T
hey had been constantly in each other's society for a whole winter in Paris. After having lost sight of each other, as generally happens in such cases, after leaving college, the two friends met again one night, long years after, already old and white-haired, the one a bachelor, the other married.
M. de Meroul lived six months in Paris and six months in his little chateau of Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a gentleman in the district, he had lived a peaceful, happy life with the indolence of a man who has nothing to do. With a calm temperament and a sedate mind, without any intellectual audacity or tendency towards revolutionary independence of thought, he passed his time in mildly regretting the past, in deploring the morals and the institutions of to-day, and in repeating every moment to his wife, who raised her eyes to Heaven, and sometimes her hands also, in token of energetic assent:
"Under what a government do we live, great God!"
Madame de Meroul mentally resembled her husband, just as if they had been brother and sister. She knew by tradition that one ought, first of all, to reverence the Pope and the King!
And she loved them and respected them from the bottom of her heart, without knowing them, with a poetic exaltation, with a hereditary devotion, with all the sensibility of a well-born woman. She was kindlyin every fold of her soul. She had no child, and was incessantly regretting it.
When M. de Meroul came across his old school fellow Joseph Mouradour at a ball, he experienced from this meeting a profound and genuine delight, for they had been very fond of one another in their youth.
After exclamations of astonishment over the changes caused by age in their bodies and their faces, they had asked one another a number of questions as to their respective careers.
Joseph Mouradour, a native of the South of France, had become a Councilor General in his own neighborhood. Frank in his manners, he spoke briskly and without any circumspection telling all his thoughts with sheer indifference to prudential considerations. He was a Republican, of that race of good-natured Republicans who make their own ease the law of their existence, and who carry freedom of speech to the verge of brutality.
He called at his friend's address in Paris, and was immediately a favorite, on account of his easy cordiality, in spite of his advanced opinions. Madame de Meroul exclaimed:
"What a pity! such a charming man!"
M. de Meroul said to his friend, in a sincere and confidential tone: "You cannot imagine what a wrong you do to our country." He was attached to his friend nevertheless, for no bonds are more solid than those of childhood renewed in later life. Joseph Mouradour chaffed the husband and wife, called them "my loving turtles," and occasionally gave vent to loud declarations against people who were behind the age, against all sorts of prejudices and traditions.
When he thus directed the flood of his democratic eloquence, the married pair, feeling ill at ease, kept silent through a sense of propriety and good-breeding; then the husband tried to turn off the conversation, in order to avoid any friction. Joseph Mouradour did not want to know anyone unless he was free to say what he liked.
Summer came round. The Merouls knew no greater pleasure than to receive their old friends in their country house at Tourbeville. It was an intimate and healthy pleasure, the pleasure of homely gentlefolk who had spent most of their lives in the country. They used to go to the nearest railway station to meet some of their guests, and drove them to the house in their carriage, watching for compliments on their district, on the rapid vegetation, on the condition of the roads in the department, on the cleanliness of the peasants' houses, on the bigness of the cattle they saw in the fields, on everything that met the eye as far as the edge of the horizon.
They liked to have it noticed that their horse trotted in a wonderful manner for an animal employed a part of the year in field-work; and they awaited, with anxiety the newcomer's opinion on their family estate, sensitive to the slightest word, grateful for the slightest gracious attention.
Joseph Mouradour was invited, and he announced his arrival.
The wife and the husband came to meet the train, delighted to have the opportunity of doing the honors of their house.
As soon as he perceived them, Joseph Mouradour jumped out of his carriage with a vivacity which increased their satisfaction. He grasped their hands warmly, congratulated them, and intoxicated them with compliments.
He was quite charming in his manner as they drove along the road to the house; he expressed astonishment at the height of the trees, the excellence of the crops, and the quickness of the horse.
When he placed his foot on the steps in front of the chateau, M. de Meroul said to him with a certain friendly solemnity:
"Now you are at home."
Joseph Mouradour answered: "Thanks old fellow; I counted on that. For my part, besides, I never put myself out with my friends. That's the only hospitality I understand."
Then, he went up to his own room, where he put on the costume of a peasant, as he was pleased to describe it, and he came down again not very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name exacted a certain amount of ceremonial even with their intimate friends.
