumb silence, with a line between her brows. When she became aware of this, she would slip noiselessly away. Any one who had been disturbed about her would have found her in her room, setting it in order, making her bed, turning the mattress, polishing the furniture or the floor, using more movements than were necessary, but not succeeding in stifling the spirit that resounded within her. She would stop in the midst of something she was doing, upright on a chair, a bit of chiffon in her hand, or leaning on the window-sill. Then she would forget everything, not only the past but the present as well, the dead and the living, even her child. She saw without seeing, she heard without hearing, she thought without thinking. A flame that burned in empty space. A sail in the wind of the open sea. She felt the great breath that passed through her limbs, and the ship vibrated with all its masts. And then from the boundless void emerged the face of the things that surrounded her. From the court of the house over which Annette was leaning mounted the familiar sounds; she recognized the voice of the child talking and singing. But her reverie was not interrupted; it took another course. It was the song of a bird on a summer afternoon. O sunny heart, what an amount of life you still have to give! Take the world into your open arms! Too much plunder! . . . Her consciousness relaxed its grip; she fell back into the incandescent gulf where there was no longer any song, any child's voice, any Annette . . . nothing but a powerful vibration of sunlight. . . .
Annette awakened, leaning on her elbow on the window-sill.
But at night the tormenting dreams that had disappeared since Marc's birth took up their abode in her. They came in groups of three or four, ceaselessly succeeding one another. Annette rolled from one to another, layer after layer of them. She would get up in the morning fatigued, feverish; she had lived ten nights in one. And she did not want to recall what she had dreamed.
Those who saw Annette frequently had observed her anxious brow and her absorbed eyes; they did not understand this sudden change, but they were not disturbed by it; they attributed it to external causes, material difficulties. For Annette these periods of anxiety were a season of deep renewal. She could not do justice to them, for they brought with them the weight of gestation, which was more agonizing than that of maternity. It was a maternity indeed, that of the buried soul. The human being is wrapped up like a seed in the depths of matter, in the amalgam of humus and human loam where the generations have left their debris. The labor of a great life consists in disengaging it. For this childbirth a whole lifetime is necessary, and often the midwife is death.
Annette had the secret anguish of the unknown being who was to emerge from her some day and rend her. Overcome by fits of shame, she would shut herself up in a tumultuous retreat, face to face with the immanent Being; and their relations were hostile. The air was charged with electricity; its gusts rose and fell in the immobility. She realized her danger. In vain had her consciousness left in the shadow the thing that disturbed her. "In the shadow" meant in herself, in her own home. And to feel her home peopled from top to bottom with beings whom she did not know was far from reassuring.
"All that. . . . I am all that. . . . But what does it want of me? . . . What do I myself desire?"
In reply, she said to herself, "You have nothing more to desire. You possess."
Her stiffened will turned all the violence of her love upon the child. These continual recurrences of maternal passion were not very fortunate. Abnormal, excessive, unhealthy—(for this passion sprang from an impossible attempt to turn into a path that was not theirs alien and insistent instincts)—they could only end in disappointment. She repelled the child. Marc would not submit to being monopolized in this way. He no longer concealed his ill-will from his mother. He thought her a bore and he told her so in cross little monologues which happily Annette did not hear, but which Sylvie overheard one day. She scolded him for it, bursting out laughing at the same time. Marc, in a corner by the door, was talking to the wall, saying, as he made little impatient gestures, "That woman makes me tired!"
People are always writing the history of the events of a life. They imagine they see the life itself in them, but in reality these events are only its outer covering. The life itself is within. The events act upon it only in so far as it has chosen them; one might be tempted to say it has produced them, and in many cases this is the exact truth. Twenty events take place each month under our eyes; they do not count for us because we have nothing to do with them. But when one of them touches us, it is a safe wager that we have gone halfway to meet it; and if the shock loosens a spring in us, it is because the spring is wound up and awaiting the shock.
Towards the end of 1904, Annette's moral tension gave way, and the transformations it brought about in her seemed to coincide with certain changes which, at the same moment, took place in her.
Sylvie married. She was twenty-six years old; she had had enough of the joys of liberty; she decided that the moment had come to enjoy those of a home. She took her time making her choice. The stuff of which a lover is made does not need to be lasting; it only needs to be pleasing. But a good husband must be made of sound, durable material. Of course it was important for Sylvie that he should be attractive too. But there are ways and ways of being attractive. In choosing a husband one doesn't have to lose one's head. Sylvie consulted her common sense and even her social sense. Her business was going well. Her establishment,Sylvie: Robes et manteaux, had acquired, along with a select clientele of the fairly well-to-do bourgeoisie, a justified reputation for elegance and style at moderate prices. She had reached a point in her business where she could go no further alone. To advance she would be obliged to associate other forces with her own and add to her seamstress's workshop a tailor's shop that would enable her to enlarge the circle of her operations.
Without taking any one into her confidence she looked about for some one who would fall in with her plans. She made her choice soberly; and once it was made she decided to marry. Love would come later. It should have its proper place: Sylvie would not marry a man whom she could not love. But love must await its turn. Business came first.
The name of the object of her choice was Selve (Leopold); and no sooner had she cast her eye upon him than the little business woman decided on the name, the beacon-light of the new establishment,Selve et Sylvie. But although, for a woman, a name is never unimportant, Sylvie was not so foolish as to be satisfied with a name alone; and Selve (Leopold) was a good match. No longer very young, looking all of his thirty-five years, a rather handsome man in the popular style, rather ugly, in fact, but solidly built, with reddish blond hair and a florid complexion, he was the head cutter at a great tailoring establishment, skilful in his craft, earning a good income, steady, anything but dissipated. Sylvie had taken his measure; the question was settled—in Sylvie's mind. She had not consulted Selve about it. But the assent of the man she had chosen was the last thing to trouble her. She took it upon herself to win this.
Selve himself would never have sought anything of the kind. He was devoted to his own welfare and his own habits, a good soul, not at all ambitious and rather egoistical, and he had made up his mind to remain unmarried. It would not have occurred to him to quit his lucrative position as second fiddle, which entailed no responsibility, with an employer who knew his value. Sylvie upset his plans and his peace of mind in the twinkling of an eye. She met him—she took pains to meet him—at an exhibition whither she had gone, as he had, to study the modes they were both going to contribute to launch. She was surrounded by admirers, and without paying any attention to Selve she began to distribute her smiles and clever repartees to three or four young men who were very much taken with her. Suddenly, Selve, observing with some annoyance this grace and wit that were not for him, perceived that he had become the object of her attentions. She was speaking now only for him; the others had ceased to count. He was all the more affected by this instantaneous change because he attributed it to his own personal merit. With this stroke he was caught. Farewell to his resolutions!
A little while after this, Sylvie begged Annette to join her in the evening after dinner at a time when there would be no one in the workroom.
"I've asked you to come," she said, "because I'm expecting some one."
Annette was surprised. "What! You need me? Can't you receive him alone?" Sylvie said soberly, "I think it would look better."
"This attack of propriety has come rather late."
