THE INFERNO

BY HENRI BARBUSSEAUTHOR OF "UNDER FIRE"

TRANSLATED FROM THE 100TH FRENCH EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTIONBY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN1918

INTRODUCTION

In introducing M. Barbusse's most important book to a public alreadyfamiliar with "Under Fire, " it seems well to point out the relation ofthe author's philosophy to his own time, and the kinship of his art tothat of certain other contemporary French and English novelists. 

"L'Enfer" has been more widely read and discussed in France than anyother realistic study since the days of Zola. The French sales of thevolume, in 1917 alone, exceeded a hundred thousand copies, a popularityall the more remarkable from the fact that its appeal is based as muchon its philosophical substance as on the story which it tells. 

Although M. Barbusse is one of the most distinguished contemporaryFrench writers of short stories, he has found in the novel form themost fitting literary medium for the expression of his philosophy, andit is to realism rather than romanticism that he turns for theexposition of his special imaginative point of view. And yet thisstatement seems to need some qualification. In his introduction to"Pointed Roofs, " by Dorothy Richardson, Mr. J. D. Beresford points outthat a new objective literary method is becoming general in which thewriter's strict detachment from his objective subject matter is unitedto a tendency, impersonal, to be sure, to immerse himself in the lifesurrounding his characters. Miss May Sinclair points out that writersare beginning to take the complete plunge for the first time, andinstances as examples, not only the novels of Dorothy Richardson, butthose of James Joyce. 

Now it is perfectly true that Miss Richardson and Mr. Joyce haveintroduced this method into English fiction, and that Mr. FrankSwinnerton has carried the method a step further in another direction, but before these writers there was a precedent in France for thismethod, of which perhaps the two chief exemplars were Jules Romains andHenri Barbusse. Although the two writers have little else in common, both are intensely conscious of the tremendous, if imponderable, impactof elemental and universal forces upon personality, of the profoundmodifications which natural and social environment unconsciouslyimpress upon the individual life, and of the continual interaction offorces by which the course of life is changed more fundamentally thanby less imperceptible influences. Both M. Romains and M. Barbusseperceive, as the fundamental factor influencing human life, thecontraction and expansion of physical and spiritual relationship, theinevitable ebb and flow perceived by the poet who pointed out that wecannot touch a flower without troubling of a star. 

M. Romains has found his literary medium in what he calls unanimism. While M. Barbusse would not claim to belong to the same school, and infact would appear on the surface to be at the opposite pole of life inhis philosophy, we shall find that his detachment, founded, though itis, upon solitude, takes essentially the same account of outside forcesas the philosophy of M. Romains. 

He perceives that each man is an island of illimitable forces apartfrom his fellows, passionately eager to live his own life to the lastdegree of self-fulfilment, but continually thwarted by nature and byother men and women, until death interposes and sets the seal ofoblivion upon all that he has dreamed and sought. 

And he has set himself the task of disengaging, as far as possible, thepurpose and hope of human life, of endeavouring to discover whatpromise exists for the future and how this promise can be related tothe present, of marking the relationship between eternity and time, anddiscovering, through the tragedies of birth, love, marriage, illnessand death, the ultimate possibility of human development andfulfilment. 

"The Inferno" is therefore a tragic book. But I think that theattentive reader will find that the destructive criticism of M. Barbusse, in so far as it is possible for him to agree with it, onlyclears away the dead undergrowth which obscures the author's passionatehope and belief in the future. 

Although the action of this story is spiritual as well as physical, andoccupies less than a month of time, it is focussed intensely uponreality. Everything that the author permits us to see and understandis seen through a single point of life--a hole pierced in the wallbetween two rooms of a grey Paris boarding house. The time is mostoften twilight, with its romantic penumbra, darkening into theobscurity of night by imperceptible degrees. 

M. Barbusse has conceived the idea of making a man perceive the wholespiritual tragedy of life through a cranny in the wall, and there is afine symbolism in this, as if he were vouchsafing us the opportunity toperceive eternal things through the tiny crack which is all that isrevealed to us of infinity, so that the gates of Horn, darkened by ourhuman blindness, scarcely swing open before they close again. 

The hero of this story has been dazzled by the flaming ramparts of theworld, so that eternity is only revealed to him in fiery glimpses thatshrivel him, and he is left in the dark void of time, clinging to adream which already begins to fail him. 

