I am perfectly well aware that this sort of evidence would not satisfy a jury, but it was sufficient for me, who knew her so well.
And to my thinking the evidence was strengthened by the fact that a short time ago my brother-in-law had forbidden the doctor his house, because the latter had made advances to my sister.
I was therefore determined not to return to my own country. At home I should be compelled to associate daily with men whom I distrusted, and to escape the ridicule which inevitably falls to the share of the duped husband, I fled to Vienna.
Alone in my hotel, the vision of the wife I had worshipped haunted me. Utterly unable to work, I began a correspondence with her. I wrote her love-letters twice a day. The unknown town affected me like a cemetery. I moved through the thronging crowd like a phantom. But after a while my imagination began to people this solitude. I invented a romantic story for the sole reason of introducing Marie into this dreary desert, and soon life was pulsing everywhere. I pictured her as a famous singer, and to lend my dream a semblance of reality and make of the fine city a more convincing background for her, I made the acquaintance of the director of the Conservatoire. I, who detested the theatre, visited the opera or a concert every night. Everything interested me intensely, because I reported everything to her. No sooner had I arrived at my hotel than I sat down and gave her a minute description of Miss So-and-so's performance, drawing comparisons which were invariably in her own favour.
Her spirit pervaded the picture galleries. I spent an hour before the Venus of Guido Reni in the Belvedere, because she was so like my beloved.
In the end my longing grew so irresistible that I packed my box and returned home as fast as the express could carry me. Surely I was bewitched; there was no means of escape from her.
I had a royal reception.
My love-letters seemed to have rekindled Marie's love. I ran up the little garden to meet her. I covered her face with passionate kisses. I took her little head between my hands.
"Can you really work magic, little witch?"
"What do you mean? Your journey was not an attempt at flight, was it?"
"It was! But you are stronger than I am.... I throw down my arms...."
On my writing-table lay a spray of red roses.
"You do love me a little?"
She was covered with confusion like a young girl—she blushed ... it was all over with me, my honour, my efforts to break the chains which bound me, and which I longed for when I was free.
Six months went by; we lived in a wonderful dream: we chirruped like starlings, we kissed, our love was endless. We played duets and backgammon. The most beautiful days of the last five years were surpassed. Spring had returned in the autumn of our lives! And had we not dreaded the approach of the winter?
I was fast again in her toils. She was convinced that the love philtre which she had given me to drink had intoxicated me afresh, and relapsed into her former indifference. She neglected her appearance, and despite all my remonstrances no longer took the trouble to make the best of herself. I foresaw that the result would be coldness on both sides, in spite of ourselves. Even her preference for her own sex reappeared, more dangerous and more pitiable, for this time she made love to young girls.
One evening we had invited the commandant and his fourteen-year-old daughter, cur hostess and her daughter, a girl of fifteen, and a third girl of about the same age to a quiet little dinner-party, which was to be followed by a dance.
Towards midnight—to this day I grow hot when I think of it—I saw that Marie, who had been drinking freely, had gathered the young girls round her and, looking at them with lascivious eyes, was kissing them on the lips.
The commandant was watching the scene from a dark corner of the room, hardly able to control himself. In imagination I saw prison, penal servitude, a scandal which we could never live down; I made a rush at the group and broke it up, telling the girls to join in the dancing....
When we were left alone I took Marie to task. We argued and stormed till daylight. Since she had had more wine than was good for her, she lost her head and confessed things which I had never even dreamed of.
Beside myself with anger, I repeated all my indictments, all my suspicions, and added a new charge, in which I did not really believe myself.
"And this mysterious illness, these headaches from which I suffer...."
"What! You blame me for that too!"
I had not meant what she insinuated; I had merely referred to the symptoms of cyanide poisoning which I had observed in myself.
All of a sudden a reminiscence flashed into my mind; the thought of something which at the time had seemed too improbable that it had left no permanent trace in my memory....
My suspicion was strengthened when I remembered a certain epithet used in an anonymous letter which I had received a short time after Marie's divorce. The letter referred to her as "the prostitute of Södertälje."
What did it mean? I had made inquiries which had come to nothing. Was I on the point of making a fresh discovery?
When the Baron, Marie's first husband, made her acquaintance at Södertälje, she was half and half engaged to a young officer, a man with admittedly bad health. Poor Gustav had played the part of a greenhorn. That accounted for the warm gratitude which she felt for him even after the divorce; she had confessed at the time that he had delivered her from dangers ... what dangers she had not mentioned.
But "the prostitute of Södertälje"? I reflected ... the retired life which the young couple led, without friends, without society; they had been ostracised by the class to which they belonged.
Had Marie's mother, formerly a governess of middle-class origin, who had wheedled Marie's father into a marriage with her; who had fled to Sweden to escape from pressing debts; had she, the widow who so cleverly contrived to conceal her poverty, stooped to sell her daughter when they were living at Södertälje?