"Better late than never," said Sylvie, diplomatically.
"Nonsense! Try that on somebody else."
"Just what I'm doing," said Sylvie.
Annette shook her finger at her. "You have some one up your sleeve. Well, who is this someone?"
"Here he is now."
Selve (Leopold) was ringing the bell. He seemed to be annoyed at not finding Sylvie alone, but as a well-bred man he put a good face on the situation. It was not easy for him to appear to advantage alone in the presence of two young gossips who were alarming enough anyway and were evidently in each other's confidence. He felt that these two pairs of eyes were watching him. After a few rather heavy gallantries, of which, as a matter of politeness, Annette had her share, he began to talk about business, the trade, the strenuous life he led. Annette, with an air of being interested, charitably asked him a few questions. He became more confident and told about the difficulties of his career, his disappointments, his success, missing no opportunity to place himself in a good light. He seemed simple, cordial, self-sufficient; he played with all his cards on the table. Sylvie, who was more cautious, watched his play before playing herself. Annette, who was soon relegated to the background, where she followed the game, was less surprised at the competence of her sister than at the humbleness of her choice. It would have been easy for Sylvie to make a more brilliant match; she had simply not wished to do so. She distrusted men who were too handsome and too clever. It goes without saying that she would not have chosen a goose or a fool.In medio. . . . What she wanted was a prudent second in command, not someone who would command her. She knew that in marriage everybody has to give something and wants to get something: it is a question of supply and demand. For herself she demanded the right to remain the mistress in her own household. And what did he demand? Ah, poor fellow, to be loved for himself, just for himself. He was not conceited; he knew well enough that he was neither handsome nor attractive. But it was his weakness to wish to be married for love. Ridiculous, wasn't it? He shrugged his shoulders at the idea, for he was no fool, this big, ingenuous creature who was familiar enough with life and sceptical, as three out of every four Frenchmen are, where women were concerned. But the need of the heart is so strong! That stupid need! "Why shouldn't I be loved? I'm as good as others who are." So, by turns, he was almost humble and almost fatuous. And always begging. This was not very clever of him, and it was even worse that he allowed it to be seen. For she had seen him very clearly, the sharp-eyed minx. And to those big, blue, round, rather prominent eyes that were always asking, "Do you love me?"—her soft eyes responded neither with a Yes nor with a No. For uncertainty is like fuel to love.
When the sisters found themselves alone again, Annette said to Sylvie, "Don't play with him too much!"
"Why not?" said Sylvie, wondering. "The stakes are worth the trouble."
"Then it's serious?"
"Very serious."
"I can't imagine you married."
"Really? I dare say you will see me so two or three times."
"I don't like you to laugh at these things."
"What would one laugh at, my dear Salvation Army lassie? Come, Mrs. General Booth"—she pronounced it "Botte"—"don't knit your beautiful brows. I'm not thinking of changing before I've even tried it. I am marrying in the hope that it's for good. But if it doesn't last, one must be able to resign oneself."
"I am not anxious about you," said Annette.
"Really? I thank you for his sake. Has he made a conquest of you?"
"He isn't good enough for you, Sylvie. But I shouldn't want you to make this good man suffer some day."
Sylvie smiled and looked at her teeth in the mirror.
"Suffer! Everybody makes the other person suffer. That's nothing. Of course he will suffer, poor man! I shouldn't mind being in his place. Come, don't disturb yourself about him. Do you think I don't know the value of my Adonis? It isn't dazzling, but it amounts to a good deal. I know what I'm about. I shan't tell him, for it doesn't do to spoil men. It allows them to think they have rights over us. But privately I shall not forget it. I shan't do myself the wrong of doing him a wrong. And if I don't promise never to make him angry—which might be an excellent way of making him a little thinner—I shan't put him on the grill unless it is necessary. Of course, assuming that I have no reason to complain of him. Otherwise it would serve him right to give him his due. And I pay in cash. I am an honest business woman; I don't deceive my customers any more than is necessary for me to live. Unless they try to get the best of me. Then I get the best of them. Don't I!"
"To think," Annette exclaimed, "that you never can get her to talk seriously!"
"Life would not be endurable," said Sylvie, "if one had to say serious things seriously!"
Leopold was not long in coming back again, and Sylvie did not leave him languishing. She had quickly made the tour of the enemy's positions, reconnoitered behind his defensive works and discovered his arms, his baggage and his supplies before giving herself in good earnest. She had no difficulty in leading him to adopt her own plans. Till his last day Leopold was to preserve the illusion that it was he who had conceived the idea of establishing the great dressmaking establishment ofSelve et Sylvie.
The marriage was arranged for the middle of January, a time when work would be rather slack. The preceding weeks were a joyous time in the workroom. The radiant Leopold regaled the whole band, took them to the theatre and the movies. They all had such a need for laughter! When one of them was married, it was as if she brought marriage into the house. And each of the others greeted the visitor with a whispered "Don't forget! The next time it will be my turn. . . ."
Annette was caught up in the general joy. Instead of feeling the deprivation of her own life, she asked herself what had become of her troubles. They slipped away as a chemise slips down one's thighs. O youthful body, sorrow cannot cling to you! Not that this marriage gave her any satisfaction. She had loved her sister too tenderly not to feel rather sad to see her going still further away from her. And it was not pleasant to see such a pretty girl giving herself to this rather vulgar man. Annette had had other dreams for Sylvie. But with our dreams other people have nothing to do. Their way of being happy is their own, not ours. And they are right.
Sylvie was satisfied. Leopold's affection, the admiration which he showed for her, touched her vanity and gradually her heart. As she had said to her sister, she appreciated the serious character of the man she had chosen. He would be a steadfast companion who would not interfere with her. She had no intention of abusing him—though one never knew!—but she was certain that she would never have to give him any minute account of her behavior. Leopold made no attempt to learn about Sylvie's past; he trusted her, and this pleased her. His experience of life had left Leopold with few illusions; above all, it had left him not unwilling to compromise; it inclined him to assume for his own use and accept for that of others, as a rule of conduct, the cordial egoism of an honest, sceptical, affectionate man who was not exacting and did not ask of others more than he himself could give.
Sylvie, indeed, found herself much closer to him than to Annette. She loved Annette more; but, as she said to herself, laughing, she would never have married a masculine Annette. No, that would have turned out badly.
Selve inspired her with a feeling of complete security. This restful impression dispensed her from thinking about him: she thought of the wedding, of the dress she was making, of her future household, and she made great plans for the business. It was perfectly satisfying.