After lunch, they went to visit the farms; and the Parisian stupefied the respectable peasants by talking to them as if he were a comrade of theirs.
In the evening, the curé dined at the house—a fatold priest, wearing his Sunday suit, who had been specially asked that day in order to meet the newcomer.
When Joseph saw him he made a grimace, then he stared at the priest in astonishment as if he belonged to some peculiar race of beings, the like of which he had never seen before at such close quarters. He told a few smutty stories allowable enough with a friend after dinner, but apparently somewhat out of place in the presence of an ecclesiastic. He did not say, "Monsieur l'Abbe," but merely "Monsieur"; and he embarrassed the priest with philosophical views as to the various superstitions that prevailed on the surface of the globe.
He remarked:
"Your God, monsieur, is one of those persons whom we must respect, but also one of those who must be discussed. Mine is called Reason; he has from time immemorial been the enemy of yours."
The Merouls, greatly put out, attempted to divert his thoughts.
The curé left very early.
Then the husband gently remarked:
"You went a little too far with that priest."
But Joseph immediately replied:
"That's a very good joke, too! Am I to bother my brains about a devil-dodger? At any rate, do me the favor of not ever again having such an old fogy to dinner. Curses on his impudence!"
"But, my friend, remember his sacred character."
Joseph Mouradour interrupted him:
"Yes, I know. We must treat them like girls, whoget roses for being well behaved! That's all right, my boy! When these people respect my convictions, I will respect theirs!"
This was all that happened that day.
Next morning, Madame de Meroul, on entering her drawing-room, saw lying on the table three newspapers which made her draw back in horror. "Le Voltaire," "Le Republique Francaise," and "La Justice."
Presently, Joseph Mouradour, still in his blue blouse, appeared on the threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" attentively. He exclaimed:
"There is a splendid article by Rochefort. This fellow is marvelous."
He read the article in a loud voice, laying so much stress on its most striking passages that he did not notice the entrance of his friend.
M. de Meroul had a paper in each hand. "Le Gaulois" for himself and "Le Clarion" for his wife.
The ardent prose of the master-writer who overthrew the empire, violently declaimed, recited in the accent of the South, rang through the peaceful drawing-room, shook the old curtains with their rigid folds, seemed to splash the walls, the large upholstered chairs, the solemn furniture fixed in the same position for the past century, with a hail of words, rebounding, impudent, ironical and crushing.
The husband and the wife, the one standing, the other seated, listened in a state of stupor, so scandalized that they no longer even ventured to make a gesture. Mouradour launched out the concluding passage in the article as one lets forth a jet of fireworks, then in an emphatic tone remarked:
"That's a stinger, eh?"
But suddenly he perceived the two prints belonging to his friend, and he seemed himself for a moment overcome with astonishment. Then, he came across to his host with great strides, demanding in angry tone:
"What do you want to do with these papers?" M. de Meroul replied in a hesitating voice:
"Why, these—these are my—my newspapers."
"Your newspapers! Look here, now, you are only laughing at me! You will do me the favor to read mine, to stir you up with a few new ideas, and, as for yours—this is what I do with them—"
And before his host, filled with confusion, could prevent him, he seized the two newspapers and flung them out through the window. Then he gravely placed "La Justice" in the hands of Madame de Meroul and "Le Voltaire" in those of her husband, and he sank into an armchair to finish "L'Intransigeant."
The husband and the wife, through feelings of delicacy, made a show of reading a little, then they handed back the Republican newspapers, which they touched with their finger-tips as if they had been poisoned.
Then he burst out laughing, and said:
"A week of this sort of nourishment, and I'll have you converted to my ideas."
At the end of the week, in fact, he ruled the house. He had shut the door on the curé, whom Madame Meroul went to see in secret. He gave orders that neither the "Gaulois" nor the "Clarion" were to be admitted into the house, which a man-servant went to get in a mysterious fashion at the post-office, and which, on his entrance, were hidden away under the sofa cushions. He regulated everything just as he liked, always charming, always good-natured, a jovial and all powerful tyrant.