The old woman, a coquette still at the age of sixty, had always inspired me with mingled feelings of compassion and dislike; mean, pleasure-loving, with the manners of an adventuress, a veritable "man-eater," she regarded every man as her legitimate prey. She had made me support her sister; she had deceived her first son-in-law, the Baron, with the story of a dowry swindled out of one of her creditors.
Poor Marie! Her remorse, her unrest, her dark moods were rooted in that shady past. In putting old events by the side of new ones I had the key to the quarrels between mother and daughter, brutal quarrels, frequently verging on violence. I could understand Marie's hitherto incomprehensible words, "I could kick my mother!"
Had her game been to silence the old woman? Probably; for the latter had threatened to ruin our lives by confessing "everything."
There could have been no doubt of Marie's dislike for her mother, to whom the Baron frequently referred as "that old blackguard," an invective which he justified with the half-truth that she had taught her daughter all the tricks of coquetry to enable her to catch a husband.
All these coincidences strengthened my determination to separate from her. It had to be! There was no alternative. And I left for Copenhagen to make inquiries into the past of the woman in whose keeping I had confided my honour.
In meeting my countrymen after several years' absence I found that they had formed very definite opinions of me; the eager exertions of Marie and her friends had borne fruit. She was a holy martyr; I was a madman, whose lunacy consisted in believing himself to be saddled with an unfaithful wife.
Make inquiries? It was like beating my head against a stone wall. People listened to what I had to say with a furtive smile and stared at me as if I were a rare animal. No information was vouchsafed to me; I was deserted by every one, especially by those who secretly yearned for my ruin, so that they might rise over my fallen body.
I returned to my prison. Marie met me with evident misgivings; I learned more from the expression of her face than I had learned during the whole of my melancholy journey.
For two months I champed upon the bit; then I fled for the fourth time, in the height of summer, this time to Switzerland. But the chain which held me was not an iron chain which I might have been able to break; it was rather an indiarubber cable, elastic and capable of infinite expansion. The stronger the tension, the more irresistibly I was pulled back to the starting point.
Once more I returned, to be rewarded with open contempt; she was sure that another attempt to free myself from her net would kill me, and my death was her only hope.
I fell ill, severely ill, so that I believed myself to be dying; I made up my mind to write the whole story of the past. I could see plainly now that I had been in the power of a vampire. I only wanted to live long enough to cleanse my name from the filth with which she had sullied it. I wanted to live long enough to revenge myself; but first of all I must have proofs of her infidelity.
I hated her now with a hatred more fatal than indifference because it is the anthithesis of love. I hated her because I loved her.
It was on a Sunday, while we were dining in the summer-arbour, that the electric fluid which had gathered during the last ten years discharged itself. I cannot remember my actual motive, but I struck her, for the first time in my life. I struck her face repeatedly, and when she tried to defend herself I seized her wrists and forced her on her knees. She gave a terrified scream. The temporary satisfaction which I had felt at my action gave way to dismay, for the children, frightened to death, cried out with fear. It was a horrible moment! It is a crime, a most unnatural crime, to strike a woman, a mother, in the presence of her children. It seemed to me that the sun ought to hide his face.... I felt sick to death.
And yet there was peace in my soul, like the calm after a storm, a satisfaction such as is only derived from duty done. I regretted my action, but I felt no remorse. My deed had been as inevitable as cause and effect.
In the evening I saw her walking in the moonlit garden. I joined her; I kissed her. She did not object; she burst into tears. We walked for a few minutes, then she accompanied me to my room and stayed with me until midnight.
How strange is life! In the afternoon I had struck her. At night she held me in her arms and kissed me.
What an extraordinary woman she was, to kiss her executioner with willing lips!
Why had I not known it before? If I had struck her ten years ago I should now have been the happiest of husbands.
Remember this, my brothers, if ever you are deceived by a woman!
But she had no intention of foregoing her revenge. A few days after this incident she came into my room, began telling me a long, rambling story, and after endless digressions gave me to understand that she had once, only once, been violated; it had happened, she said, while on her theatrical tour in Finland.
It was true, then!
She implored me not to think that it had happened more than once; not to suspect her of having had a lover. That meant several times, several lovers.
"Then it is true that you have deceived me, and in order to deceive the world, too, you have invented the myth of my insanity. To hide your crime more completely you meant to torture me to death. You are a criminal. I have no longer any doubt of it. I shall divorce you!"
She threw herself on her knees, weeping bitterly, and asking me to forgive her.
"I'll forgive you; nevertheless our marriage must be annulled."
On the following day she was very quiet; on the second day she had regained her former self-possession; on the third she behaved in every respect like an innocent woman.
Since she had confessed herself, she was more than innocent; she was a martyr who treated me with insulting condescension.