The wedding took place one radiant winter day. Selve carried off all his friends to the woods of Vincennes. They separated into jolly groups. Annette gaily mingled with them. In former times she would have been sensitive to the noisy and rather vulgar side of these rejoicings, but she was not so now. She laughed with these bold young men, these hearty girls who were giving themselves a day of merriment between their days of toil. She took part in their sports, and she enchanted everybody with her enthusiasm. Sylvie, who had known her as cold and contemptuous, watched her running and amusing herself in this frank way. There she was playing blindman's buff, with her eyes under the bandage, red with excitement, her mouth open and laughing, her chin in the air, as if to seize the light as it flew past, her arms stretched out before her and her hands like wings, striding along with great steps, stumbling, laughing her prettiest. . . . What was the beautiful, vigorous body of this passionate blind girl going to seize? Who was going to seize her? More than one person who was watching her might have had this thought. But Annette seemed to be thinking only of her game. What had become of the cares that had weighed upon her yesterday? Of her anxious, tense, absorbed air? . . . What elasticity she had! . . . Sylvie congratulated herself on having succeeded in distracting Annette from her troubles, and she was overjoyed at this. But Annette knew very well that the cause lay much further back. She was not disburdened of her cares because she was laughing at the wedding. She was laughing at the wedding because she was disburdened.
What had happened? It was a strange thing and one that was not the work of a day, although on this day it appeared so.
One Sunday morning, a few weeks before this, she had been sitting half-clad before her dressing-table. She took a long time over her toilet on Sunday, for on other days she was obliged to go out so early. She was weary with the accumulated fatigue of the week. The child, who had just got up, had slipped out of the room to find his aunt. He was very much interested in the wedding, and he amused Sylvie by the reflexions which, as a man of experience, he expressed on this subject. Leopold petted him; as a way of courting Sylvie, he courted her little lap-dog. And Marc, flattered and proud of his importance, passed all his time in the apartment below, remaining with his mother very reluctantly. Annette was bitterly disheartened by this. But this morning her weariness swept away her sadness and even mingled with it a secret feeling that lightened it. She sighed, however, from habit. She was feeling that mingled fatigue and enjoyment which came from knowing that she could, thank heaven, stretch out at full length on this Sunday without having to stir. . . . Sunday! In former days Annette had never dreamed how precious it was.
"How weary I am, how weary I am! How good it is not to budge! If I were sitting in the most uncomfortable position, leaning on my elbow in some tiresome way, I shouldn't move. I could sleep for a thousand years. There is a charm in this that holds you. One's afraid of breaking it. Let's not stir. How good it is!"
She saw through the window, on the roof opposite, a stream of smoke coming from the baker's chimney. It was carried off by the wind, in spirals, bright and gay, stretching out, rolling, running and dancing against the blue sky. Annette's eyes laughed and her spirit danced in the meadows of the air—borne along in the wake of the mad arabesques. All the weight of the earth had slipped away from her. Her spirit felt naked in the wind and the sun. Annette sang in a low voice. . . . And suddenly there appeared before her the enraptured eyes of a young man who had looked at her the day before in an omnibus. She did not know him, and in all probability she would never see him again. But this look, which she had surprised as she suddenly turned her head—he did not think he was being seen—confessed so naïvely how charmed he was that ever since a fresh joy had remained in her heart. She pretended to herself that she did not know the cause of this; but as her mirror returned to her the image of her smile, she saw herself with the eyes of the one who would love her some day. . . . What has become of you, my worries? I can still hear them murmuring fitfully, far, far away.
"Enough, enough! No more of this. One must be reasonable."
There was nothing new in what Annette said to herself. Twenty times she had said it. But although she did as she said, she expected nothing from it. Success does not always depend on being reasonable. Reason is a good counsellor, but counsellors do not guarantee payment. And the heart is only convinced by the reasons of the heart.
She had no lack of these now. Annette was willing to see how absurd were the demands made by her maternal love. But if she was ready to do this, it was because other stifled aspirations had risen to the surface. She could no longer deny them; she no longer wished to do so. And once she had given them this tacit acquiescence, Annette felt liberated. The voice of her reawakened youth said to her, "Nothing is lost. You still have the right to be happy. Your life is just beginning."
The world revived. Everything had a savor again. Even on dull days she had her luminous moments of escape. Annette formed no plans for the future. She abandoned herself to the happiness, whatever it might be, of a future that she had recaptured. Yes, yes, she was young, young as the young year. . . . A whole life before her, . . . There would never be enough of it.
One of those gay, precocious months of February that have so much charm in Paris. Spring is not yet in the sky or in the heart, but everything is pure, pure light, the limpid joy of a child that has awakened. The beautiful dawn of the year is beginning, and before the birds have reappeared one hears them coming. As from the summit of a tower lost in the clear sky, one sees them, clouds of wings, swarms of swallows. They are coming, they are crossing the seas. And already some of them are singing in my heart.
Like every healthy being, Annette loved all the seasons. In adapting herself to them, she shared in their secret energies. Those of the springtime exalted her.
She went along, happy to be walking, happy to be working, carrying home with her a wholesome fatigue and a hearty appetite. She was interested in everything, filled with a new curiosity about the things of the mind which for four years she had abandoned, about books, music; and sometimes in the evening, although she was half dead, she would go out and run to the other end of Paris to use a ticket to some concert. Sylvie envied her; she herself was in the early stages of pregnancy, and it was far from pleasant.
In her evening walks, Annette was followed more than once. She did not notice this: absent-minded, dreaming, amused, she would suddenly stop in the midst of her soliloquy with the feeling that she was dragging something along at her heels. She would wake up and look curiously at the thing that was whispering to her, shrug her shoulders or make a face and start off briskly saying, "What an old idiot!"
The idiot was often young, and Annette thought, "In a dozen years Marc may be like this."
She stopped indignantly. The false Marc received the wrath of the eyes which she turned upon the other, and he did not persist. The eyes began to laugh. The idea of seeing Marc in such a situation, a big handsome boy, amused her in spite of everything. But her maternal pride was hurt. She scolded herself for the observation she had made. Or rather she scolded Marc.
"Young scamp!" she muttered. "When I get home I'll pull his ears." (She did pull them.)
These little adventures entertained her. At first, that is. But when they kept on. . . .
"Oh, what a pest! This is tiresome. Am I never to be allowed to walk in peace any more? Because you look to the right, to the left, in the simplest, most harmless way, because you laugh as you walk along, people have to suspect you are thinking of love! I know love, I have seen enough of it. The fools who imagine one can't get along without them! It never occurs to them that one can be happy without them, just because it's a fine day and one is young and has the little one needs. Let them think what they like! Am I thinking of them? Of them! Haven't they ever looked at themselves?"
She herself looked at them; and as she was in a state of grace (that is, of gay freedom) she certainly did not idealize them. Far from it. She asked herself how one could possibly fall in love with a man. Man was certainly not a beautiful animal. One would have to have lost one's head to find him attractive. And the daughter of Rivière, who was a good Frenchwoman, of the strong classical type, a reader of Rabelais and Molière, repeated to herself Dorine's remark to Tartuffe.
She made fun of love. (Ah, how she deceived herself!) She defied it, and she carried it in her heart. Sly and apparently asleep, it was awaiting its hour. These little skirmishes were preparations for the real attack. The enemy was approaching. The friend. . . .
Who could have suspected him? Anyone else, perhaps. But this man—what an idea!
