I was careful to insist on my poverty, and let her understand that my mother lived almost entirely on what I earned. This was a detail invented on the spot, for hypocrisy doubles itself in expression. Intruth this was a scene of a childish and rascally comedy, which I played with very little skill. But the reasons which determined me to lie in this fashion were so special that they exacted an extraordinary penetration to be comprehended, a total attention of my mind, almost your genius, my dear master. The visible embarrassment of my position could so easily be attributed to the trouble inseparable from such remembrances. As I was perfectly cool while I was telling this fable, I could observe Charlotte. She listened without any sign of emotion, her eyes lowered on the big book which supported her hand. She took the book when I had finished, and replied in a blank voice, as they say, one of those voices which betrays no sentiment of the speaker:
“I do not understand how you could have had any confidence in this young girl, since she listened to you without the knowledge of her parents.”
And she went away with a simple inclination of her graceful head, carrying the book with her. How pretty she was in her dress of fine, light cloth, with her slender form, her small waist, her face quite long and lighted up by her thoughtful gray eyes! She was like a Madonna engraved after Memling, whose profile I had formerly so much admired, fervent, lovely and mournful, on the first page of a large copy of the “Imitation,” belonging to the Abbé Martel.
Explain to me this other enigma of the heart, you, the great psychologist; never have I felt more the charm of this pure and gentle being than at the moment when I had just lied to her, and lied so uselessly as I imagined from her response.
Yes, I took this response literally, which, on the contrary, should have encouraged me to hope. I did not guess that to have only listened to a confidence so intimate was for a being so proud and so reserved, so far above me, a proof of a very powerful sympathy. I did not consider that this almost severe remark was dictated in part by the secret jealousy which I had desired to arouse in her, in part by a need to strengthen herself in her own principles so as to justify to herself her excessive familiarity.
As she had not been able to read the falsehood in my story, so I had not seen the truth behind her reply.
I felt all the hopes which I had been building up for the past fortnight crumble before me. No. She was not interested in me with a genuine interest which I could transform into passion. I drew up the balance sheet of our relations. What proof had I of this interest? The delicacy of the material cares with which she had surrounded me? This was a simple effect of her goodness. Her attempt to find out the cause of my melancholy? Ah, well! she had been curious, that was all. Thetimid accent of her voice when she questioned me? I had been a fool not to recognize the habitual modesty of a delicate girl. Conclusion: my comedy of these two weeks, my grimacesà laChatterton, the falsehood of my so-called drama, so many ridiculous maneuvers, had not advanced me a line in the heart I wished to conquer.
I turned again to my book, but I was no longer capable of fixing my attention on the abstract text of Helvétius. I recall this childishness, my dear master, that you may the better perceive what a strange mixture of innocence and depravity was elaborated in my mind.
What did this unexpected deception prove, if not that I had imagined I could direct the thought of Charlotte, by applying to her the laws of psychology borrowed from the philosophers, as absolutely as her brother directed the billiard balls? The white touches the red a little to the left, goes on the cushions, and returns to the other white. That is outlined by the hand on the paper, that is explained by a formula, that is foreseen and is done ten times, twenty times, a hundred times, ten thousand times.
In spite of my enormous reading, perhaps because of it, I saw the play of the passions in this state of ideal simplicity. I did not comprehend till later how much I was deceived. In order to define the phenomenaof the heart we must go to the vegetable, and not to the mechanical world for analogies, and to direct these phenomena we must employ the methods of the botanist, patient graftings, long waiting, careful training.
A sentiment is born, grows, expands, withers like a plant, by an evolution sometimes retarded, sometimes rapid, but always unconscious. The germ of pity, of jealousy, and of dangerous example planted by my ruse in the soul of Charlotte must develop its action, but only after days and days, and this action would be the more irresistible as she believed me to be in love with another and that in consequence she would not think to defend herself against me.
But to account in advance for this work and to discount the hope of it, one would have to be a Ribot, a Horwicz, an Adrien Sixte, that is, a connoisseur of souls, instead of one like me, ignorant that the plain over which he is walking will be covered with grain and not suspecting the approaching harvest.
The conviction that I had definitely failed in my first effort increased during the days which followed this false confidence. For Charlotte scarcely spoke to me.
I know now, from her own confession, that she concealed under this coldness a growing agitation which disconcerted her by its novelty, its force and its depth. In the meantime she appeared absorbed in the gameof backgammon which the marquis had discovered in the Encyclopedia.
Recollecting that this had been the favorite pastime of his grandfather, theemigré, he had given up all other games. A merchant of Clermont had been able to send him the necessary articles with which to satisfy this caprice.
The backgammon table was installed in the salon and father and daughter passed their evenings in throwing the dice, which made a dry noise against the wooden ledge. The cabalistic terms of little table, big table, outer table, double ace, double threes, two fives, were intermingled now with the words of the marquise and her two companions.
Sometimes the curé of Aydat, the Abbé Barthomeuf, an old priest who said mass in the chapel of the château on Thursdays when the weather was very severe, would relieve Charlotte by playing with the marquis. Although the marquis treated me with irreproachable politeness, he had never asked me if I wished to learn to play. The difference which he established between the abbé and myself humiliated me, by the oddest contradiction, for I much preferred to remain in my low chair reading a book, or observing the character of the different persons from their physiognomies.
Is it not always so when one is in a position which is thought to be inferior? Any inequality of treatment wounds the self-love. I took my revenge in observing the ridiculousness of the abbé, who professed, for the château in general and the marquis in particular, an almost idolatrous admiration. His face which was always red became apoplectic when he took his seat opposite the marquis, and the prospect of winning the silver coins designed to make the game more interesting made the dice-cup tremble in his hand at the decisive throws.
This observation did not occupy me long, and I turned to follow the young girl, who seated herself at her work near her mother.
The failure of my attempt to win her love had made me more cruel, in proportion to the admiration I had before felt for the innocent grace of this child. To confess all, I began to feel, in her atmosphere, emotions of an order more sensual than psychological. I was a young man, and I had in my flesh, in spite of my philosophical resolutions, the memory of sex of which you have so authoritatively analyzed the persistent fatality and the invincible reviviscence.
How long this period of inertia at once impassioned and discouraged, might have lasted, I do not know. We were, Mlle. de Jussat and I, in a very peculiar situation, impelled one toward the other, she by abudding love of which she was ignorant, I by all the confused reasons which I have analyzed.
Although we were together so many hours of the day, neither of us then suspected the sentiments of the other. In such circumstances, one does not consider whether the events which mark a new crisis are effects or causes, whether their importance resides in themselves or whether they simply serve to manifest the latent conditions of the soul. But may we not put this question apropos of each destiny taken in its whole? How many times, above all since I consume my hours in this cell between these four whitewashed walls, seeing only the empty sky through four openings at the edge of the roof, in searching and searching again into my short history, have I asked myself if our fate creates our mind, or if it is not our mind which creates our fate, even our external destiny?