She did not realise the consequences of a crime such as she had committed, and therefore she did not understand my dilemma. If I continued to live with her, I became a public laughing-stock; on the other hand, to leave her spelled disaster also; my life was ruined.
Ten years of martyrdom to be paid for with a few blows and a day of tears. Was it fair?
For the last time I left my home, secretly, for I had not the heart to say good-bye to the children.
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon I went on board a steamer bound for Constance. I had decided to visit my friends in France, and there to write the story of this woman, the true representative of the age of the unsexed.
At the last moment Marie appeared on the landing-stage, tear-stained, excited, feverish, yet pretty enough to turn the head of any man. But I remained cold, callous, silent, and received her treacherous kiss without returning it.
"Say at least that we are parting friends!"
"Enemies for the short time which remains for me on earth!"
We parted.
The steamer started. I watched her walking along the quay, trying to draw me back with the magic of her eyes which had held me under their spell for so many years. She came and went like a forsaken little dog. I waited for the moment when she would jump into the water; I should jump after her, and we should drown together. But she turned away and disappeared in a little side-street, leaving me with a last impression of her bewitching figure, her little feet, which I had allowed to trample on me for ten years without a murmur. Only in my writings perhaps I had occasionally given vent to my feelings, but even there I had always tried to mislead the reader by concealing her real crimes.
To steel my heart against grief and regret, I went at once into the saloon. I sat down to dinner, but an aching lump in my throat compelled me to rise, and I climbed again on deck.
I watched the green hill gliding past, and thought of the little white cottage with the green shutters which crowned it. My children lived there, but the home was desolate, they were without protection, without means.... An icy pang shot through my heart.
I was like the cocoon of the silkworm when the great steam-engine; slowly reels off the shining thread. At every stroke of the piston I grew thinner, and as the thread lengthened the cold which chilled me increased.
I was like an embryo prematurely detached from the umbilical cord. What a complete and living organism is the family! I had thought so at that first divorce, from which I had recoiled conscience-stricken. But she, the adulteress, the murderess, had remained unmoved.
At Constance I caught the train for Basle. What a wretched Sunday afternoon!
I prayed to God, if God there was, to preserve even my bitterest foes from such agony.
At Basle I was overwhelmed with an irresistible desire to revisit all those places in Switzerland where we had stayed together, to gladden my sad heart with memories of happy hours spent with her and the children.
I stayed for a week in Geneva and some days at Ouchy, hunted by my misery from hotel to hotel, without peace or rest, like a lost soul, like the wandering Jew. I spent my nights in tears, haunted by the little figures of my beloved children; I visited the places they had visited; I fed "their" seagulls on the Lake of Geneva, a poor, restless ghost, a miserable phantom.
Every morning I expected a letter from Marie, but no letter came. She was too clever to furnish her opponent with written evidence. I wrote to her several times a day, love-letters, forgiving her for all her crimes—but I never posted them.
Doubtless, my judges, if I had been destined to end my days in a lunatic asylum, my fate would have come upon me in those hours of keenest agony and bitterest sorrow.
My power of endurance was exhausted; I wondered whether Marie's confession had not been a ruse, so as to get rid of me and begin life all over again with her unknown lover, or, perhaps, to live with her Danish friend. I saw my children in the hands of a "stepfather" or the clutches of a "stepmother"; Marie would be quite rich with the proceeds of my collected works; she would perhaps write the story of my life as seen through the eyes of the unnatural woman who had come between us. The instinct of self-preservation stirred within me; I conceived a cunning plan. The separation from my family paralysed me mentally; I decided to return to them and stay with them until I had written the story of Marie's crimes. In this way she would become the unconscious tool of my revenge, which I could throw away when I had no further use for it.
With this object in view I sent her a telegram, business-like, free from all sentimentality; I informed her that my petition for a divorce had been refused; pretended that I required a power of attorney from her, and suggested an interview at Romanshorn, on this side of the Lake of Constance.
I despatched the telegram with a sense of relief. On the following day I took the train and in due time arrived at the appointed place. The week of suffering was a thing of the past; my heart was beating normally, my eyes shone with added lustre; I drew a deep breath at the sight of the hills on the opposite shore, where my children lived. The steamer approached the landing stage; my eyes searched for Marie.
Presently I caught sight of her on the deck, her face woe-begone, ten years older. The sight of her, suddenly grown old, wrung my heart. She walked with dragging footsteps, her eyelids were red with weeping, her cheeks hollow and drooping.
At that moment all feeling of hatred and disgust was swamped by pity. I felt a strong temptation to take her into my arms, but I pulled myself together, drew myself up and assumed the devil-may-care expression of a young blood who had come to a tryst. When I looked at her more closely I discovered in her a strange resemblance to her Danish friend; the likeness was really extraordinary; she had the same expression, the same pose, the same gestures, the same way of wearing her hair. Had she played me this last trick? Had she come to me straight from her "friend"?