Julien Dumont was just about the age of Annette, between twenty-nine and thirty years old. Of middling height, with a slight stoop, a rather sad face and one that would have been unattractive without the fine, brown, gentle, serious eyes that were humbly caressing when one overcame their shyness, a bony forehead, with a depression in the middle, a big nose, pronounced cheek-bones, a short black beard, an affectionate mouth that was concealed under a very long moustache—it was Julien's almost invariable habit to conceal whatever was least ugly about him—the dull, old-ivory complexion of a man who has been nourished more by books than by sunlight. A face that lacked neither intelligence nor goodness, but was rather depressed and languid, a face that life and the passions had not yet marked. In his whole appearance there was something walled-in, something despondent.
He was more ingenuous and inexperienced than Annette, who was still a good deal so herself. For, in spite of her brief experience, an experience that had been more violent than extensive, she did not know very much about the world of love. It is true that the intuition she owed to her father and her talks with Sylvie, which sometimes quite equalled those of the Queen of Navarre, had not left her ignorant of anything. But the lesson is badly learned which the heart has not studied at its own expense. Words are not of the same stuff as reality. And one sometimes fails to recognize what one has read about when one meets it in life. Annette, who had been well taught, had almost everything to learn. Julien had to learn everything.
He had lived without love. We hesitate in France to speak of "innocents" of this kind: they provoke the easy pleasantries of an intelligent race that does not vary to any great extent in the forms of its wit. There are many of these innocents. Whether it is the result of religious scruples, or moral puritanism, or a deep-seated and sometimes unwholesome timidity, or (and this is most frequently the case) an overwhelming burden of work that absorbs their years of youth, a life of poverty, toil, a repugnance for vulgar love affairs, a respect for the future, for the one who is coming (who is not coming)—in every case, no doubt, a certain cold-bloodedness lies at the bottom of their attitude. The Nordic heart is slow to awaken, though this may mean, not that the passions are going to lack force in the future, but merely that they are gathering and being held in reserve. There are many of these innocents, and the happy young people about them pay no attention to them. Innocents are left empty-handed; they are left out of everything. Julien knew scarcely anything about life except through his intelligence.
The child of a bourgeois family, poor, laborious, which included only his two parents, the father an obscure professor who had worked himself to death, the mother devoted to her son, who returned the devotion, deeply religious, a practising Catholic, a believer, with liberal ideas, an unbroken, monotonous life of labor, coldly illumined by the severe joy of conscience and habit, with no interest in politics, a distaste for every sort of public activity, a profound love of the hidden, inner, domestic life, he was a truly honest, modest soul, with a sense of the value of the strong, humble virtues. And deep down in his heart was a flower of poetry.
He was an assistant teacher of science at a lycée. He had known Annette years before at the University, when they were twenty. From the very first he had been attracted by her. But Annette, who was rich at that time, popular, radiant with youth and happy egoism, carelessly distant, intimidated Julien. Her bolder companions assumed with her the place that he would have liked to take. He envied them, but he did not try to rival them; he considered himself inferior, ugly, awkward, ill-dressed; he was unable to express himself and gave a false idea of his intelligence and his sincerity. The sense of his physical uncouthness paralysed him all the more because he was susceptible to beauty, and Annette inspired in him an unexpressed emotion. For he thought her beautiful; unlike his companions who paid court to her, he did not have a sufficiently free mind to observe cavalierly the imperfections that accompanied her attractions, the strongly marked eyebrows, the prominent eyes, the short nose. He did not see these details. But he alone of all these young men grasped the harmony of this living form, he alone understood it; for, although most people stop at the mere external pattern, every form expresses an inner meaning. Julien did not separate in his own mind Annette's eyes, her forehead, her heavy eyebrows from her energy of character and vigorous mentality. He saw her from a distance, simply, summarily; but he saw her truly, more truly, at this first glance, than when he came nearer and tried to know her better. He was one of those far-sighted spirits that are embarrassed at close range. Sometimes they have genius and stumble at every step.
Julien and Annette happened to meet again one morning in the great windowed hall on the first floor of the Library of Sainte-Geneviève. It was nearly ten years since they had seen each other, and Julien had prudently avoided thinking of the image that rose before him to-day. He lifted his eyes from his book. On the other side of the table, a few steps away, he caught sight of her reading. Over her beautiful auburn hair was a fur toque; her cloak was thrown back from her shoulders. (It was still winter, though Easter was approaching; and the hall, into which the icy air of the square filtered through the great windows, was never warm enough. Julien had kept his own coat-collar turned up, but she, with her neck exposed, did not feel the cold.) With one elbow on the table and her chin resting on the back of her hand, she had the familiar attitude which he had seen so long ago, her brow bending forward, her blond eyebrows knit, and the eyes running down the page, while she nibbled the end of her pencil. He felt again as he had felt at twenty. But it did not occur to him to get up and speak to her.
In spite of the ardor with which she had applied herself to reading, as she applied herself to everything, Annette's mind was still pursuing more than one single thought. The ideas she had come to find in a book, and that really attracted her, rarely presented themselves without a procession of images which had very little in common among themselves. She drove them away; but, as moment followed moment, the indiscreet images came back and knocked at the door. The most intellectual woman never completely forgets herself in what she is reading; the current within her is too strong. Annette interrupted her reading to open the flood-gate for a moment.
As she thus stopped, casting about her a rather troubled glance, her eye encountered that of Julien: it was fixed upon her. The image of Julien seemed to her a part of what was passing through her mind. Then, suddenly awakening—as when, in the morning, on her pillow, she found herself all at once in the midst of life—she rose gaily and stretched out her hand to him across the table.
Julien, who was embarrassed, awkwardly went over and sat down beside her. They began to talk. Julien said little. He was stunned by this unexpected pleasure. Annette took everything into her own hands. She was delighted; a happy past reappeared before her. Julien played a very minor part in this: he was a mere link in the chain, and as the figures of the dance unfolded Julien was soon far away. But he thought he still saw himself in Annette's laughing eyes, and in his confusion he scarcely knew what he was saying to her in reply. He did his best (the clumsy soul!) to conceal the admiration she aroused in him. She still seemed beautiful to him, more beautiful than ever, but closer, more human, somehow new. . . . In what way? He knew nothing about her; the last thing he had heard was the death of her father six years before. He lived a solitary life; the gossip of Paris never reached him. . . . He asked if Annette was still living in the Boulogne house.
"What, don't you know? It's a long time since I moved away from there. Yes, they put me out of it."
He did not understand. She hastily explained, with an air of gaiety, that she had been ruined by her own fault, her indifference to business.
"It was a very good thing!" she added.
And she spoke of other matters. Not a word about her life. She had no desire to conceal it, but it was no concern of others. If Julien had insisted, asked some question, she would have replied with the exact truth. But he asked nothing, he would not have dared. His mind was lost in this one thought: she was poor, poor like himself. Already the fiery wind of hope had entered him.
To disguise his feeling he leaned, with a gruff camaraderie, over the pamphlet she had just laid down.
"What are you reading here?"
He turned the leaves. A scientific review. There was a file of them.