Other friends were about to come on a visit, religious people with Legitimist opinions. The master and mistress of the chateau considered it would be impossible to let them meet their lively guest, and, not knowing what to do, announced to Joseph Mouradour one evening that they were obliged to go away from home for a few days about a little matter of business, and they begged of him to remain in the house alone.
He showed no trace of emotion, and replied:
"Very well; 'tis all the same to me; I'll wait here for you as long as you like. What I say is this—there need be no ceremony between friends. You're quite right to look after your own affairs—why the devil shouldn't you? I'll not take offense at your doing that, quite the contrary. It only makes me feel quite at my ease with you. Go, my friends—I'll wait for you."
M. and Madame Meroul started next morning.
He is waiting for them.
M
ademoiselle Source had adopted this boy under very sad circumstances. She was at the time thirty-six years old. She was deformed, having in her infancy slipped off her nurse's lap into the fireplace, and getting her face so shockingly burned that it ever afterwards presented a frightful appearance. This deformity had made her resolve not to marry, for she did not want any man to marry her for her money.
A female neighbor of hers, being left a widow during her pregnancy, died in child-birth, without leaving a sou. Mademoiselle Source took the new-born child, put him out to nurse, reared him, sent him to a boarding-school, then brought him home in his fourteenth year, in order to have in her empty house somebody who would love her, who would look after her, who would make her old age pleasant.
She resided on a little property four leagues away from Rennes, and she now dispensed with a servant. The expenses having increased to more than double what they had been since this orphan's arrival, her income of three thousand francs was no longer sufficient to support three persons.
She attended to the housekeeping and the cooking herself, and she sent out the boy on errands, letting him further occupy himself with cultivating the garden. He was gentle, timid, silent, and caressing. And she experienced a deep joy, a fresh joy at being embracedby him, without any apparent surprise or repugnance being exhibited by him on account of her ugliness. He called her "Aunt" and treated her as a mother.
In the evening they both sat down at the fireside, and she got nice things ready for him. She heated some wine and toasted a slice of bread, and it made a charming little meal before going to bed. She often took him on her knees and covered him with kisses, murmuring in his ear with passionate tenderness. She called him: "My little flower, my cherub, my adored angel, my divine jewel." He softly accepted her caresses, concealing his head on the old maid's shoulder. Although he was now nearly fifteen years old, he had remained small and weak, and had a rather sickly appearance.
Sometimes Mademoiselle Source brought him to the city, to see two married female relatives of hers, distant cousins, who were living in the suburbs, and who were the only members of her family in existence. The two women had always found fault with her for having adopted this boy on account of the inheritance; but for all that they gave her a cordial welcome, having still hopes of getting a share for themselves, a third, no doubt, if what she possessed were only equally divided.
She was happy, very happy, always taken up with her adopted child. She bought books for him to improve his mind, and he devoted himself ardently to reading.
He no longer now climbed on her knees to fondle her as he had formerly done; but instead would go and sit down in his little chair in the chimney-corner and open a volume. The lamp placed at the edge of the little table, above his head, shone on his curly hair, and on a portion of his forehead; he did not move, he did notraise his eyes, he did not make any gesture. He read on, interested, entirely absorbed in the adventures which formed the subject of the book.
She, seated opposite to him, gazed at him with an eager, steady look, astonished at his studiousness, often on the point of bursting into tears.
She said to him now and then: "You will fatigue yourself, my treasure!" in the hope that he would raise his head, and come across to embrace her; but he did not even answer her; he had not heard or understood what she was saying; he paid no attention to anything save what he read in these pages.
For two years he devoured an incalculable number of volumes. His character changed.
After this, he asked Mademoiselle Source many times for money, which she gave him. As he always wanted more, she ended by refusing, for she was both regular and energetic, and knew how to act rationally when it was necessary to do so. By dint of entreaties he obtained a large sum one night from her; but when he urged her to give him another sum a few days later, she showed herself inflexible, and did not give way to him further, in fact.
He appeared to be satisfied with her decision.
He again became quiet, as he had formerly been, loving to remain seated for entire hours, without moving, plunged in deep reverie. He now did not even talk to Madame Source, merely answering her remarks with short, formal words. Nevertheless, he was agreeable and attentive in his manner towards her; but he never embraced her now.