Warned by these details, I recapitulated the part I meant to play. While I accompanied her to the hotel she was depressed and ill at ease, but she kept her self-possession. She questioned me very intelligently on the projected divorce proceedings, and when she found that I exhibited no trace of grief or emotion, she dropped her woe-begone aspect and began to treat me, as far as she dared, with a certain condescension.
During the interview she reminded me so much of her friend that I was tempted to ask for news of the lady. I was especially struck by a very tragic pose, a favourite one of her friend's, a pose which was accompanied by a certain gesture of the hand which rested on the table ... ugh!
I rang for wine. She drank greedily and became sentimental.
I took the opportunity to ask after the little ones. She burst into tears; she said that she had suffered greatly during the past week; from morning till night the children had worried her with questions about their father; she did not see how they could get on without me.
All at once she noticed the absence of my wedding-ring; she became agitated.
"Your wedding-ring?" she gasped breathlessly.
"I sold it in Geneva. There's no need to ask what I did with the money."
She grew pale.
"Then we are quits. Shall we make a fresh start?"
"Is that what you call fair play? You committed an act fraught with tragic consequences for the whole family, for through it I am compelled to doubt the legitimacy of my children. You are guilty of having tampered with the lineage of a family. You have dishonoured four people: your three children of doubtful paternity and your husband, whom your infidelity has made a public laughing-stock. What, on the other hand, are the consequences of my act?"
She wept. I remained firm. I said that the divorce proceedings must go on, that I should adopt the children—in the meantime she could remain in my house, if she liked. Would it not be the free life she had always been dreaming of? She had always cursed matrimony.
She reflected for a moment. My proposal did not please her.
"I remember you saying you would like the position of a governess in the house of a widower. Here's the widower for you!"
"Give me time.... We shall see.... But in the meantime do you intend to live with us?"
"If you ask me to."
"We are waiting for you."
And for the sixth time I returned to my family, but this time firmly resolved to use the remaining weeks to finish my story....
Seated at my writing-table, pen in hand, I fainted; a feverish attack prostrated me. This very inopportune attack frightened me, for I had not been seriously ill for fifteen years. It was not fear of death, oh no. Death held no terrors for me; but I was thirty-nine years old and at the end of a turbulent career, my last word still unsaid, the promises of my youth only partly fulfilled, pregnant with plans for the future. This sudden cutting of the knot was far from pleasing me. For the last four years I had lived with my family in half-voluntary exile; I was at the end of my resources, and had settled down in a small town in Bavaria; I had come into conflict with the law, for one of my books had been confiscated, and I had been banished from my own country. I had but one desire left when I was thrown on my sick-bed—the desire for revenge.
A struggle arose within me; I had not sufficient strength left in me to call for help. The fever shook me as one shakes a feather bed; it seized me by the throat and throttled me; it put its foot on my breast and scorched my brain, so that my eyes started from their sockets. I was alone with Death, who had crept in by stealth and was attacking me.
But I was unwilling to die; I resisted, and an obstinate fight began. The tension of my nerves relaxed, the blood coursed through my veins. My brain twitched like a polypus that has been thrown into vinegar. But before loner I realised that I must succumb in this dance of death. I relinquished my hold, fell backwards and submitted to the fatal embrace of the dread monster.
Immediately an indescribable calm came over me, a voluptuous weakness composed my limbs, and perfect peace soothed body and soul, which had lacked all wholesome recreation during so many years of toil.
I fervently desired that it really should be the end. Slowly all will to live ebbed away. I ceased to observe, to feel, to think. I became unconscious, and a delicious sensation of blankness filled the void created by the cessation of the racking pain, the tormenting thoughts, the secret terrors.
When I regained consciousness I found my wife sitting by my bedside and gazing at me with terrified eyes.
"What is the matter with you dear?" she said.
"Nothing; I am ill," I replied. "And there are times when illness is welcome."
"What do you mean? You are jesting!"
"No, it is the end at last ... anyhow, I hope it is."
"Heaven forbid that you should leave us in these straits!" she exclaimed. "What is to become of us in a strange country, without friends, without means?"
"There is my life insurance," I said, attempting to console her. "I know it isn't much, but it is enough to take you home."
She had not thought of this, and she looked a little reassured as she continued—
"But you cannot lie here like this! I shall send for a doctor."
"No, I won't have a doctor!"
"Why not?"
"Because—I won't!"
The glances which we exchanged spoke volumes.
"I want to die," I said, anxious to put an end to our conversation. "I am sick of life; the past is a tangled skein which I cannot unravel. It is time that my eyes closed for ever—that the curtain fell!"
She remained unmoved.
"Your old suspicion ... is it still alive, then?" she asked.