It happened one evening that the marquis, seated with his back to the fire in therobe-de-chambre, which he sometimes wore all day, spoke at length to his wife of an article in the morning paper. I was holding this paper at the time, and M. de Jussat said to me quite suddenly:
“Would you read this article, Monsieur Greslon?”
I admired, once more, the art with which this grand seigneur rendered the most trifling demands insolent. His tone alone was sufficient to chill me. I obeyed however, and began to read this chronicle, morefinely written than such articles usually are, and in which were revived all the picturesqueness and coloring of a fancy ball, with a curious mixture of reporting and poetry.
During the reading the marquis regarded me in astonishment. I must tell you, my dear master, that at the time of my friendship with Emile, I had acquired a real talent for diction. During his illness my little comrade had no greater pleasure than to hear me read.
“You read very well, very well!” cried M. de Jussat when I had finished.
His astonishment made his eulogy a new wound to my self-esteem. It was too plain that he did not expect to find much talent in a silent and timid young man of Clermont, who had come to the château on the recommendation of old Limasset, to be avalet de lettres. Then, following as usual, the impulse of his caprice, he continued:
“That is an idea. You shall read for us in the evening. That will amuse us a little better than thistrictrac. Littlejan, bigjan, it is always the same thing, and then the noise of the dice sets my teeth on edge. This beastly country! If the snow ever stops again, we will not stay here eight days. And what book are you going to begin with?”
Thus I found myself promoted to a new service, without even being allowed to consider whether it would interfere with my studies or not, for I often brought into the salon some of my books that I might study a little without leaving Lucien. But I did not for a moment think of evading this task. First the brusqueness of the marquis had brought me a glance almost supplicating from Charlotte, one of those glances by which a woman knows how to ask pardon, for the error of some one whom she loves. Then, a new project took form in my mind. Might not this task be utilized to the profit of the enterprise commenced, abandoned, and which the look of Mlle. de Jussat made me think was still possible?
To the question of the marquis upon the choice of the book, I responded that I would consider. And I looked for a work which would permit me to approach the prey around which I turned, as I once saw, near the Puy du Dôme, a kite wheel around and above a poor little bird.
Was not this an opportunity to try by another method this influence of imitation, which I had vainly hoped from my false confidence? It is to you, my dear master, that we owe the strongest pages which have been written upon that which you so justly call the Literary Mind, upon this unconscious modeling of our heart to the resemblance of the passions painted by the poets.
I saw in this then, a means of acting upon Charlotte which I reproached myself for not having thought of before. But how was I to find a romance which was passionate enough to excite her, and outwardly correct enough to be read before the assembled family? I literally ransacked the library. Its incoherent and contrasted composition, reflected the residence of its successive masters and the chances of their taste.
There were all the principal works of the eighteenth century of which I have spoken—then a hiatus. During the emigration the château had remained unoccupied. Then a lot of romantic books in their first editions attested the literary aspirations of the father of the marquis, who had been the friend of Lamartine. Then came the worst of contemporaneous romances, those which are bought on the railway, half-bound, cut sometimes with the finger, or a page lost, and some treatises on political economy, an abandoned hobby of M. de Jussat.
At last I discovered amid all this rubbish a “Eugénie Grandet,” which appeared to me to fill the conditions desired. There is nothing more attractive to a fresh imagination than these idyls at once chaste and fervid in which innocence envelops passion in a penumbra of poesy. But the marquis must have known this celebrated romance by heart, and I apprehended that he would refuse to listen to it.
“Bravo!” he replied when I submitted my idea to him, “that is one of the books that one reads once, talks about always and entirely forgets. I saw this Balzac once in Paris, at the Castries. It is more than forty years ago. I was a youngster then. But I remember him well, fat, short and stubby, noisy, important, with beautiful bright eyes and a common air.”
The fact is that after the first pages, he fell asleep, while the marquise. Mlle. Largeyx and thereligieuseknit, and Lucien, who had recently come into possession of a box of colors conscientiously illuminated the illustrations of a large volume.
While reading I observed Charlotte, and it was not difficult to see that this time my calculation had been correct, and that she vibrated under the phrases of the romance as a violin under a skillful bow. Everything was prepared to receive this impression, from her feelings already stirred to her nerves strained by an influence of a physical kind. One cannot live with impunity for weeks in such an atmosphere as that of the château, always warm, nearly stifling.
From that evening, this child hung on my lips as the ingenuous loves of Eugénie and her cousin Charles disclosed their touching episodes. The same instinct of comedy which had guided me in my false confidence made me throw into every phrase the intonation which I thought would please her most.
I certainly enjoyed this book, although I preferred ten other of Balzac’s works, such, for example, as the “Curé de Tours,” which are veritable literary compendiums, each phrase of which contains more philosophy than a scholium of Spinoza.
I forced myself to appear touched by the misfortunes of the miser’s daughter, in my most secret fibres; and my voice grew pitiful over the sweet recluse of Saumur.
Here, as before, I gave myself useless trouble. There was no need of an art so complicated. In the crisis of imaginative sensibility through which Charlotte was passing, any romance of love was a peril.
If the father and mother had possessed, even in a feeble degree, that spirit of observation which parents ought to exercise without ceasing, they would have divined this peril of their daughter, more and more captivated during the three evenings that this reading lasted. The marquise simply remarked that characters so black as father Grandet and the cousin did not exist. As for the marquis, he knew too much of the world to proffer any such opinion, he formulated the cause of his ennui during the reading.
“It is decidedly overdrawn. These unfinished descriptions, these analyses, these numerical calculations! They are all very good, I do not say they are not. But when I read a romance I wish to be amused.”
And he concluded that he must send to the Library of Clermont immediately for the comedies of Labiche. I was in despair at this new fancy. I would again be powerless to act upon the imagination of the young girl, just at the moment when I could feel success probable. This showed that I did not know the need which this soul, already touched, felt, unknown to herself, the need of drawing near to me, of comprehending me and making herself comprehended by me, of living in contact with my mind.
The next day after that on which the marquis had issued the decree of proscription against analytical romances, Mlle. de Jussat entered the library at the hour I was there with her brother. She came to replace the volume of the Encyclopedia; and with a half-embarrassed smile:
“I would like to ask a favor of you,” she said timidly. “I have a great deal of time here, with which I do not know very well what to do. I would like to have your advice in regard to my reading. The book which you chose the other day gave me a great deal of pleasure.” She added: “Ordinarily romances weary me, but that one was very interesting.”