She had by this time grown slightly afraid of him when they sat facing one another at night at oppositesides of the chimney-piece. She wanted to wake him up, to make him say something, no matter what, that would break this dreadful silence, which was like the darkness of a wood. But he did not appear to listen to her, and she shuddered with the terror of a poor feeble woman when she had spoken to him five or six times successively without being able to get a word out of him.
What was the matter with him? What was going on in that closed up head? When she had been thus two or three hours sitting opposite him, she felt herself getting daft, and longed to rush away and to escape into the open country in order to avoid that mute, eternal companionship and also some vague danger, which she could not define, but of which she had a presentiment.
She frequently shed tears when she was alone. What was the matter with him? When she gave expression to a desire, he unmurmuringly carried it into execution. When she wanted to have anything brought to her from the city, he immediately went there to procure it. She had no complaint to make of him; no, indeed! And yet....
Another year flitted by, and it seemed to her that a new modification had taken place in the mind of the young man. She perceived it; she felt it; she divined it. How? No matter! She was sure she was not mistaken; but she could not have explained in what the unknown thoughts of this strange youth had changed.
It seemed to her that till now he had been like a person in a hesitating frame of mind who had suddenly arrived at a determination. This idea came to her oneevening as she met his glance, a fixed singular glance which she had not seen in his face before.
Then, he commenced to watch her incessantly and she wished she could hide herself in order to avoid that cold eye, riveted on her.
He kept staring at her, evening after evening for hours together, only averting his eyes when she said, utterly unnerved:
"Do not look at me like that, my child!"
Then he hung down his head.
But, the moment her back was turned, she once more felt that his eyes were upon her. Wherever she went he pursued her with his persistent gaze.
Sometimes, when she was walking in her little garden, she suddenly noticed him squatted on the stump of a tree as if he were lying in wait for her; and again when she sat in front of the house mending stockings while he was digging some cabbage-bed, he kept watching her, as he worked, in a sly, continuous fashion.
It was in vain that she asked him:
"What's the matter with you, my boy? For the last three years you have become very different. I don't find you the same. Tell me what ails you, and what you are thinking of, I beg of you."
He invariably replied, in a quiet, weary tone:
"Why, nothing ails me, Aunt!"
And when she persisted, appealing to him thus:
"Ah! my child, answer me, answer me when I speak to you. If you knew what grief you caused me, you would always answer, and you would not look at me that way. Have you any trouble? Tell me! I'll console you!"
He went away with a tired air, murmuring:
"But there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you."
He had not grown much, having always a childish aspect, although the features of his face were those of a man. They were, however, hard and badly-cut. He seemed incomplete, abortive, only half-finished, and disquieting as a mystery. He was a close, impenetrable being, in whom there seemed always to be some active, dangerous mental travail taking place.
Mademoiselle Source was quite conscious of all this, and she could not from that time forth, sleep at night, so great was her anxiety. Frightful terrors, dreadful nightmares assailed her. She shut herself up in her own room, and barricaded the door, tortured by fear.
What was she afraid of? She could not tell.
Fear of everything, of the night, of the walls, of the shadows thrown by the moon on the white curtains of the windows, and above all, fear of him.
Why?
What had she to fear? Did she know what it was?
She could live this way no longer! She felt certain that a misfortune threatened her, a frightful misfortune.
She set forth secretly one morning, and went into the city to see her relatives. She told them about the matter in a gasping voice. The two women thought she was going mad and tried to reassure her.
She said:
"If you knew the way he looks at me from morning till night. He never takes his eyes off me! At times, I feel a longing to cry for help, to call in the neighbors, so much am I afraid. But what could I say to them? He does nothing to me except to keep looking at me."
The two female cousins asked:
"Is he ever brutal to you? Does he give you sharp answers?"
She replied:
"No, never; he does everything I wish; he works hard; he is steady; but I am so frightened I don't mind that much. He has something in his head, I am certain of that—quite certain. I don't care to remain all alone like that with him in the country."
The relatives, scared by her words, declared to her that they were astonished, and could not understand her; and they advised her to keep silent about her fears and her plans, without, however, dissuading her from coming to reside in the city, hoping in that way that the entire inheritance would eventually fall into their hands.