"Yes, still alive. Drive away the spectre, you alone can do it."
She assumed her favourite part of little mother, and gently laid her soft hand on my burning forehead.
"Does that relieve you?"
"Yes...."
It was a fact. The mere touch of that light hand which rested so heavily on my life exorcised the evil spirit, the secret trouble which would not let me rest.
Another and more violent attack of fever followed. My wife rose to make me some elder tea.
Left by myself I sat up in bed and looked out through the window opposite. It was a large window in the shape of a triptychon, framed by wild vine; I saw a part of the landscape surrounded by green leaves; in the fore-ground the beautiful scarlet fruit of a quince tree rocked gently among the dark green foliage; apple trees, a little further off, studded the green grass; still further away the steeple of a small church rose into the radiant air, behind it a blue spot, the Lake of Constance, was visible, and far in the background the Tyrol Alps.
We were in the height of summer, and, illuminated by the slanting rays of the afternoon sun, the whole scene formed a charming picture.
From below rose the twittering of the starlings which sat on the vine-props in the vineyards, the chirping of the young chickens, the strident note of the crickets, the tinkling cowbells, clear as crystal. The loud laughter of my children, the directing voice of my wife, who was talking to the gardener's wife about my illness, mingled with these gay sounds of country life.
And as I gazed and listened life seemed good to me, death to be shunned. I had too many duties to perform, too many debts to pay. My conscience tortured me, I felt an overpowering need to confess myself, to ask all men's forgiveness for the wrongs I had committed, to humiliate myself before some one. I felt guilty, stricken with remorse, I did not know for what secret crime; I was burning with the desire to relieve my conscience by a full confession of my fancied culpability.
During this attack of weakness, the result of a sort of innate despondency, my wife returned carrying a cup in her hand; alluding to a slight attack of persecutional mania from which I had once suffered, she tasted the contents before offering it to me.
"You may drink without fear," she said smilingly, "it contains no poison."
I felt ashamed. I did not know what to say. And to make amends for my suspicion I emptied the cup at one draught.
The somniferous elder tea, the fragrance of which recalled in me reminiscences of my own country where the mystic shrub is held sacred by the people, made me feel so sentimental that I there and then gave expression to my remorse.
"Listen to me carefully," I said, "for I believe that my days are numbered. I confess that I have always lived a life of utter selfishness. I have sacrificed your theatrical career to my literary ambition.... I will tell you everything now ... only forgive me...."
She tried to calm me, but I interrupted her and continued—
"In compliance with your wishes we married under the dotal system. In spite of it, however, I have wasted your dowry to cover sums which I had recklessly guaranteed. My greatest grief now is the fact that you cannot touch the proceeds of my works. Send for a notary at once, so that I can settle on you all my nominal or real property. ... Above everything, promise that you will return to the stage which you gave up to please me."
She refused to listen any further, treated my confession as a joke, advised me to go to sleep and rest, and assured me that everything would come right, and that I was not on the point of death.
I seized her hand, exhausted. I begged her to stay with me until I had fallen asleep. Grasping her little hand more firmly, I again implored her to forgive me for all the wrong I had done her. A delicious drowsiness stole over me and closed my tired eyelids. Under the radiations of her shining eyes, which expressed infinite tenderness, I felt as if I were melting away as ice melts in the rays of the sun. Her cool lips, touching my forehead, seemed to press a seal on it, and I was plunged into the depths of ineffable bliss.
It was broad daylight when I awoke from my stupor. The rays of the sun fell on a Utopian landscape. To judge from the matutinal sounds which rose from below, it must have been above five o'clock. I had slept soundly during the whole night without dreaming or waking up. On the little table by my bedside stood the cup which had contained the elder-tea; the chair on which my wife had been sitting when I fell asleep was still in its place. I was covered with her cloak; the soft hairs of the fox skins with which it was lined tickled my chin.
My brain felt as refreshed and rested as if I had slept for the first time in ten years. I collected my thoughts, which had been rushing hither and thither in wild disorder, and with this powerful, well-drilled and disciplined army I prepared to meet those attacks of morbid remorse which frequently accompany physical weakness.
Looming large, filling my mind completely, were the two ugly blots which, under guise of a confession, I had revealed to my wife on the previous day; the two dark blots which had spoiled my life for so many years.
I resolved to re-examine them at once, to dissect those two "facts" which up to now I had allowed to pass unchallenged, for I had a vague presentiment that they were unsound.
"Let me see," I said to myself, "what have I done that I should look upon myself as a selfish coward, who has sacrificed the artistic career of his wife to his ambition? Let me see what really happened...."
At the time of our betrothal she was playing very small parts. Her position in the artistic world had sunk to a very modest one, once her want of talent, character and originality had made her second appearance in public a fiasco. She lacked all the essentials which go to make a successful actress. On the day before our wedding she was playing the part of a society woman in a very commonplace play; she had only a dozen words to speak.