I felt, at hearing her speak in that way, the joy which Count André must have tasted when he saw the enemy whom he killed during the war put his inquisitive head above the wall. It seemed to me as if I, too,held my human game at the end of my gun.
The response to this request appeared to me so important that I feigned to be very much embarrassed. In thanking her for her confidence I said to her that she had charged me with a very delicate mission for which I felt myself incapable. In brief, I made believe to decline a favor, which I was charmed to intoxication to have obtained. She insisted, and I promised to give her the next day a list of books.
I passed the evening and a part of the night in taking and rejecting in my mind hundreds of volumes. At last I repeated aloud my father’s favorite formula: “Let us proceed methodically,” and I asked myself how books had acted on my imagination, in my adolescence, and what books?
I stated that I had been attracted most of all toward literature by the unknown of sentimental experience. It was the desire to assimilate unexperienced emotions which had bewitched me. I concluded that this was the general law of literary intoxication. I must then choose for this girl some books which should awake in her the same ideas while taking into account the difference of our characters.
Charlotte was refined, pure and tender. She must be led into the dangerous road of romantic curiosity by descriptions of sentiments analogous to her own heart. I judged that the “Dominique” ofFromentin, the “Princesse de Clèves,” “Valérie,” “Julia de Trécœur,” the “Lys dans la vallée,” the “Reisebilder” of Heine, certain comedies of Musset, in particular “On ne badine pas avec l’amour,” the first poetry of Sully Prudhomme and that of Vigny, would best serve my purpose.
I took the trouble to write out this list, accompanying it with a tempting commentary, in which I indicated in my best manner the shade of delicacy proper to each of these writers. That is the letter which the poor child had kept, and of which the magistrates said it seemed like the beginning of courtship. Ah! the strange courtship, and so different from the vulgar ambition of the marriage with which these gross minds have stupidly reproached me! If I had not a reason of pride for refusing to defend myself which I will give you at the end of this memoir, I would be silent from disgust of these low intelligences, of which not one would be able to comprehend an action dictated by pure reason. If they had only made you, my dear master, and the other princes of modern thought, my judges! Then I would speak, as I am speaking now to you.
The works thus designated arrived from Clermont. They were the object of no remark on the part of the marquis. It is necessary to have another reach of mind than that of this poor man to comprehend thatthere are no bad books. There are bad moments in which to read the best of books. You have a comparison so just in your chapter on “L’âme littéraire,” when you liken the sore opened in certain imaginations by certain readings to the well-known phenomenon produced on the body poisoned by diabetes. The most inoffensive prick becomes envenomed with gangrene.
If there were need of a proof of this theory of “the preliminary state,” as you say again, I should find it in the fact that Mlle. de Jussat sought in these books for things so diverse, for information about me, my manner of feeling, of thinking, of understanding life and character.
Every chapter, every page of these dangerous volumes became an occasion for questioning me long, passionately, and ingenuously. I am certain that she was sincere, and that she did not imagine she was doing anything wrong when she came to talk with me apropos of such or such a phrase about Dominique or Julia, Félix de Vandenesse or Perdican. I remember the horror which she felt for the young man, the most captivating and the most guilty of Musset’s heroes, and the heat with which I stigmatized his duplicity of heart between Camille and Rosette.
Now, there was no personage in any book, who pleased me to the samedegree as this lover at once traitorous and sincere, disloyal and loving,ingénuandroué, who achieved, in his way, his experience of sentimental vivisection upon his pretty and proud cousin.
I have cited this example, among twenty others, to give you an idea of the conversations which we had now in this château in which we were so strangely isolated. No one watched us. The dissimulation in which I had masked myself on my arrival continued to cover me.
The marquis and the marquise had formed from the first an image entirely different from my real nature. They took no pains to verify whether this first impression were exact or false.
The good Mlle. Largeyx, installed in the comfort of her complacent parasitism, was much too innocent to suspect the thoughts of depravity perfectly intellectual which were revolving in my mind.
The Abbé Bartholomew and Sister Anaclet, whom a secret rivalry separated, concealed under the form of an amiability quite ecclesiastic, had only one care, that of pleasing the master and mistress of the château, the priest for the benefit of his church, and thereligieusefor that of her order.
Lucien was too young, and, as for the domestics, I had not yet learned what perfidy was veiled under the impassibility of their smooth facesand the irreproachable appearance of their brown livery with its gold buttons.
We were then free, Charlotte and I, to talk the whole day. She appeared first in the morning, in the dining-room where my pupil and I took our tea, and there, under the pretext of breakfasting together, we talked at one corner of the table, she in all the perfumed freshness of her bath, with her hair hanging down in a heavy plait, and the suppleness of her lovely form visible under the material of her half-fitting morning dress.
I saw her again in the library where she always had some excuse for coming; and by this time her hair was dressed, and she had assumed the toilette of the day. We met again in the drawing-room before the second breakfast and still again; and she waited upon us with her customary grace, distributing the coffee a little hurriedly that she might linger near me whom she served last, which permitted us to talk in an angle of the window.
When the weather would permit we went out, the governess, Charlotte, my pupil, and I, in the afternoon. At five-o’clock tea we were again together, then at dinner, when I sat near her, and in the evening we conversed almost as if we were really alone.
I mentally compared the phenomena which were taking place in thisgirl, to that which I had observed several times in taming animals. At one time I had written some chapters on animal psychology. A theorem of Spinoza had served me for a starting point. I cannot now recall the text, but this is the sense: to reproduce a movement, you must do it yourself. That is true of man, and it is true of the animal. A savant of rare merit and whom you know well, M. Espinas, has explained that all society is founded on resemblance. I have concluded that for a man to tame an animal, to bring it to live in his society, he must, in his relations with this animal, make only those movements which the animal can reproduce, that is to resemble him.
I have verified this law in establishing the species of analogy of expression between a hunter and his dog, for example. I found—and this was the sign that Mlle. de Jussat was becoming a little tamer each day—that we began to employ analogous expressions, turns of thought almost the same. I found myself accenting my words as she did hers, and I observed in her gestures which resembled mine. In fine, I became a part of her life, without her perceiving it, so careful was I not to startle this soul just ready to be taken by a word that would cause her to feel her danger.
This life of watchful diplomacy, to which I was condemned duringnearly two months that these simply intellectual relations lasted, did not pass without almost daily internal struggles. To interest this mind, to invade this imagination little by little, was not all of my programme. I wished to be loved, and I knew that this moral interest was only the beginning of passion. This beginning ought to lead in order not to remain useless to something more than a sentimental intimacy.