They even promised to assist her in selling her house and in finding another near them.
Mademoiselle Source returned home. But her mind was so much upset that she trembled at the slightest noise, and her hands shook whenever any trifling disturbance agitated her.
Twice she went again to consult her relatives, quite determined now not to remain any longer in this way in her lonely dwelling. At last, she found a little cottage in the suburbs, which suited her, and she privately bought it.
The signature of the contract took place on a Tuesday morning, and Mademoiselle Source devoted the rest of the day to the preparations for her change of residence.
At eight o'clock in the evening she got into the diligence which passed within a few hundred yards of her house, and she told the conductor to let her down in the place where it was his custom to stop for her.The man called out to her as he whipped his horses:
"Good evening, Mademoiselle Source—good night!"
She replied as she walked on:
"Good evening, Pere Joseph." Next morning, at half-past seven, the postman who conveyed letters to the village, noticed at the cross-road, not far from the high road, a large splash of blood not yet dry. He said to himself: "Hallo! some boozer must have got a bleeding in the nose."
But he perceived ten paces farther on a pocket-handkerchief also stained with blood. He picked it up. The linen was fine, and the postman in alarm, made his way over to the dike, where he fancied he saw a strange object.
Mademoiselle Source was lying at the bottom on the grass, her throat cut open with a knife.
An hour later, the gendarmes, the examining magistrate, and other authorities made an inquiry as to the cause of death.
The two female relatives, called as witnesses, told all about the old maid's fears and her last plans.
The orphan was arrested. Since the death of the woman who had adopted him, he wept from morning till night, plunged at least to all appearance, in the most violent grief.
He proved that he had spent the evening up to eleven o'clock in a café. Ten persons had seen him, having remained there till his departure.
Now the driver of the diligence stated that he had set down the murdered woman on the road between half-past nine and ten o'clock.
The accused was acquitted. A will, a long timemade, which had been left in the hands of a notary in Rennes, made him universal legatee. So he inherited everything.
For a long time, the people of the country put him into a quarantine, as they still suspected him. His house, which was that of the dead woman, was looked upon as accursed. People avoided him in the street.
But he showed himself so good-natured, so open, so familiar, that gradually these horrible doubts were forgotten. He was generous, obliging, ready to talk to the humblest about anything as long as they cared to talk to him.
The notary, Maitre Rameay, was one of the first to take his part, attracted by his smiling loquacity. He said one evening at a dinner at the tax-collector's house:
"A man who speaks with such facility and who is always in good humor could not have such a crime on his conscience."
Touched by his argument, the others who were present reflected, and they recalled to mind the long conversations with this man who made them stop almost by force at the road corners to communicate his ideas to them, who insisted on their going into his house when they were passing by his garden, who could crack a joke better than the lieutenant of the gendarmes himself, and who possessed such contagious gayety that, in spite of the repugnance with which he inspired them, they could not keep from always laughing in his company.
All doors were opened to him, after a time.
He is, to-day, the mayor of his own township.
H
ow is it that the sunlight gives us such joy? Why does this radiance when it falls on the earth fill us with so much delight of living? The sky is all blue, the fields are all green, the houses all white; and our ravished eyes drink in those bright colors which bring mirthfulness to our souls. And then there springs up in our hearts a desire to dance, a desire to run, a desire to sing, a happy lightness of thought, a sort of enlarged tenderness; we feel a longing to embrace the sun.
The blind, as they sit in the doorways, impassive in their eternal darkness, remain as calm as ever in the midst of this fresh gayety, and, not comprehending what is taking place around them, they keep every moment stopping their dogs from gamboling.
When, at the close of the day, they are returning home on the arm of a young brother or a little sister, if the child says: "It was a very fine day!" the other answers: "I could notice that 'twas fine. Loulou wouldn't keep quiet."
I have known one of these men whose life was one of the most cruel martyrdoms that could possibly be conceived.
He was a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people were gone, an atrocious life of misery commenced for him. Adependent on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he swallowed was made a subject of reproach against him; he was called a drone, a clown; and although his brother-in-law had taken possession of his portion of the inheritance, the soup was given to him grudgingly—just enough to save him from dying.