For how many tears, how much misery was our marriage made responsible! It robbed the actress of all charm, and yet she had been so fascinating as Baroness, divorced from her husband that she might devote her life entirely to art.
It was true, I was to blame for this deterioration, which, after two years' weeping over steadily shrinking parts, resulted in her leaving the stage.
At the very moment when her engagement came to an end I had a success, an undoubted success, as a novelist. I had already conquered the stage with small, unimportant plays. Now I was burning to write a play which would create a sensation; it should be one of those spectacular plays which delight audiences; my purpose, of course, was to help my wife to a re-engagement. It was a repugnant task, for one of my most cherished dreams was the reform of the drama. In writing my new play I sacrificed my literary faith. But I meant to force my wife on a hostile public, throw her at their heads with all the means in my power, move heaven and earth to make her popular. All my efforts were in vain. The public would have none of the divorced wife who had married a second time; the manager hastened to cancel a contract which brought him no advantage.
"Well, was that my fault?" I asked myself, voluptuously stretching my limbs, well satisfied with the result of this first self-examination. Was there a greater blessing than a good conscience?
With a lighter heart I continued my musing—
A miserable year passed, was wept away, despite the happiness it brought us in the birth of a little girl.
And all of a sudden my wife had another attack of stage mania, more violent than the previous one. We besieged the agencies, stormed the managerial offices, advertised ourselves hugely—but everywhere we failed, all doors were closed to us, everybody threw cold water on our schemes.
Disillusioned by the failure of my drama, and on the point of making a name in science, I had sworn never again to write a play round an actress, more especially as this sort of work had no attraction for me. In addition, I was little disposed to break up our home merely to satisfy a passing whim of my wife's, and therefore I resigned myself to bearing my share of the incurable sorrow.
But after a time I found the task beyond my strength. I made use of my connections with a theatre in Finland, and, thanks to my efforts, my wife was engaged for a number of performances.
I had made a rod for my own back. For a whole month I was widower, bachelor, head of the family, housekeeper. In compensation my wife, on her return, brought home with her two large packing-cases full of wreaths and bouquets.
But she was so happy, so young and so charming, that I took at once the necessary steps to secure a fresh engagement for her. I knew that by doing this I was running the risk of having to leave my country, my friends, my position, my publisher—and for what? For a woman's whim.... But let that pass! Either a man is in love or he isn't....
Fortunately for me, my correspondent had no room in his company for an actress without a repertoire.
Was that my fault? At the thought of it I literally rolled over in my bed with pleasure. What a good thing an occasional little self-examination is! It unburdens the heart ... it rejuvenated me.
But to proceed. Children were born to us at short intervals. One—two—three. But again and again her yearning for the stage returned. One ought to persevere! A new theatre was being opened. Why not offer the manager a new play with a good part for the leading actress, a sensational play, dealing with the "woman question" which loomed so large at the time?
No sooner thought than done. For, as I have already said, either a man is in love, or he isn't.
The play was produced. It contained a splendid part for the leading actress, magnificent dresses (of course), a cradle, much moonshine, a villain; an abject husband in love with his wife (myself), a wife about to become a mother (a stage novelty), the interior of a convent—and so on.
The actress had an extraordinary success, but from the literary point of view the play was a failure, an awful failure ... alas!
She was saved. I was lost, ruined. But in spite of everything, in spite of the supper which we gave to the manager at a hundred crowns per head; in spite of a fine of fifty crowns which we had to pay for illegal cheering, late at night before the agent's office—in spite of all our efforts, no engagement was offered to her. It was not my fault. I was blameless in the matter. I was the martyr, the victim. Nevertheless, in the eyes of her sex I henceforth was a ruffian who had ruined his wife's career. For years I had suffered remorse on this account, remorse so bitter that it poisoned my days and robbed my nights of peace.
How often had the reproach been publicly flung into my face! It was always I who was guilty!... That things came about in quite a different way, who cared? ... One career had been ruined, that I admit ... but which, and by whom?
A horrible thought came into my mind; the idea that posterity might blame me for this ruined career seemed to me no laughing matter, for I was defenceless and without a friend capable of stating the facts undisguised and unmisrepresented.
There remained the spending of her dowry.
I had once been made the subject of a paragraph entitled: "A squanderer of his wife's fortune." I also, on another occasion, had been charged with living on my wife's income, a charge which had made me put six cartridges into my revolver.
Let us examine this charge also, since an investigation has become desirable, and after due examination let us pronounce sentence.
My wife's dowry consisted of ten thousand crowns in doubtful shares; I had raised a mortgage on these shares with a bank of mortgages, amounting to fifty per cent of their face value. Like a bolt from the blue the general smash came. The shares were so much waste-paper, for we had omitted to sell them at the right moment. I was consequently compelled to pay the full amount of my mortgage: fifty per cent of the face value. Later on my wife received twenty-five per cent of her claim, this being the proportion which the creditors received after the bank's failure.