There is in your “Theory of the Passions,” my dear master, a note which I read so much at that time that I know the text by heart: “A well-prepared study of the lives of professional libertines,” say you, “would throw a definite light upon the problem of the birth of love. But the documents are lacking. These men have nearly all been men of action, and who, in consequence, did not know how to relate. However, some works of a superior psychological interest, the “Memoires” of Casanova, the “Private Life of Marshal de Richelieu,” the chapter of Saint-Simon on Lauzun, authorize us to say that nineteen times out of twenty audacity and physical familiarity are the surest means of creating love. This hypothesis confirms our doctrine on the animal origin of this passion.”
Sometimes when we were alone together, and she moved, and her feet approached mine, and when she breathed and I felt that she was a living creature, the feverish wave of intoxication ran through my veins, andI was obliged to turn my eyes away, for their expression would have made her afraid. Often also, when I was away from her, it seemed to me that audacity would be much more easy as it would be more complete. I resolved then to clasp her in my arms, to press my lips to hers. I saw her feeling badly at my caress, overcome, confounded by this revelation of my ardor. What would happen then? My heart beat at this idea. It was not the fear of being driven from the château that held me back. It was more shameful to my pride not to dare. And I did not dare. The inability to act is a trait of my character, but only when I am not sustained by an idea. Let the idea be there and it infuses an invincible energy into my being. To go to my death would be easy. You will see that, if I am condemned. No, what paralyzed me near Mlle. de Jussat as by a magnetic influence washer purity! At least I have felt, with singular force, this recoil before innocence.
Often when I felt this invisible barrier between Charlotte and myself, I have recalled the legends of guardian angels, and comprehended the birth of this poetic conceit of Catholicism.
Reduced to reality by analysis, this phenomenon simply proves that in the relations between two beings, there is a reciprocity of action of one upon the other unknown to either. If by calculation I forcedmyself to resemble this girl in order to tame her, I experienced without calculation the species of moral suggestion which all true character imposes upon us. The extreme simplicity of her mind triumphed at times over my ideas, my remembrances, and my desires.
Finally, although judging this weakness to be unworthy of a brain like mine, I respected her, as if I had not known the value of this word respect, and that it represents the most stupid of all our ignorances. Do we respect the player who ten times in succession strikes the rouge or the noir? Well, in this hazardous lottery of the universe, virtue and vice are the rouge and noir. An honest woman and a lucky player have equal merit.
The spring arrived in the midst of these agitating alternations of audacious projects, stupid timidity, contradictory reasonings, wise combinations and ingenuous ardors. And such a spring! One must have experienced the severity of winter among these mountains, then the sudden sweetness of the renewal of nature, to appreciate the charm of life which floats in this atmosphere when April and May bring back the sacred season.
It comes first across the meadows in an awaking of the water which shudders under the thin ice; it bursts through and then runs singingon, light, transparent and free.
It comes through the woods in a continuous murmur of snow which detaches itself piece by piece and falls upon the evergreen branches of the pines and the yellow and dried leaves of the oaks. The lake freed from its ice takes to shivering under the wind which sweeps away the clouds, and the azure appears, the azure of a mountain sky, clearer, deeper than that of the plain; and in some days the uniform color of the landscape is tinted with colors tender and young.
The delicate buds begin to appear on the naked branches. The greenish aments of hazels alternate with the yellowish catkins of the willows. Even the black lava of the Cheyre appears to be animated. The velvety fructifications of the mosses mingle with the whitening spots of the lichens. The craters of the Puy de la Vache and of the Puy de Lassolas disclose little by little the splendor of their red gravel. The silvery trunks of the birches and the changeable trunks of the beeches shine in the sun with a lively splendor.
In the thickets, the beautiful flowers which I had formerly picked with my father, and whose corollas looked at me as if they were eyes, and whose aroma followed me like a breath, began to bloom. The periwinkle, the primrose, and the violet appeared first, then in succession thecuckoo-flower with its shade of lilac, the daphne which bears its pink flowers before it has any leaves, the white anemone, the two-leaved harebell, with its odor of hyacinth, Solomon’s seal with its white bells and its mysterious root which walks under the ground, the lily-of-the-valley in the hollows, and the eglantine along the hedges.
The breeze which came from the white domes of the mountain passed over these flowers. It brought with it perfumes something of the sun and the snow, so caressing and so fresh, that only to breathe was to be intoxicated with youth, was to participate in the renewal of the vast world; and I, fixed as I was in my doctrines and my theories, felt the puberty of all nature. The ice of abstract ideas in which my soul was imprisoned melted.
When I read over the pages of my journal, now destroyed, in which I had noted my sensations, I am astonished to see with what force the sources of ingenuousness were reopened in me under this influence, and with what a rushing flood they inundated my heart. I am vexed with myself for thinking of it in this cowardly spirit. However, I experience a pleasure in remembering that at this period I sincerely loved her who is now no more. I repeat it with a real relief, that at least on the day that I dared to tell her of my love—fatal day which marked thebeginning of our separation—I was the sincere dupe of my own words.
The declaration on which I had deliberated so much was, however, simply the effect of chance. It was the 12th of May. Ah! it is less than a year ago! In the morning the weather had been even more than usually fine, and in the afternoon Mlle. Largeyx, Lucien, Charlotte and I started to go to the village of Saint-Saturnin through a wood of oaks, of birches and hazels which separated this village from the ruined château of Montredon, and which is called the Pradat wood. We had taken the little English cart which could hold four if necessary.
Never was a day more warm, a sky more blue, never was the odor of spring borne by the wind more exhilarating.
We had not walked a league when Mlle. Largeyx, fatigued by the sun, took her seat in the cart which was driven by the second coachman. The rogue has sworn cruelly against me, and has recalled all that he knew or guessed of what I myself am going to relate to you. Lucien also soon declared himself tired, and joined the governess, so that I was left to walk alone with Mlle. de Jussat.
She had taken it into her head to make a bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley, and I helped her in this work. We were busy under the branches, which were covered with a sort of delicate green cloudof the scarcely opened foliage. She walked ahead, drawn far from the edge of the wood in her search for the flowers. We found ourselves at last in a clearing, and so far away that we could not see the group made by the cart and the three persons. Charlotte first perceived our solitude. She listened, and not hearing the noise of the horse’s feet on the road, she cried out with the laughter of a child:
“We are lost. Fortunately the road is not hard torembourser, as poor Sister Anaclet says. Will you wait until I arrange my bouquet? It would be a pity to have these beautiful flowers spoil.”
She sat down on a rock which was bathed in sunlight, and spread the flowers on her lap, taking up the sprays of lilies one by one. I inhaled the musky perfume of these pale racemes, seated on the other extremity of the stone. Never had this creature, toward whom all my thoughts had tended for months, appeared so adorably delicate and refined as at this moment with her face daintily colored by the fresh air, with the deep red of her lips which were bent in a half-smile, with the clear limpidity of her gray eyes, with the symmetry of her entire being.