His face was very pale, and his two big white eyes were like wafers; and he remained unmoved in spite of the insults inflicted upon him, so shut up in himself that one could not tell whether he felt them at all.
Moreover, he had never known any tenderness, his mother having always treated him unkindly, and caring scarcely at all for him; for in country places the useless are obnoxious, and the peasants would be glad, like hens, to kill the infirm of their species.
As soon as the soup had been gulped down, he went to the door in summer-time and sat down, to the chimney-corner in winter time, and, after that, never stirred all night. He made no gesture, no movement; only his eyelids, quivering from some nervous affection, fell down sometimes over his white, sightless orbs. Had he any intellect, any thinking faculty, any consciousness of his own existence? Nobody cared to inquire as to whether he had or no.
For some years things went on in this fashion. But his incapacity for doing anything as well as his impassiveness eventually exasperated his relatives, and he became a laughing-stock, a sort of martyred buffoon, a prey given over to native ferocity, to the savage gaiety of the brutes who surrounded him.
It is easy to imagine all the cruel practical jokesinspired by his blindness. And, in order to have some fun in return for feeding him, they now converted his meals into hours of pleasure for the neighbors and of punishment for the helpless creature himself.
The peasants from the nearest houses came to this entertainment; it was talked about from door to door, and every day the kitchen of the farmhouse was full of people. Sometimes they put on the table, in front of his plate, when he was beginning to take the soup, some cat or some dog. The animal instinctively scented out the man's infirmity, and, softly approaching, commenced eating noiselessly, lapping up the soup daintily; and, when a rather loud licking of the tongue awakened the poor fellow's attention, it would prudently scamper away to avoid the blow of the spoon directed at it by the blind man at random!
Then the spectators huddled against the walls burst out laughing, nudged each other, and stamped their feet on the floor. And he, without ever uttering a word, would continue eating with the aid of his right hand, while stretching out his left to protect and defend his plate.
At another time they made him chew corks, bits of wood, leaves, or even filth, which he was unable to distinguish.
After this, they got tired even of these practical jokes; and the brother-in-law, mad at having to support him always, struck him, cuffed him incessantly, laughing at the useless efforts of the other to ward off or return the blows. Then came a new pleasure—the pleasure of smacking his face. And the plough-men, the servant girls, and even every passing vagabond were every moment giving him cuffs, which caused his eyelashesto twitch spasmodically. He did not know where to hide himself, and remained with his arms always held out to guard against people coming too close to him.
At last he was forced to beg.
He was placed somewhere on the high-road on market-days, and as soon as he heard the sound of footsteps or the rolling of a vehicle, he reached out his hat, stammering:—
"Charity, if you please!"
But the peasant is not lavish, and for whole weeks he did not bring back a sou.
Then he became the victim of furious, pitiless hatred. And this is how he died.
One winter the ground was covered with snow, and it froze horribly. Now his brother-in-law led him one morning at this season a great distance along the high-road in order that he might solicit alms. The blind man was left there all day, and when night came on, the brother-in-law told the people of his house that he could find no trace of the mendicant. Then he added:
"Pooh! best not bother about him! He was cold, and got someone to take him away. Never fear! he's not lost. He'll turn up soon enough to-morrow to eat the soup."
Next day, he did not come back.
After long hours of waiting, stiffened with the cold, feeling that he was dying, the blind man began to walk. Being unable to find his way along the road, owing to its thick coating of ice, he went on at random, falling into dykes, getting up again, without uttering a sound, his sole object being to find some house where he could take shelter.
But by degrees the descending snow made a numbness steal over him, and his feeble limbs being incapable of carrying him farther, he had to sit down in the middle of an open field. He did not get up again.
The white flakes which kept continually falling buried him, so that his body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant accumulation of their rapidly thickening mass; and nothing any longer indicated the place where the corpse was lying.
His relatives made pretense of inquiring about him and searching for him for about a week. They even made a show of weeping.
The winter was severe, and the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of crows, who were whirling endlessly above the open field, and then, like a shower of black rain, descended in a heap at the same spot, ever going and coming.