"Yes," said Annette, "I am trying to catch up with things. It's not easy. I have lost ground during these five years; I have to earn my living, giving lessons, and I haven't the time. I am taking advantage of Easter. No more lessons. I'm resting. I am trying to make up for lost time. I am taking double doses, you see. [She pointed to the open reviews that surrounded her.] I should like to swallow them all. But it's too much. I can't manage it; I have to learn everything all over again. Such an immense number of things have happened since I have been out of the running; they allude to works that I don't know. . . . Heavens, how quickly things move! But I shall catch up with them again! I swear I shan't be left behind on the road like a cripple. There are fine things to be seen out there. I want to see them."
Julien drank in her words. Of all she was saying what remained in his mind was this: she was earning her living under difficulties, and she was laughing. She rose in his admiration to a height which the old Annette had never attained. And she dragged him along with her. For this joy, which he did not possess, she brought to him.
They went out together. Julien was proud to find himself in the company of this beautiful woman; he could not get over his surprise that she should have remembered him so well. In the old days she had hardly seemed to notice that he existed. And here she was recalling to him little forgotten events in which he was concerned. She asked about Julien's mother. He was so touched that his embarrassment vanished; haltingly, he began to tell her about himself; he was tongue-tied. Annette listened to him with gentle irony; she would have liked to prompt him. He was still at the beginning and his assurance was coming back when she held out her hand to bid him goodbye. He had just time to ask her if she was going to be at the library again, and he was overjoyed to hear her say, "to-morrow."
Julien went home in utter confusion. He was ashamed of himself, but to-morrow he would make up for it. To-day he only wanted to think of the miracle of this friendship. On her side, Annette, who was submerged in Sylvie's environment, was pleased to have found again a comrade of her intellectual years. Not that he was very enlivening—hardly that—but he was a serious, sympathetic, honest boy. . . . What an icicle!
She had no reason the next day to change her opinion. Julien only thawed out when he was alone at home. The moment he saw Annette again, the ice at once returned. He was filled with consternation. He had prepared many things to say, prepared a conversation as he would have prepared a lecture, but under Annette's eyes nothing remained of it all. There was only a tasteless extract left of the recitation that he had warmed up in himself so many times. Even he was bored as he heard himself reeling it off. He only recovered his equilibrium when they began to discuss science and he himself was not in question. On that ground he was precise and clear and even became quite lively. Annette could have asked nothing more. Eager to learn, she pressed him with questions that interested Julien by their intelligence; she was so quick in imagining, though she often guessed wrong, and at a word she would turn up at the exact point whither he wished to lead her. He liked this attentive face, these eyes that plunged into his to reach his thought more quickly, and then suddenly lighted up. She had understood! The joy of thought shared in common, and this invisible sun and the immense perspective illumined by its light, the joy of travelling together towards discovery by new roads where he was her guide! It was delicious to talk in this way, in the peaceful seclusion of this hall of books, this church of the mind.
Delicious for him, but not for those who were near them. For he talked too loud: he had forgotten that other people existed. Annette smilingly told him that he must be silent and rose to go out. He followed her. But once in the street again, with the table and the books no longer before them, he became the same impotent soul whom Annette had seen the day before. She tried to make him talk of himself, but her labor was lost. And he could not make up his mind to leave her; he wanted to take her back to the door of her house. He was stiff, nervous, abrupt from embarrassment—at moments, unintentionally, even rather impolite. . . . He was a fearful bore! Annette, slightly irritated, thought, "How the devil can I get rid of him?"
Julien perceived the mocking curve in this mouth that said nothing. He stopped suddenly and remarked, in a tone of distress, "O forgive me, I'm boring you. . . . Yes, I know it, I know it! I am such a bore! I don't know how to talk. I am not used to it. I live alone. My mother is good, very good, but I can't tell her about my thoughts. Many of them would upset her; she wouldn't understand them. And I have never known anybody who was interested in them. I don't expect it. You have been good to listen to me so indulgently. I have let myself go on because I wanted to tell you. . . . But it isn't possible. One can't tell things, one should keep them to oneself. It isn't interesting, it isn't manly. Live and be silent. I ask your pardon for having bored you."
Annette was touched. There was real feeling in these words. This mixture of modesty and sad pride struck her; she felt the disappointment and the wounded affection under the shell of coldness. In one of those bursts of emotion which she could not resist, she was seized with a kindly pity for Julien. She said warmly, "No, no, don't regret anything. I thank you. It was quite right of you to talk"—she corrected herself with a touch of mockery that had no sharpness in it this time—"to try to talk. Yes, it isn't easy. You are not used to it. . . . Well, I'm glad you are not used to it. There are plenty of others who are! But there is nothing to prevent me from hoping that I shall make you get used to it. Are you willing? Since you have no one with whom you can talk?"
Julien was too much moved to reply, but his look expressed a gratitude that was still shy. Although it was past the hour when she should have been at home, Annette retraced her steps so that they might still have a few minutes together; and she talked to him with a kind, motherly camaraderie, in a simple, cordial tone that was like a cool hand laid on his aching forehead. Yes, he had been hurt, this big boy; with his moody air he needed to be handled very gently. He was coming back to life now. But she had to go in. . . . Annette suggested seeing him again from time to time. And they confessed that, as for the work they had done in the library, they might have done it just as well in the Luxembourg Gardens, or . . .
"Or . . . why not at my house?"
And Annette, inviting him for some Sunday soon, vanished without waiting for a reply.
Ah, how well he might have talked, now that she was no longer there! He went over the whole scene; he felt how kind Annette was. And since this man, who was so well balanced in his intellectual life, was unable to preserve any measure in the things of the heart, he slipped without transition from the thought that his feeling was destined to remain unreturned to the thought that perhaps . . .
Annette had not the least suspicion of what was taking place in Julien. The unengaging appearance of her new companion seemed a guarantee against love, and she thought that in some comic fashion it would also guarantee Julien. She respected him. She pitied him. Pitied, he became sympathetic. It was pleasant to tell herself that she could do him good; and he became more sympathetic to her. But it would never have occurred to her to be on her guard against him, still less against herself.
She had forgotten her invitation when, on the following Sunday, he came to recall it to her; and the joyous surprise with which she greeted him was not assumed. But Julien who, for a week, had been thinking of nothing but this moment, did not see the surprise and saw only the joy. And his own increased. The weather was very bad. Annette had not thought of going out this afternoon. As she was not expecting anybody; she was in négligé, and so was the apartment. The baby had been playing there. It is useless to have, as Annette had, a love of order; children oblige one to give it up, along with so many fine plans that one has formed without considering them. But Julien, referring everything to himself, saw in this disorder no artistic effect, but a sign of some intimacy that Annette wished to accord him. He came in with a beating heart, but with his mind made up to appear this time in an advantageous light; he assumed an air of assurance. It was not becoming to him, and Annette, who was annoyed at being surprised in this confusion, was angry because the intruder was so unceremonious. She at once became cold, and in an instant Julien's pride was broken. So they remained, each as stiff as the other, the one not daring to utter another word, the other waiting with an air of malicioushauteur.