She harmonized in a manner almost supernatural with the country about us by the charm of youth which emanated from her person. The longer Ilooked at her the more I was convinced that if I did not seize this occasion to tell her what I had wished to declare for so long a time, I should never again find another opportunity so propitious.
This idea grew in my mind, mingled with the remorse of seeing her, so confident, so unsuspicious of the patient work by which, abusing our daily intimacy, I had brought her to treat me with a gentleness almost fraternal.
My heart beat violently. The magic of her presence excited my entire being. Unfortunately she turned toward me for a moment, to show me the bouquet which was nearly finished. No doubt she saw in my face the trace of the emotion which my pride of thought raised in me, for her face which had been so joyous, so frank, suddenly grew anxious. I ought to say that during our conversations of these two months we had avoided, she from delicacy, I from shrewdness, any allusion to the romance of deception by which I had tried to excite her pity. I understood how thoroughly she had believed in this romance and that she had not ceased to think of it, when she said with an involuntary melancholy in her eyes:
“Why do you spoil this beautiful day by sad remembrances? I thought you had become more reasonable.”
“No!” I responded; “you do not know what makes me sad. Ah! it is not remembrances. You refer to my former griefs. You are mistaken. There is no more place in my mind for memories than there is on these branches for last year’s leaves.”
I heard my voice as if it had been that of some one else, at the same time I read in her eyes that, in spite of the poetical comparison by which I had concealed the direct meaning of this phrase, she understood me.
How was it that what had been so impossible now seemed easy? How was it that I dared to do what I had believed I should never dare to do? I took her hand which trembled in mine as if the child were seized with a frightful terror. She rose to go away, but her knees trembled so that I had no difficulty in constraining her to sit down again. I was so overcome by my own audacity that I could not control myself, and I began to tell her my feelings for her in words which I cannot recall now.
All the emotions through which I had passed, since my arrival at the château, yes all, even from the most detestable, those of my envy of Count André, to the best, my remorse at abusing the confidence of a young girl, were dissolved in an adoration almost mystical, and half-mad, for this trembling, agitated, and beautiful creature. I saw her while I was speaking grow as pale as the flowers which were scattered in her lap. I remember that words came to me which wereexcited to madness, wild to imprudence, and that I ended by repeating:
“How I love you! Ah! How I love you!”
Clasping her hand in mine and drawing her nearer and nearer to me. I passed my free arm around her waist without even thinking, in my own agitation, of kissing her. This gesture, by alarming her, gave her the energy to rise and disengage herself. She moaned rather than said:
“Leave me, leave me.”
And stepping backward, her hands held out in front of her as if to defend herself, she went to the trunk of a birch tree. There she leaned, panting with emotion, while the big tears rolled down her cheeks. There was so much of wounded modesty in these tears, so painful a revulsion, in the tremulousness of her half-open lips, that I remained where I was muttering:
“Pardon.”
“Be still,” said she, making a motion with her hand.
We remained thus opposite one another and silent for a time which must have been very short, but which seemed an eternity to me. All at once a cry crossed the wood, at first distant, then nearer, that of a voice imitating the cry of the cuckoo. They had grown uneasy at our absence,and it was Lucien who gave the usual signal for rallying.
At this simple reminder of reality Charlotte shivered. The blood came back to her cheeks. She looked at me with eyes in which pride had driven away fear. She looked like one who had just awaked from a horrible sleep. She looked at her hands, which still shook, and, without another word, she took up her gloves and her flowers, and began to run, yes, to run like a pursued animal, in the direction of the voice. Ten minutes after we were again on the road.
“I do not feel very well,” she said to her governess, as if to anticipate the question which her disturbed face would provoke; “will you give me a place in the carriage? We are going home.”
“It is the heat which has made you feel badly,” replied the old demoiselle.
“And M. Greslon?” asked Lucien when his sister had taken her seat and he was in behind.
“I will walk,” I answered.
The cart moved lightly on, in spite of its quadruple burden, while Lucien waved me an adieu. I could see the hat of Mlle. de Jussat immovable by the side of the shoulder of the coachman, who gave a “pull up” to his horse, then the carriage disappeared and I walked along alone, under the same blue sky, and between the same trees covered with an impalpable verdure. But an extraordinary anguish had replaced thecheerfulness and the happy ardor of the beginning of the walk.
This time the die had been thrown. I had given battle, I had lost; I should be sent away from the château ignobly. It was less this prospect which overcame me than a strange mingling of regret and of shame.
Behold whither my learned psychology had led me! Behold the result of this siegeen règleundertaken against the heart of this young girl! Not a word on her part in response to the most impassioned declaration, and I, at the moment for action, what had I found to do but recite some romantic phrases? And she, by a simple gesture, had fixed me to my place!
I saw in imagination the face of Count André. I saw in a flash the expression of contempt when they should tell him of this scene. Finally, I was no longer the subtle psychologist or the excited young man, I was a self-love humiliated to the dust by the time I reached the gate of the château.
In recognizing the lake, the line of the mountains, the front of the house, pride gave place to a frightful apprehension of what I was going to suffer, and the project crossed my mind to flee, to go back directly to Clermont, rather than experience anew the disdain of Mlle. de Jussat, and the affront which her father would inflict upon me. It wastoo late, the marquis himself came to meet me, in the principal avenue, accompanied by Lucien who called me. This cry of the child had the customary intonation of familiarity, and the reception of the father proved that I had been wrong to feel myself lost so soon.
“They abandoned you,” said he, “and did not even think of sending the carriage back for you. You must have walked a good stretch!” He consulted his watch. “I am afraid that Charlotte has taken cold,” he added, “she went to bed as soon as she came in. These spring suns are so treacherous.”
“So Charlotte had said nothing yet. She is suffering this evening. That will be for to-morrow,” thought I, and I began that evening to pack my papers. I held to them with so ingenuous a confidence in my talent as a philosopher!
The next day arrived. Nothing vet. I was again with Charlotte at the breakfast table; she was pale, as if she had passed through a crisis of violent pain. I saw that the sound of my voice made her tremble slightly. Then this was all. Ah! what a strange week I passed, expecting each morning that she had spoken, crucified by this expectation and incapable of taking the first step myself or of going away from the château! This was not alone for want of a pretext to give. A burning curiosity held me there. I had wished to live as muchas to think. Well! I was living, and in what a fever!
At last, the eighth day, the marquis asked me to come into his study.
“This time,” said I to myself, “the hour has struck. I like this better.”
I expected to see a terrible countenance, and to hear some almost insulting words. I found, on the contrary, the hypochondriac smiling, his eyes bright, his manner young again.