How much did I squander?
Not one penny, in my opinion. The holder of the shares received the actual value of her unsaleable investments which my personal guarantee had increased by twenty-five per cent.
Truly I was as innocent in this connection as in the other.
And the anguish, the despair which had more than once driven me to the verge of suicide! The suspicion, the old distrust, the cruel doubts, began to torture me afresh. The thought that I nearly died as a scoundrel almost drove me mad. Worn out with care, overwhelmed with work, I had never had time to pay much attention to the dark innuendoes, the veiled allusions. And while I, completely absorbed in my daily toil, lived unsuspectingly from day to day, slanderous rumours had been started, which became more and more insistent and definite, although they had no other foundation than the talk of the envious and the idle gossip of the cafés. And I, fool that I was, believed everybody, doubted no one but myself. Ah!...
Was I really never insane, never ill, no degenerate? Was I merely fooled by a trickster whom I worshipped, whose little embroidery scissors had cut off Samson's locks when he laid his weary head on the pillow, worn out by heavy toil, exhausted by care and anxiety on her account and the children's? Trustful, unsuspicious, I had lost my honour, my manhood, the will to live, my intellect, my five senses, and alas! much more even, in this ten years' sleep in the arms of the sorceress.
Was it possible—the thought filled me with shame—that a crime had been committed in these fogs in which I had lived for years like a phantom? An unconscious little crime, caused by a vague desire for power, by a woman's secret wish to get the better of the man in the duel called matrimony?
Doubtless I had been a fool! Seduced by a married woman; compelled to marry her to save her honour and her theatrical career; married under the dotal system and the condition that each should contribute half of the expenses, I was ruined after ten years, plundered, for I had borne the financial burden on my own shoulders entirely.
At this very moment when my wife denounced me as a spendthrift, incapable of providing the necessities of life; when she represented me as the squanderer of her so-called fortune; at this very moment she owed me forty thousand crowns, her share of the expenses, according to the verbal agreement made on our wedding day.
She was my debtor!
Determined to settle all accounts once and for ever, I jumped out of bed like a man who has dreamed that he is paralysed, and on awakening flings away the crutches with which he had walked in his dream. I dressed quickly and ran down-stairs to confront my wife.
Through the half-open door my enraptured gaze met a charming spectacle.
She lay, stretched out at full length, on her tumbled bed, her lovely little head buried in the pillow over which the flood of her golden hair waved and curled; her transparent nightgown had slipped off her shoulders, and her virginal bosom gleamed white under the lace insertion; the soft, red-and-white striped coverlet betrayed the swelling curves of her graceful, fragile body, leaving her bare feet uncovered—tiny arched feet with rosy toes and transparent flawless nails—a genuine work of art, perfect, fashioned in flesh after the model of an antique marble statue: and this was my wife.
Light-hearted and smiling, with an expression of chaste motherliness, she watched her three little ones as they were climbing and tumbling about among the flowered down pillows, as if on a heap of newly mown flowers.
The delightful spectacle softened me. But a whispering doubt in my heart warned me: "Beware of the she-panther playing with her cubs!"
Disarmed by the majesty of motherhood, I entered her room with uncertain steps, timid as a schoolboy.
"Ah! You are up already, my dear," she greeted me, surprised, but not as pleased as one might have expected.
I stammered a confused reply, smothered by the children, who had climbed on my back when I stooped to kiss their mother.
Was it possible? Could she really be a criminal? I pondered the question as I went away, subdued by her chaste beauty, the candid smile of those lips which could surely never have been tainted by a lie. No, a thousand times no!...
I stole away, convinced of the contrary.
And yet doubt remained, doubt of everything: of my wife's constancy, my children's legitimate birth, my sanity; doubt which persecuted me, relentlessly and unremittingly.
It was time to make an end, to arrest the flood of sterile thoughts. If only I could have absolute certainty! A crime had been committed in secret, or else I was mad! I must know the truth!
To be a deceived husband! What did I care, as long as I knew it! I should be the first to laugh at it. Was there a single man in the world who could be absolutely certain that he was his wife's only lover?...
When I thought of the friends of my youth, now married, I could not pick out one who was not, to some extent, hoodwinked. Lucky men whom no doubts tortured! It was silly to be small-minded. Whether one is the only one, or whether one has a rival, what does it matter? The ridicule lies in the fact of not knowing it; the main thing is to know all about it.
Yet if a man were married for a hundred years he would still know nothing of the true nature of his wife. However deep his knowledge of humanity, of the whole cosmos, he would never fathom the woman whose life is bound up with his own life. For this reason the story of poor Monsieur Bovary is such pleasant reading for all happy husbands....