"If you imagine, my dear boy, that I am going to help you to-day!"
And then she saw the ridiculous side of the situation. She saw with the corner of her eye the piteous look of the conqueror, and she laughed out loud. Suddenly relaxed, she resumed the comradely tone. Julien did not understand it at all: disconcerted but relieved, he too became natural again, and at last a friendly conversation sprang up between them.
Annette told him about her working life, and they confessed to one another that they were not made for their occupations. Julien was passionately interested in the science which he taught, but . . .
"They can't follow me! They look at me with their dull eyes blinking with sleep; there are hardly two or three who have a glimmer of understanding; the rest are a heavy mass of boredom. If you sweat blood and water, you can sometimes (not always) stir it for a moment, but it always falls back into the pond. Try to fish it out again! It's work for a well-digger. But it isn't their fault, the unhappy brats. They are just like ourselves; they are victims of the democratic mania according to which all minds absorb equally the same sum of knowledge—before the normal age when they might begin to understand! Then come the examinations, the agricultural matches, when they weigh these products of ours who are crammed with a mixture of lame words and formless notions. Most of these they hastily disgorge immediately afterwards, and they are disgusted with learning for the rest of their lives."
"Now I," said Annette, laughing, "like children very much, yes, even the most unattractive ones. I am not indifferent to any of them. I should like to have them all, I should like to hug them all. But one has to limit oneself. Isn't that so? It's enough to have one. . . ."
(She pointed to the disorderly room, but he did not understand and smiled stupidly.)
"It's a pity! When I see one who pleases me, I would like to steal him. And they all give me pleasure. There is something fresh, an infinite hope, even in the ugliest. . . . But what can I do with them? And what can they do with me? I see so little of them. They are only in my hands for an hour. And then I run to the others. And my little ones also run from hand to hand. What one hand has done the other undoes. Nothing sticks. These little formless souls, these little soulless forms, who dance the Boston and the two-step. We run about. Everyone runs about. This life is a race-course. No one ever stops. People die, they join the dead. Ah, what unhappy souls, never granting themselves a day to collect their thoughts! And they don't grant us one either, we who would so like to have it!"
Julien understood her. He had no need to learn the value of a retreat, the horror of the tumultuous world. And their understanding increased when Annette said that fortunately, in the midst of the flood, there were still a few islets where one could take refuge, the beautiful books of the poets and especially music. The poets had little attraction for Julien; their language was beyond him. He had the strange distrust of it which is common in minds that love thought and often have their own poetry, but do not perceive the deep vibrations of the music of words. The other music, the language of sounds, is more accessible to them. Julien loved it. Unfortunately, he lacked the time and the means to go and hear it.
"I lack them too," said Annette. "But I go just the same."
Julien did not have this vitality. After his working day he stayed quietly at home. He did not know how to amuse himself. He saw a piano in the room.
"Do you play?"
"Ah, it isn't easy!" said Annette, laughing. "Hedoesn't allow it."
Julien, vaguely troubled, asked in surprise who could prevent her in this way. Annette, with her ear alert, listened to the little steps that were tapping along as they climbed the stairs. She ran and opened the door. "See, there's the monster!"
She brought Marc in. He had returned from his aunt's.
Julien did not yet understand.
"My little boy . . . Marc, will you say good-afternoon?"
Julien was astounded. It had not even occurred to Annette that he would be surprised. She went on gaily, holding Marc, who tried to escape from her, "You see, I haven't lost my time in spite of all."
Julien did not have the wit to reply. His attention was occupied in concealing his confusion. He attempted a rather foolish smile. Marc had succeeded in slipping from his mother's hands, without having said good-afternoon. (He thought this ceremony ridiculous, and he made off, leaving his mother talking, "talking and saying nothing," well knowing that the instant after she would have forgotten it in something else. There was no continuity in women.) Four steps away from Julien, in the folds of a curtain which he twisted in his embrace, Marc looked the stranger up and down with severe eyes; and in his childish way (which was fairly accurate) he had quickly sized up the situation. Decision without appeal: he did not like Julien. The question was settled.
Julien, whose embarrassment was increased by this look from the child, tried to resume the thread of the conversation while following the thread of his own thoughts. But he only succeeded in becoming more confused. He reassured himself, however. Feebly. Annette's confident manner made it impossible for him to suspect that she was unmarried: that was out of the question. But where was the husband? Alive or dead? Annette was not in mourning. No, he was not reassured. What had become of this man? Julien did not dare to ask directly. After many detours, he finally took a chance, imagining he was very clever, and carelessly remarked, "Have you been alone very long?"
"I am not alone," said Annette. And she pointed to her child.
He learned nothing more. But since she thus admitted by implication that she was alone (with the child) and that she took it gaily, it must be because her mourning was far, very far, behind her, and she no longer thought of it. Julien's interested logic ended victoriously, "Monsieur Malbrough is dead."
Farewell to the husband! He was no longer disturbing. Julien threw one more shovelful of earth on him, and then, turning to Marc, gave the child a crooked smile. Marc was becoming sympathetic to him.
But he had not become so to Marc. He was more familiar with the constitution of the atomic bodies than with that of a child's mind. Marc fully realized that this demonstration of good nature was not natural, and the result was that he turned his back, grumbling, "I forbid him to laugh at me."
Annette, amused by Julien's useless efforts to win over the child, thought she ought to make up for Marc's ungracious greeting. She questioned Julien about his solitary life with an interest that wandered a little at first, but soon ceased to do so. Julien, who was always more sure of himself when he was sitting in the half-light of a room, talked about himself this time quite frankly. He was simple; he never, or hardly ever, posed, in spite of his desire to please. In his sincerity he revealed a candour that one seldom meets in Paris in a man of his age. When he touched upon subjects that were dear to him, he had a delicacy that veiled a restrained emotion. In these moments of abandon when, in the kindly silence of the encouraging Annette, his true inner nature seemed to blossom, a gleam of moral beauty lighted up his face. Annette looked at him attentively, and what she felt for him was no longer merely a friendly indifference.
After this they saw each other regularly on Sundays and a little oftener during the week, when they had a free moment. Julien used as a pretext the books which he lent her; it was quite necessary to accompany them with explanations so that Annette should have less difficulty in understanding them. He brought Marc some rather expensive but badly chosen presents for which the little enemy was by no means grateful to him: he thought them childish and beneath his dignity. But nothing could shake Julien's good will, firmly resolved as he was not to see anything that would disturb him. Solitary spirits who distrust the world lose all discernment, all desire to be discerning, the moment they abandon their distrust in favor of some chosen soul: they are liberated. Julien's mind, ingenious in deceiving itself, arranged to its satisfaction the memories it brought back from each of its visits: everything that Annette had said and everything that surrounded her. (Without being conscious of it, he indirectly glorified himself.) Annette's inattentiveness, her wandering replies, even the bored silences which he sometimes caused her, all rendered her more beautiful and more touching to him. And as, each time, he still discovered some new little trait, which did not accord with the portrait he had made, he kept remaking the portrait, he made it over ten times; and although the portrait no longer resembled what it had been at the beginning, Julien never admitted that there had been a change in its essential constancy. He was ready to alter his ideal of love as many times as the beloved object altered.