“My daughter,” said he, “continues to be very unwell. Nothing very serious, but some odd nervous symptoms. She wishes positively to consult a Paris physician. You know she has been very ill and was cured by a physician in whom she has confidence. I shall not be sorry to consult him also for myself. I am going with her the day after to-morrow. It is possible that we shall take a little journey to amuse her. I desired to give you some particular directions in regard to Lucien during my absence, though I am very well pleased with you, my dear Monsieur Greslon, very well pleased. I wrote so to Limasset yesterday. It is a good thing for me that you are here.”
You will judge my dear master, by what I have shown you of my character, that these compliments must have flattered me as evidence of the perfection with which I had filled my rôle, and by reassuringme after my fears of the last days. I saw this very clear and positive fact: Charlotte had not wished to tell of my declaration, and I asked at once: Why? Instead of interpreting this silence in a sense favorable to me, I saw in it this idea: she did not wish through pity to take away my means of making a living, but it was not the kind of pity which I had wished to provoke.
I had no sooner imagined this explanation than it became evident and insupportable.
“No,” said I, “that shall not be, I will not accept the alms of this outraging indulgence. When Mlle. de Jussat returns, she will not find me here. She shows me what I ought to do, what I will do. I have desired to interest her, I have not even excited her anger. I will leave at least some other remembrance than that of a vulgar pedant who keeps his place in spite of the worst affronts.”
I was so baffled in my projects; the hope which had sustained me all winter was so dead that I wrote out, on the night following this conversation, a letter in the place of the one in which I had thought to make her love me, again asking for pardon.
I comprehend, said I, that any relation is impossible between us, and I added that on her return she would not have to endure the odiousness of my presence. The next morning in the confusion of departure, I found a moment when her mother having called her, I could slip into her room. I hastened to put my letter on her bureau. There, among the books ready to be put into her trunk, was her blotting case. I opened it and found an envelope upon which were the words: May 12, 1886. This was the day of the fatal declaration. I opened this envelope. It contained some sprigs of dried lilies-of-the-valley, and I remember to have given her, in this last walk, some sprigs more beautiful than the others and she had put them in her corsage. She had preserved them then. She had kept them in spite of what I had said to her—because of what I had said to her.
I do not believe that I ever experienced an emotion comparable to that which seized me there, before this simple envelope, to the flood of pride which suddenly inundated my heart. Yes. Charlotte had repulsed me. Yes, she had fled from me. But she loved me! I closed the case, I went up to my room in haste, for fear that she would surprise me, without leaving my letter, which I instantly destroyed. Ah! there was no question of my going away now.
I must wait until she should return, and, this time, I would act, I would conquer. She loved me!
§ V. THE SECOND CRISIS.
She loved me. The experience instituted by my pride and my curiosity had succeeded. This evidence—for I did not for a moment doubt theproof, rendered the departure of the young girl not only supportable, but almost sweet. Her flight was explained by a fear of her own emotions which proved to me their depth. And then, by going away for a few weeks, she relieved me from a cruel embarrassment.
How should I act? By what politic safeguard should I push on to success from this unhoped-for point? I was about to have leisure to think of this during her absence, which could not last long, since the Jussats had now no house except in Auvergne.
Deferring then until later the formation of a new plan, I gave myself up to the intoxication of triumphant self-love which I witnessed in the departure of Charlotte and of her father. I had taken leave of them in the drawing-room in order not to embarrass the final adieus, and returned to my room. The warm, cordial hand-shake of the marquis, proved once more how strongly I was anchored in the house, and I had divined behind the cool farewell of the girl the palpitation of a heart which did not wish to yield.
I inhabited in the second story a corner room with a window on the front of the château I placed myself behind the curtain so that I could see them as they entered the carriage. It was a victoria encumbered with wraps and drawn by the same light bay horse that had drawn the English cart. There was also the same coachman on the seat, whip inhand, and with the same immobility of countenance.
The marquis appeared, then Charlotte. Under the veil and from such a height, I could not distinguish her features, and when she raised the veil to dry her eyes, I could not have told whether it were the last kisses of her mother and her brother which caused this access of nervous emotion or despair at a too painful resolution. But, when the carriage turned away toward the gate, I saw her turn her head; and as the family had already gone in what could she be looking at so long, if not at the window from whose shelter I was regarding her? Then a clump of trees hid the carriage, which reappeared at the border of the lake to disappear again and plunge into the road which crosses the wood of Pradat—that road where a souvenir awaited her, which I was certain would make her heart beat more quickly—that troubled, conquered heart.
This sentiment of pride satisfied me for an entire month, without a minute’s interruption, and—proof that I was still entirely intellectual and psychological in my relations with this young girl, my mind was never more clear, more supple, more skillful in the handling of ideas than at this period.
I wrote then my best pages, a treatise on the working of the will during sleep. I put into it, with the delight of a savant which youwill understand, all the details which I had noted, for some months, on the goings and comings, the heights and depths of my resolutions. I had kept, as I have told you, a most precise journal, analyzing, in the evening before going to sleep, and in the morning, as soon as I was awake, the least shades of every state of mind.
Yes, these were days of a singular fullness. I was very free. Mlle. Largeyx and Sister Anaclet kept the marquise company. My pupil and I took advantage of the beautiful and mild days for walking. Under the pretext of teaching I had cultivated in him a love of butterflies. Armed with a long cane and a net of green gauze, he constantly ran after the Auroras with wings bordered with orange, the blue Arguses, the brown Morio’s, the mottled Vulcans and the gold-colored Citrons. He left me alone with my thoughts.
Sometimes we took the Pradat road which was now adorned with all the verdure of spring, sometimes we went toward Verneuge, toward the valley of Saint-Genès-Champanelle, which is as gracefully pretty as its name. I would seat myself upon a block of lava, some small fragment of the enormous stream poured out by the Puy de la Vache, and there, without troubling my head about Lucien, I abandoned myself to this strange disposition which has always appeared to me in the midst of this savage nature, as a striking symbol of my doctrines, a type of implacablefatality, a council of absolute indifference to good or ill.
I looked at the leaves of the trees as they unfolded in the sunlight, and I recalled the known laws of vegetable respiration, and how, by a simple modification of light, the life of the plant can be changed. In the same way, one ought to be able at will to direct the life of the soul, if he could exactly know its laws.
I had already succeeded in creating the commencement of a passion in the soul of a young girl, separated from me by an abyss. What new procedures applied with rigor would permit me to increase the intensity of this passion?
I forgot the magnificence of the heavens, the freshness of the wood, the majesty of the volcanoes, the vast landscape spread out before me, in seeing only the formulas of moral algebra. I hesitated between diverse solutions for the next day on which I should have Mlle. de Jussat face to face with me in the solitude of the château.