But as far as I was concerned I wanted the truth. I must have it. For the sake of revenge? What folly! Revenge on whom? On my favoured rivals? They did but make use of their prerogative as males! On my wife? Did I not say one ought not to be small-minded? And to hurt the mother of my darlings? How could I do it?
But I wanted to know; I wanted to know everything. I determined to examine my life, carefully, tactfully, scientifically; to make use of all the resources of psychology: suggestion, thought-reading, mental torture—none should be neglected; I determined to probe the deepest depths, not even despising the well-worn, old-fashioned means of burglary, theft, interception of letters, forged signatures....
I determined to make the most searching investigations.... Was that monomania, the paroxysm of rage of a lunatic? It is not for me to say.
I appeal to the reader for a verdict after a careful study of my confession. Perhaps he will find in it elements of the physiology of love, some light on the pathology of the soul, or even a strange fragment of the philosophy of crime.
September1887—March1888.
This is a terrible book, I fully admit it, and I regret that I ever wrote it.
How did I come to write it?
I had to wash my corpse before it was laid in its coffin.
Four years ago, if I remember rightly, a friend of mine, a writer, a declared enemy of the indiscretions—of others—said to me one day when talking about my first marriage—
"Do you know, it would make excellent copy for the sort of novel which I should like to write."
Certain of my friend's applause, I decided there and then to write it myself.
"Don't be angry with me, dear old fellow, that I, as the original owner, make use of my property."
I also remember, it is twelve years ago now, a remark my future mother-in-law made to me one evening when I was watching her daughter carrying on a flirtation with a group of young men—
"Wouldn't she make a splendid heroine for a novel?"
"With what title?"
"A passionate woman!"
Happy mother, who died in the nick of time, I have carried out your suggestion. The novel has been written. I can die in peace.
MS. 1888.
The other day I met again the hero of this novel. I upbraided him for having induced me to publish the story of his first marriage. He is married again, father of a sweet little girl, and looks ten years younger.
"Dear old boy," he said in reply to my reproaches, "the sympathy which everybody felt for the heroine of the novel, when it was first published, absolves me. You! may gauge from this fact the great depth of the love I bore her, for not only did it survive so much brutality, but it communicated itself even to the reader. This, however, has not prevented a French academician from denouncing my constancy as weakness, my steadfast loyalty to my family, including my children, baseness, in view of my wife's brutality, inconstancy and dishonesty. I wonder whether this man would consider an insignificant Caserio superior to an eminent Carnot, simply because the former stabbed the latter?
"Moreover, this book, which you had wanted to write yourself, is only the woof of a fabric the richness of which is known only to those of my countrymen who have followed my literary career as it unfolded itself side by side with the sorrows of my heart, without suffering to be influenced. I could have left the battlefield. I remained steadfastly at my post. I fought against the enemy at home, day and night. Was this not courage?
"The 'poor, defenceless woman' was backed by the four Scandinavian kingdoms, where she counted nothing but allies in her war against a man who was sick, solitary, poor, and threatened with confinement in a lunatic asylum because his intellect rebelled against the deification of woman, this penultimate superstition of the free-thinkers.
"The dear souls who conceal their revengeful thoughts under the term 'divine justice' have condemned my 'Confession' in the name of their Nemesis divina, bringing spurious evidence for their assertion that I had deceived the husband of Marie's first marriage. Let them read the scene where the Baron throws his wife into my arms, when I stood before him with clean hands and confessed to him my guiltless love for the wife he neglected. Let them remember the important fact that I took upon my young shoulders the whole burden of our fault, to save his position in the army and the future of his little girl. Let them then say whether it is just to punish an act of self-sacrifice by an act of brutal revenge.
"One must be young and foolish to act as I have acted, I admit that. But it will not happen again—never again.... But ... enough of it! And then ... no ... good-bye!"
He walked away quickly, leaving me under the spell of his perfect honesty.
I never again regretted having published the story of this idealist, who has now disappeared from literature and the world. But I abandoned my former intention to write "The Confession of a Foolish Woman," because, after all, it goes too much against common-sense to allow a criminal to give evidence against her victim.
French Original Edition, 1894.
It was the outspoken account of his first marriage, written in self-defence and as a last testament, for he intended to take his life as soon as the book was finished. For five years the sealed manuscript, which was not meant for publication, was in the safe keeping of a relative. Only in the spring of 1893, under the pressure of circumstances and after public opinion and the press had attacked him in the most unjust manner, did he sell the book to a publisher.
"Separated," 1902.
STRINDBERG'S WORKSPART IIIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIXXXIPART IIIIIIIIIVPART IIIIIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIXXIXIIXIIIPART IVIIIIIIIVVVIEPILOGUECONCLUDING REMARKS OF THE AUTHOR