The following week these gloomy birds were still there. There was a crowd of them up in the air, as if they had gathered from all corners of the horizon; and they swooped down with a great cawing into the shining snow, which they filled curiously with patches of black, and in which they kept rummaging obstinately. A young fellow went to see what they were doing, and discovered the body of the blind man, already half devoured, mangled. His wan eyes had disappeared, pecked out by the long, voracious beaks.
And I can never feel the glad radiance of sunlit days without sadly remembering and gloomily pondering over the fate of the beggar so disinherited in life that his horrible death was a relief for all those who had known him.
M
y friend, you have asked me to relate to you the liveliest recollections of my life. I am very old, without relatives, without children; so I am free to make a confession to you. Promise me one thing—never to reveal my name.
I have been much loved, as you know; I have often myself loved. I was very beautiful; I may say this to-day, when my beauty is gone. Love was for me the life of the soul, just as the air is the life of the body. I would have preferred to die rather than exist without affection, without having somebody always to care for me. Women often pretend to love only once with all the strength of their hearts; it has often happened to be so violent in one of my attachments that I thought it would be impossible for my transports ever to end. However, they always died out in a natural fashion, like a fire when it has no more fuel.
I will tell you to-day the first of my adventures, in which I was very innocent, but which led to the others. The horrible vengeance of that dreadful chemist of Pecq recalls to me the shocking drama of which I was, in spite of myself, a spectator.
I had been a year married to a rich man, Comte Herve de Ker—— a Breton of ancient family, whom I did not love, you understand. True love needs, I believe at any rate, freedom and impediments at the same time. The love which is imposed, sanctioned by law, and blessed by the priest—can we really call thatlove? A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen kiss. My husband was tall in stature, elegant, and a really fine gentleman in his manners. But he lacked intelligence. He spoke in a downright fashion, and uttered opinions that cut like the blade of a knife. He created the impression that his mind was full of ready-made views instilled into him by his father and mother, who had themselves got them from their ancestors. He never hesitated, but on every subject immediately made narrow-minded suggestions, without showing any embarrassment and without realizing that there might be other ways of looking at things. One felt that his head was closed up, that no ideas circulated in it, none of those ideas which renew a man's mind and make it sound, like a breath of fresh air passing through an open window into a house.
The chateau in which we lived was situated in the midst of a desolate tract of country. It was a large, melancholy structure, surrounded by enormous trees, with tufts of moss on it resembling old men's white beards. The park, a real forest, was enclosed in a deep trench called the ha-ha; and at its extremity, near the moorland, we had big ponds full of reeds and floating grass. Between the two, at the edge of a stream which connected them, my husband had got a little hut built for shooting wild ducks.
We had, in addition to our ordinary servants, a keeper, a sort of brute devoted to my husband to the death, and a chambermaid, almost a friend, passionately attached to me. I had brought her back from Spain with me five years before. She was a deserted child. She might have been taken for a gipsy withher dusky skin, her dark eyes, her hair thick as a wood and always clustering around her forehead. She was at the time sixteen years old, but she looked twenty.
The autumn was beginning. We hunted much, sometimes on neighboring estates, sometimes on our own; and I noticed a young man, the Baron de C——, whose visits at the chateau became singularly frequent. Then he ceased to come; I thought no more about it; but I perceived that my husband changed in his demeanor towards me.
He seemed taciturn and preoccupied; he did not kiss me; and, in spite of the fact that he did not come into my room, as I insisted on separate apartments in order to live a little alone, I often at night heard a furtive step drawing near my door, and withdrawing a few minutes after.
As my window was on the ground-floor I thought I had also often heard someone prowling in the shadow around the chateau. I told my husband about it, and, having looked at me intently for some seconds, he answered:
"It is nothing—it is the keeper."
Now, one evening, just after dinner, Herve, who appeared to be extraordinarily gay, with a sly sort of gaiety, said to me:
"Would you like to spend three hours out with the guns, in order to shoot a fox who comes every evening to eat my hens?"
I was surprised. I hesitated; but, as he kept staring at me with singular persistency, I ended by replying:
"Why, certainly, my friend." I must tell you thatI hunted like a man the wolf and the wild boar. So it was quite natural that he should suggest this shooting expedition to me.