Ought I on her return to feign indifference, to disconcert her, to subdue her, first by astonishment and then by self-love and grief? Should I pique her jealousy by insinuating that the foreigner of mysoi-disantromance had returned to Clermont and had written to me? Should I, on the contrary, continue the burning declarations, the audacities which surround, the follies which intoxicate?
I replaced these hypotheses successively by still others. I pleased myself by saying that I was not in love, that the philosopher ruled the lover, that myself, this dear self of whom I had constituted myself the priest, remained superior and lucid. I branded as unworthy weaknesses the reveries which at other times replaced these subtle calculations.
It was in the house that these reveries took hold upon me, when I looked at the portraits of Charlotte which were scattered about everywhere on the walls of the salon, on the tables and in Lucien’s room. Photographs of all sizes represented her at six years, at ten years, at fifteen, and I could trace the growth of her beauty from themignonnegrace of her first years to the delicate charm of to-day.
The features of these photographs changed, but the expression never. It was the same in the eyes of the child and in those of the young girl, with something of seriousness, of tenderness and of fixedness which revealed profound sensibility. It was impressed upon me, and the remembrance of it agitates me with a confused emotion. Ah! Why did I not give myself up to it entirely.
But why was Charlotte, in so many of these portraits by the side of her brother André? What secret fibre of hate had this man, by his existence alone, touched in my heart, that simply to see his image near that ofhis sister dried up my tenderness and left in me only one wish?
I dared to formulate it, now that I believed I had taken this heart in my snare. Yes, I wished to be Charlotte’s lover. And after? After? I forced myself not to think of that, as I forced myself to destroy the instinctive scruples of violated hospitality. I collected the most masculine energies of my mind and I plunged more deeply into my theories upon the cultivation of self.
I would go out of this experience enriched by emotions and remembrances. Such would be the moral issue of the adventure. The material issue would be the return to my mother’s house when my preceptorate was ended.
When scruples became aroused, and a voice said: “And Charlotte? Have you the right to treat her as a simple object of experience?” I took my Spinoza, and I read there the theorem in which it is written that our right is only limited by our power.
I took your “Theory of the Passions” and I studied there your phrases on the duel between the sexes in love.
“It is the law of the world,” I reasoned, “that all existence should be a conquest, executed and maintained by the strongest at the expense of the feeblest. That is as true of the moral universe as of the physical. There are some souls of prey as there are wolves, tigers andhawks.”
This formula seemed to me strong, new and just. I applied it to myself, and I repeated:
“I am a soul of prey, a soul of prey,” with a furious attack of what the mystics call the pride of life, among the fresh verdure, under the blue sky, on the bank of the clear river which flows from the mountains to the lake. This exhilaration at my victorious pride was dissipated by a very simple fact. The marquis wrote that he would return, but alone. Mlle. de Jussat, who was still unwell, would remain with a sister of her mother. When the marquise communicated this news to us we were at table. I felt a spasm of anger so violent that it astonished myself, and on the plea of sudden indisposition I left the dinner table.
I should like to have cried out, broken something or manifested in some foolish way the rage which shook my soul. In the fever of vanity which had exalted me since the departure of Charlotte, I had foreseen everything, except that this girl would have character enough not to return to Aydat. The way which she had found to escape from her sentiment was so simple, but so sovereign, so complete.
The marvelous tactics of my psychology became as vain as the mechanism of the best cannon against an enemy out of reach of its shot.
What could I do if she were not there? The vision of my weakness rose up so strong, so painful, that it excited my nervous system so profoundly that I neither ate nor slept until the arrival of the marquis. I should then learn if this resolution excluded all hope of a counter order—if there were any chance that the young girl would return by the end of July, or in August, or in September. My engagement would last until the middle of October.
My heart beat, my throat was choked while we walked, Lucien and I, in the railroad station of Clermont, waiting for the train from Paris. In the excess of my impatience I had obtained permission to come to meet the father. The locomotive entered the station. M. de Jussat put his head through a doorway. I said at the risk of revealing my feelings:
“And Mlle. Charlotte?”
“Thank you, thank you,” he answered, pressing my hand with feeling, “the physician says that she has a very serious nervous trouble. It seems that the mountains are not good for her. And I am well only high up! Ah! This is painful, very painful. We shall try for a time, the cold-water cure at Paris, and then at Néris perhaps.”
She would not return!
If ever I have regretted, my dear master, the notebook which I burned, it is assuredly now, and this daily record of my thoughts from theevening on which the marquis thus announced the definite absence of his daughter. This record continued until October, when a circumstance brusquely changed the probable course of things.
You would have found there, as in an atlas of moral anatomy, an illustration of your beautiful analysis of love, desire, regret, jealousy, and hate. Yes, during those four months I went through all these phases. It was an insane attempt, but quite natural, persuaded as I was that Charlotte’s absence only proved her passion.
I wrote to her. In that letter, deliberately composed, I began by asking her pardon for my audacity in the Pradat wood, and I renewed this audacity in a worse manner, by drawing a burning picture of my despair away from her.
This letter was a wilder declaration than the other, and so bold that once the envelope had disappeared in the box at the village post-office whither I had carried it myself, my fears were renewed. Two days, three days, and there was no reply. The letter at least was not returned, as I had feared, without even being opened.
At this time the marquise had finished her preparations to join her daughter. Her sister occupied at Paris in the Rue de Chanaleilles, a house large enough to give to these ladies all the rooms they needed.Hôtel de Sermoises, Rue de Chanaleilles, Paris, what emotions I have had in writing this address, not only once, but five or six times.
I calculated that the aunt would not watch the correspondence of the young girl very strictly, while the mother would watch her. It was necessary to take advantage of the time the latter still remained at Aydat, to strengthen the impression certainly produced by my letter. I wrote every day, until the departure of the marquise, letters like the first, and I found no trouble in playing the lover.
My passionate desire to have Charlotte return was sincere—as sincere as unreasonable. I have known since that, at every arrival of these dangerous missives, she struggled for hours against the temptation to open the envelope. At last she opened it. She read and reread the pages and their poison acted surely. As she was ignorant of the discovery I had made of her secret, she did not think to defend herself against the opinion that I could have conceived of her.
These letters affected her so much that she preserved them. The ashes were found in the chimney of her room where she had burned them the night of her death. I much suspected the troubling effect of these pages which I scratched off in the night, excited by the thought thatI was firing my last cartridges, which resembled shots in a fog, since no sign gave notice that every time I aimed I struck right into her heart.
This absolute uncertainty I at first interpreted to my advantage; then, when the mother had left the château and I saw the impossibility of writing, I found in Charlotte’s silence the most evident proof, not that she loved me, but that she was using her whole will to conquer this love and that she would succeed.