Annette had become aware of his love for her. She was amused by it at first, then touched, then grateful, a little, a good deal, in spite of everything. ("The least handsome boy in the world can only give what he has. Thank you, my good Julien.") Then she was a little troubled. She told herself frankly that she should not allow him to start down that slope. But it gave the boy so much happiness, and certainly it was not displeasing to her. Annette was susceptible to affection; susceptible also to gentle attentions, the flattery of tenderness. Too much so, perhaps. She confessed it. Love, the admiration she read in his eyes were for her a caress that she could not but wish to have repeated. . . . Yes, she admitted it: perhaps it was not quite right, but it was so natural! She would have to make some little effort to deprive herself of it. She did so, but she had no luck; everything she said to push Julien away from her (did she really say everything?) attracted him all the more. It was a fatality! One has to resign oneself to a fatality. She laughed at herself, while Julien, troubled, wondered if she was not laughing at him.
"Hypocrite, hypocrite! Haven't you any shame?"
She had no shame. Can one resist pleasing a heart that has surrendered itself into one's hands? It brightens one's days. And what harm does it do? What is the danger? As long as one is calm and master of oneself and desires only what is good, the good of the other person!
She did not know that one of the insidious paths through which love finds its way is the fond vanity of believing that one is necessary—that feeling which is so strong in the heart of a true woman: it satisfies her double need of doing good, which she confesses, and of pride, which she does not confess. It is so strong that when she has a well-developed soul she often prefers the man for whom she cares less, but whom she can protect, to the man for whom she cares more, but who can get along without her. Is not this the essence of maternity? Suppose the big boy were to remain the little chick as long as he lived! The woman with a mother's heart, like Annette, finds it easy to attribute to a man whose love appeals to her a charm he does not possess. Her instinct disposes her to observe only his good qualities. Julien had plenty of these. Annette rejoiced to see his timidity vanishing and his real nature, which had been repressed, expanding in the daylight with the soft happiness of the convalescent. She said to herself that hitherto no one had understood this man, not even the mother of whom he was always talking and of whom she was beginning to be jealous. As for poor Julien, he did not know himself. . . . Who would have suspected that under this rough shell there was a tender, delicate soul? . . . (She was exaggerating.) . . . He needed confidence and he had lacked it: confidence in others, confidence in himself. To believe in himself he needed another believer. Well, she believed! She believed in Julien, for Julien's sake, so much that she ended by believing in him also for her own. . . . He blossomed under her eye as a plant in the sunlight. And it is good to be the sun for somebody else. "Open, my heart!" Was it to Julien's heart or her own that she was speaking? Already she had ceased to know. For she too was blossoming as a result of the good she was doing. An abundant nature dies if it cannot nourish others from itself. "To give myself!"
Annette gave too much. She was irresistible. Julien no longer concealed his passion. And Annette—a little late—recognized that she was in danger.
When she saw love rising within her, she threw up a feeble defence; she tried not to take Julien's feelings seriously. But she did not believe herself, and all she did was to make Julien more importunate. He became pathetic.
Then she was seized with fear. She besought him not to love her, to let them remain good friends.
"Why?" he asked. "Why?"
She did not want to say. She had an instinctive fear of love; she remembered what she had suffered through it, and an intuition warned her of what she would have to suffer again. She summoned it and she drove it away from her; she desired it and she fled from it. Julien's entreaties she resisted sincerely, and in the bottom of her heart she prayed that her adversary might conquer her; resistance.
The combat would have dragged on if a certain event had not hastened the issue.
With her sister's husband Annette was on terms of the frankest friendship. This good soul, for all his slight vulgarity, lacked neither heart nor integrity. Annette respected him, and Leopold treated her with a rather ceremonious consideration. Ever since their first meetings he had gathered that she belonged to a different species from his and Sylvie's; she intimidated him. He was all the more grateful for the kindness she showed him. At the time when he was paying court to Sylvie, she had been his ally; more than once she had come to his aid when he was exposed to the ridicule of his fiancée, who was too sure of her power not to abuse it. Later she had even discreetly interposed in misunderstandings in the household, or when Sylvie yielded to sudden whims, crotchets and deviltries, now and then, escaping from her own vexations by vexing her husband. Leopold, who did not understand such things, would come and tell his troubles to Annette, who undertook to bring Sylvie back to reason. He had even gone so far as to confide to his sister-in-law more than one matter which he had not mentioned to his wife. Sylvie was not unaware of this, and she teased Annette, who took it gaily. Everything was natural and frank among the three. Leopold had never complained of the place held in his home by his wife's sister and the little boy, though they were often rather in the way; he thought, in fact, that Sylvie did not do enough to help Annette, whose courage he admired; and he spoiled the child. Annette, who knew through Sylvie what Leopold thought, was grateful to him.
The period of Sylvie's pregnancy was not, for those about her, especially the husband, a happy time. Frequent discords drove Leopold and his consort apart. Not that Sylvie meant to get along without him. She thought very little about her maternity and was unwilling to make any change in her manner of living. But he did think about it. Those long months of gestation were far from being for her what they had been for Annette, an endless dream of languid happiness that was finished too soon. Sylvie was not made to brood on dreams. She was impatient and had no intention of giving up one of her duties, one of her rights or one of her pleasures: she overtaxed herself. Her health was affected by her nervous state, and her character did not gain by it. When one is tormented, one is glad to torment others. Sylvie, who was uncomfortable, was indignant because her husband was not; and she undertook to make him so. She harassed him with her teasing, malicious, perpetually changing moods. She was even (unexpectedly enough) jealously amorous, though this did not prevent her from abusing him. There were days when he did not know which way to turn.
Annette was at hand to receive his lamentations. He would climb up to her floor, complaining; she would listen to him patiently, and she found a way to make him laugh at his little misfortunes. These meetings, as they went on, established between them a sort of complicity, for they had so many feelings in common. And sometimes, in Sylvie's presence, they would exchange a malicious glance. Perfectly honest, both of them, they took no precautions and abandoned themselves to a familiarity which, if it was innocent, was not entirely harmless. Annette did not dream that there was any risk, and these friendly coquetries amused her. Leopold was captivated by them; he asked for nothing better. He had been attracted for a long time by the radiant force of joy that issued from her. Just at that moment Annette was discovering Julien's love, and it troubled her deliciously. The rest of the world was all a haze. When she had just seen Julien, and Leopold was talking to her, she listened to Leopold and replied to him, but it was to Julien that she was smiling. Leopold had no means of guessing this.
He knew what he wanted. He resisted like a decent fellow. But a decent fellow is a man. He should not play with fire.
One Sunday in May the four of them, Sylvie, Annette, Leopold and little Marc, went for a walk in the direction of Sceaux. After an hour of strolling, Sylvie, who was a little tired, sat down at the foot of a slope and said, "Well, young people, climb it if you want to! You will find us still here."