But my husband, all of a sudden, had a curiously nervous look; and all the evening he seemed agitated, rising up and sitting down feverishly.
About ten o'clock, he suddenly said to me:
"Are you ready?"
I rose; and, as he was bringing me my gun himself, I asked:
"Are we to load with bullets or with deershot?"
He showed some astonishment; then he rejoined:
"Oh! only with deershot; make your mind easy! that will be enough."
Then, after some seconds, he added in a peculiar tone:
"You may boast of having splendid coolness."
I burst out laughing.
"I? Why, pray? Coolness because I went to kill a fox? But what are you thinking of, my friend?"
And we quietly made our way across the park. All the household slept. The full moon seemed to give a yellow tint to the old gloomy building, whose slate roof glittered brightly. The two turrets that flanked it had two plates of light on their summits, and no noise disturbed the silence of this clear, sad night, sweet and still, which seemed in a death-trance. Not a breath of air, not a shriek from a toad, not a hoot from an owl; a melancholy numbness lay heavy on everything. When we were under the trees in the park, a sense of freshness stole over me, together with the odor of fallen leaves. My husband said nothing; but he was listening, he was watching, he seemed to be smelling about in theshadows, possessed from head to foot by the passion for the chase.
We soon reached the edges of the ponds.
Their tufts of rushes remained motionless; not a breath of air caressed it; but movements which were scarcely perceptible ran through the water. Sometimes the surface was stirred by something, and light circles gathered around, like luminous wrinkles enlarging indefinitely.
When we reached the hut where we were to lie in wait, my husband made me go in first; then he slowly loaded his gun, and the dry cracking of the powder produced a strange effect on me. He saw that I was shuddering, and asked:
"Does this trial happen to be quite enough for you? If so, go back."
I was much surprised, and I replied:
"Not at all. I did not come to go back without doing anything. You seem queer this evening."
He murmured, "As you wish," and we remained there without moving.
At the end of about half-an-hour, as nothing broke the oppressive stillness of this bright autumn night, I said, in a low tone:
"Are you quite sure he is passing this way?"
Herve winced as if I had bitten him, and with his mouth close to my ear, he said:
"Make no mistake about it. I am quite sure."
And once more there was silence.
I believe I was beginning to get drowsy when my husband pressed my arm, and his voice, changed to a hiss, said:
"Do you see him over there under the trees?"
I looked in vain; I could distinguish nothing. And slowly Herve now cocked his gun, all the time fixing his eyes on my face.
I was myself making ready to fire, and suddenly, thirty paces in front of us, appeared in the full light of the moon a man who was hurrying forward with rapid movements, his body bent, as if he were trying to escape.
I was so stupefied that I uttered a loud cry; but, before I could turn round, there was a flash before my eyes; I heard a deafening report, and I saw the man rolling on the ground, like a wolf hit by a bullet.
I burst into dreadful shrieks, terrified, almost going mad; then a furious hand—it was Herve's—seized me by the throat. I was flung down on the ground, then carried off by his strong arms. He ran, holding me up, till we reached the body lying on the grass, and he threw me on top of it violently, as if he wanted to break my head.
I thought I was lost; he was going to kill me; and he had just raised his heel up to my forehead when, in his turn, he was gripped, knocked down before I could yet realize what had happened.
I rose up abruptly, and I saw kneeling on top of him Porquita, my maid, clinging like a wild cat to him with desperate energy, tearing off his beard, his moustache, and the skin of his face.
Then, as if another idea had suddenly taken hold of her mind, she rose up, and, flinging herself on the corpse, she threw her arms around the dead man, kissing his eyes and his mouth, opening the dead lips with her own lips, trying to find in them a breath and a long, long kiss of lovers.
My husband, picking himself up, gazed at me. He understood, and falling at my feet, said:
"Oh! forgive me, my darling, I suspected you, and I killed this girl's lover. It was my keeper that deceived me."
But I was watching the strange kisses of that dead man and that living woman, and her sobs and her writhings of sorrowing love—
And at that moment I understood that I might be unfaithful to my husband.