“Ah, well!” I thought, “I shall have to give her up, since I cannot reach her, and all is over.” I pronounced these words aloud alone in my room as I heard the carriage which took the marquise roll away. M. de Jussat and Lucien accompanied her as far as Martris-de-Veyre, where she went to take the train. “Yes,” I repeated, “all is ended. What difference does it make since I do not love her?”
At the moment this thought left me relatively tranquil and with no other trouble than a vague feeling of uneasiness in the chest, as happens when we are annoyed. I went out for the purpose of shaking off even this uneasiness, and, in one of those fits of bravado, by which I was pleased to prove my strength, I went to the place in which I had dared to speak to Charlotte of my love.
In order the better to attest my liberty of soul, I had taken under my arm a new book which I had just received, a translation of Darwin’s letters.
The day was misty, but almost scorching. A kind of simoon of wind from the south parched the branches of the trees with its breath. As I went on this wind affected my nerves. I desired to attribute to its influence the increase of my uneasiness. After some fruitless search in the wood of Pradat, I at last found the clearing where we had been—the stone—the birch.
It trembled constantly in the breath of the wind, with its dentated foliage which was now much thicker. I had intended to read my book here. I sat down and opened the book. I could not get beyond a half page. The memories overcame me, took possession of me, showing me this girl upon this same stone, arranging the sprays of her lilies, then standing, leaning against this tree, then frightened and fleeing over the grass of the path.
An indefinable grief took possession of me, oppressing my heart, stifling my respiration, filling my eyes with scalding tears, and I felt, with terror, that through so any complications of analysis and of subtleties, I was desperately in love with the child who was not there, who would never be there again.
This discovery, so strangely unexpected, and of a sentiment socontrary to the programme I had arranged, was accompanied almost immediately by a revulsion against this sentiment and against the image of her who had caused me this pain. There was not a day during the long weeks that followed that I did not struggle against the shame of having been taken in my own snare and without feeling a bitter spite against the absent one.
I recognized the depth of his spite at the infamous joy which filled my heart when the marquis received a letter from Paris, which he read with a frown and sighed as he said: “Charlotte is still unwell.” I felt a consolation, a miserable one, but a consolation all the same, in saying to myself that I had wounded her with a poisonous wound and one which would be slow to heal. It seemed to me that this would be my true revenge, if she should continue to suffer, and I should be the first to cure her.
I appealed to the philosopher that I was so proud of being to drive out the lover. I resumed my old reasoning. “There are laws of life and of mind and I know them. I cannot apply them to Charlotte, since she has fled from me. Shall I be incapable of applying them to myself?” And I meditated on this new question: “Are there remedies against love? Yes, there are, and I have found them.”
My quasi-mathematical habits of analysis were at my service in myproject of healing, and I resolved the problem into its elements, after the manner of geometricians.
I reduced this question to this other: “What is love?” to which I answered brutally by your definition: “Love is the obsession of sex.” Now, how is this combated? By physical fatigue, which suspends, or at least lessens, the action of the mind.
I compelled myself and I compelled my pupil to take long walks. The days on which he had no lessons, Sundays and Thursdays, I went out alone at the break of day, after having arranged the hour and the place in which Lucien should join me with the carriage. I awoke at two o’clock. I went out from the château, in the cold of the half-twilight which precedes the dawn.
I went straight before me, frantically, choosing the worst paths, ascending the nearest peaks by the most abrupt and almost inaccessible sides. I risked breaking my limbs in descending the yielding sand of the craters, or upon the crests of basalt. No matter.
The orange line of the aurora gained the border of the sky. The wind of the new day beat against my face. The stars like precious stones melted away, drowned in the flood of azure, now pale, now darker. The sun lighted up, on the flowers, the trees and the grass a flashing of sparkling dew.
Persuaded as I am, of the laws of prehistoric atavism, I aroused in myself, by the sensation of the forced march and of the heights, the rudimentary mind of the ancestral brute, of the man of the caves from whom I, as well as the rest of mankind, am descended.
I attained in this way a sort of savage delirium, but it was neither the dreamed-of joy nor peace, and it was interrupted by the smallest reminiscence of my relations with Charlotte. The turn of a road which we had followed together, the blue bosom of the lake seen from some height, the outline of the slated roofs of the château, less than that, even the trembling foliage of a birch and its silvery trunk, the name of a village of which she had spoken, on an advertisement, was sufficient, and this factitious frenzy gave place to the keen regret that she was not near me.
I heard her say in her finely-toned voice: “Look then—” as she would say when we wandered together, through this same region, which was then covered with ice and snow—but the flower of her beauty was then in bloom, now it was adorned with verdure, but the living flower was gone.
And this sensation became more intolerable still when I met Lucien, who never failed to talk of her. He loved her, he admired her so lovingly, and in his ingenuousness he gave me so many proofs that she was worthyof being loved and admired. Then physical weariness resolved itself into a worse enervation, and nights followed in which I suffered from an excited insomnia, in which I would weep aloud, calling her name like one deranged.
“It is through the mind that I suffer,” I said after having in vain sought the remedy in great fatigue. “I will attack mind through mind.”
I undertook that study the most completely opposed to all feminine preoccupation. I despoiled in less than a fortnight, pen in hand, two hundred pages of that “Physiology” of Beaunis which I had brought in my trunk and the hardest for me, those which treat of the chemistry of living bodies.
My efforts to understand and to sum up these analyses which demand the laboratory, were supremely in vain. I only succeeded in stupefying my intellect and in making myself less capable of resisting a fixed idea.
I saw that I had again taken the wrong road. Was not the true method rather that which Goethe professed—to apply the mind to that from which we wish to be delivered? This great mind, who knew how to live, thus put in practice the theory set up in the fifth book of Spinoza, and which consists in evolving from the accidents of our personal life the law which unites us to the great life of the universe.
M. Taine, in his eloquent pages on Byron, advises the same, “the light of the mind produces in us serenity of the heart.” And you, my dear master, what else say you in the preface to your “Theory of the Passions.” “To consider one’s own destiny as a corollary in this living geometry of nature, and as an inevitable consequence of this eternal axiom whose infinite development is prolonged through time and space, is the only principle of enfranchisement.”
And what else am I doing, at this hour, in writing out this memoir, but conforming to these maxims? Can they serve me now any better than they did then? I tried at that time to resume in a kind of new autobiography the history of my feelings for Charlotte. I supposed—see how chance sometimes strangely realizes our dreams—a great psychologist to be consulted by a young man; and, toward the last, the psychologist wrote out for the use of the moral invalid a passional diagnosis with indication of causes.
I wrote this piece during the month of August and under the exhausting influence of the most torrid heat. I devoted to it about fifteen séances, lasting from ten o’clock in the evening to one o’clock in the morning, all the windows open, with the space around my lamp brightened by large night-moths, by these large velvet butterflies which bear on their bodies the imprint of a death’s head.