She remained behind with the child. Annette and Leopold went gaily on. Annette was animated, joyous, the best of company. Leopold, with his jolly talk, eased the moral tension in which Julien's love and his intellectual conversation held her. The path wound between the long wall of a great estate and a rise of ground covered with flowering bushes. Through the holes in the hedges they saw, as they climbed, the sloping orchards with their white and pink tufts.
A fantastic sky, with the busy clouds racing over its delicate blue. The laughing wind, like a young dog, bit them by fits and starts. Annette was walking ahead, picking flowers, singing. Leopold was following her; he watched her bending over, watched her robust frame under the tightly fitting dress, her bare hands, her bare neck, reddened by the lash of the wind, and amid the foaming hair the red shell of her ear, the tip of which looked like a drop of blood. The slope rose again to the right, and the road formed a passage in which the rushing wind streamed down upon them. Annette, without turning, asked her companion a question. He did not reply. She went on, bending over, picking flowers and talking. And as she joked with Leopold, who was silent, it suddenly occurred to her that there was something dangerous in this silence. She let her flowers fall. She straightened herself, but she did not have time to turn when . . . she almost fell. He had clasped her in his arms. She had been brutally seized, and she felt on her neck a panting breath. An eager mouth was kissing her throat, her cheeks. Instantly stiffening, bracing herself, with all her unconscious fighting forces collected, with her chest and her spine she furiously shook the man who had seized her: she broke his hold and found herself face to face with the aggressor. Her eyes flamed with anger, but he did not relax his grip. A rough struggle followed, like that of animals that hate each other. Rough and brief. Annette, whose outraged instincts gave her an added strength, violently repulsed the man, and he tripped and stumbled. He remained there before her, doubly humiliated, panting, scarlet, and they looked at each other with rage in their eyes. Not a word was said. Suddenly Annette clambered up the bank, crept through a hole in the hedge to the other side, and fled. Leopold, who had come to his senses, called after her. She stopped twenty paces away and would not let him approach. They redescended the hill on different sides of the hedge, keeping their distances, on their guard, hostile and ashamed. Leopold, in a changed voice, implored Annette to come back, begged her pardon. Annette turned a deaf ear towards him, but she heard him: the confusion of this voice reached her through the barrier of her bitterness. She slackened her pace.
"Annette!" he besought her. "Annette! Don't run away! I don't want to pursue you. See, I'm staying here, I shan't come near you. I've behaved like a brute. I'm ashamed, ashamed. Call me any names you like, but don't run away. I shall never touch you again, not even with the tip of my finger. I'm disgusted with myself. I ask your pardon on my knees!"
He knelt down awkwardly on the pebbles. He looked utterly wretched. He was ridiculous.
Annette, who was listening to him in cold silence, motionless, with her face turned away, threw him a side-glance without looking at him. She saw this humiliated man. She was touched by his humiliation; her warm heart had the faculty of opening to the emotions of others as if they were her own, and she blushed at Leopold's shame. She made a movement towards him and said, "Get up!"
He rose, and she instinctively recoiled a few steps. "You are still afraid," he said. "You will never forgive me."
"Don't speak of it any more," she answered dryly. "It's ended."
They descended the road again. Annette was dumb and frozen. He had difficulty in keeping silent. He was mortified, and he was trying to justify himself. But he was not very eloquent, the poor man. His style was not exactly noble. "I am a dirty cur!" he repeated angrily.
Annette, still agitated, repressed a smile. Her mind was in a tumult, and she found difficulty in calming it. She felt at the same time the loathsomeness and the absurdity of the scene. She had not forgiven him, and she was ready to pity the man who was accusing himself so pathetically beside her. He continued to flounder. She listened to him with bitterness, compassion, irony. He struggled to explain "this filthy madness that passes through your body." . . . Yes, this madness, she knew it, although it was not the time to tell him so. But he looked so wretched that, in spite of herself, she said to him, "I know. One is mad sometimes. What's done is done."
They continued on their way, without speaking, their hearts heavy, sad and embarrassed. Just as they were arriving at the spot where they had left Sylvie, Annette made a gesture as if she were about to hold out her hand to Leopold. But instead of doing so, she said, "I've forgotten it."
He was relieved, though he was still troubled. Like a schoolboy caught in some misdemeanor, he asked, "You won't say anything about it?"
Annette gave him a little pitying smile.
No, she said nothing. But at the first glance the sharp eye of Sylvie had seen it all. She asked no questions. They spoke of other things. And while all three, to hide their thoughts, made a great parade of chattering all the way home, Sylvie observed the two others.
From that day forward Annette and Leopold were never again alone together. The jealous one was always watching; Annette too was on her guard. In spite of herself she allowed her distrust to be viable. And Leopold, who was hurt, brooded over his unconfessed bitterness.
Annette's eyes were opened. She could no longer remain undistrustful of herself and others. She could no longer pass along, laughing, as she had done before, heedless, because she did not seek them, of the desires she aroused. Society being as it is, customs being as they are, her situation as a single woman, young and free, not only exposed her to pursuit, but legitimized it. No one could believe that she had freed herself, in the boldest fashion, in order to shut herself up afterwards in a widowhood the constancy of which was without an object. She imagined she had changed with maternity, and no doubt maternity was a great flame. But another flame still burned in her. She tried to forget it, because she was afraid of it; and she imagined that no one saw it. But this was not so; in spite of her, the fire of love burned on. And other people, if not she, were in danger of being its victims. Leopold's adventure had shown her this. It was hideous. She was revolted by it. In the disillusioned eyes of one who is not in love, the act of love seems a grotesque or disgusting bestiality. As Annette saw it, Leopold's attempt was both. But Annette did not have a calm conscience. She had fanned these desires. She remembered her thoughtless coquetries, her arts, the provocations she had given him. What had driven her into them? That repressed force, that inner fire which she was obliged to foster or stifle. Stifle it one cannot, one should not! It is the sunlight of life. Without it, everything is plunged in shadow. But at least it should not consume that to which it ought to give life, like the chariot that was given into the hands of Phaëton. Let it follow its regular course through the sky! Marriage then? After having so long avoided it, the perception of the dangers that menaced her led her to tell herself that a marriage of affection and esteem, of calm sympathy, would be a bulwark against the demons of the heart and a protection against pursuit from without. The more she convinced herself (and everything conspired to convince her: her material and moral security, the attraction of a home and the solicitations of her heart), the less resistance she opposed to Julien's supplications. In order to yield to them, she went over all the reasons she had for loving him. But she did not wait for these reasons in order to love him. For already there had begun within her that construction of the mind which creates an exalted vision of the chosen one. Julien had preceded her in this, but as she had a richer and more passionate nature she had soon outdistanced him.
No longer on her guard, surrendering to the ardor of her frank nature, she used none of those artifices with which a cleverer woman masks her defeat when her heart is captured and she allows people to believe that she is still mistress of it. Annette had made a gift of hers. She told Julien. And from that very moment Julien began to be uneasy.