And the significant thing about this book is that the final revelationcomes to him through the human voices of those who have suffered much, because they have loved much, after his own daring intellectual flightshave failed him. 

So this man who has confronted the greatest realities of life, enabledto view them with the same objective detachment with which God seesthem, though without the divine knowledge which transmutes theirdarkness, comes to learn that we carry all heaven and hell withinourselves, and with a relentless insight, almost Lucretian in itsdesperate intensity, he cries: "We are divinely alone, the heavenshave fallen on our heads. " And he adds: "Here they will pass again, day after day, year after year, all the prisoners of rooms will pass intheir kind of eternity. In the twilight when everything fades, theywill sit down near the light, in the room full of haloes; they willdrag themselves to the window's void. Their mouths will join and theywill grow tender. They will exchange a first or a last useless glance. They will open their arms, they will caress each other. They will lovelife and be afraid to disappear. .. . 

"I have heard the annunciation of whatever finer things are to come. Through me has passed, without staying me in my course, the Word whichdoes not lie, and which said over again, will satisfy. "

Truly a great and pitiless book, but there is a cleansing wind runningthrough it, which sweeps away life's illusions, and leaves a new hopefor the future in our hearts. 

EDWARD J. O'BRIEN. 

BASS RIVER, MASS. , July, 10, 1918. 

CHAPTER I

The landlady, Madame Lemercier, left me alone in my room, after a shortspeech impressing upon me all the material and moral advantages of theLemercier boarding-house. 

I stopped in front of the glass, in the middle of the room in which Iwas going to live for a while. I looked round the room and then atmyself. 

The room was grey and had a dusty smell. I saw two chairs, one ofwhich held my valise, two narrow-backed armchairs with smearyupholstery, a table with a piece of green felt set into the top, and anoriental carpet with an arabesque pattern that fairly leaped to theeye. 

This particular room I had never seen before, but, oh, how familiar itall was--that bed of imitation mahogany, that frigid toilet table, thatinevitable arrangement of the furniture, that emptiness within thosefour walls. 

The room was worn with use, as if an infinite number of people hadoccupied it. The carpet was frayed from the door to the window--a pathtrodden by a host of feet from day to day. The moulding, which I couldreach with my hands, was out of line and cracked, and the marblemantelpiece had lost its sharp edges. Human contact wears things outwith disheartening slowness. 

Things tarnish, too. Little by little, the ceiling had darkened like astormy sky. The places on the whitish woodwork and the pink wallpaperthat had been touched oftenest had become smudgy--the edge of the door, the paint around the lock of the closet and the wall alongside thewindow where one pulls the curtain cords. A whole world of humanbeings had passed here like smoke, leaving nothing white but thewindow. 

And I? I am a man like every other man, just as that evening was likeevery other evening. 

. . . . . 

I had been travelling since morning. Hurry, formalities, baggage, thetrain, the whiff of different towns. 

I fell into one of the armchairs. Everything became quieter and morepeaceful. 

My coming from the country to stay in Paris for good marked an epoch inmy life. I had found a situation here in a bank. My days were tochange. It was because of this change that I got away from my usualthoughts and turned to thoughts of myself. 

I was thirty years old. I had lost my father and mother eighteen ortwenty years before, so long ago that the event was now insignificant. I was unmarried. I had no children and shall have none. There aremoments when this troubles me, when I reflect that with me a line willend which has lasted since the beginning of humanity. 

Was I happy? Yes, I had nothing to mourn or regret, I had nocomplicated desires. Therefore, I was happy. I remembered that sincemy childhood I had had spiritual illuminations, mystical emotions, amorbid fondness for shutting myself up face to face with my past. Ihad attributed exceptional importance to myself and had come to thinkthat I was more than other people. But this had gradually becomesubmerged in the positive nothingness of every day. 

. . . . . 

There I was now in that room. 

I leaned forward in my armchair to be nearer the glass, and I examinedmyself carefully. 

Rather short, with an air of reserve (although there are times when Ilet myself go); quite correctly dressed; nothing to criticise andnothing striking about my appearance. 

I looked close at my eyes. They are green, though, oddly enough, people usually take them for black. 

I believed in many things in a confused sort of way, above all, in theexistence of God, if not in the dogmas of religion. However, Ithought, these last had advantages for poor people and for women, whohave less intellect than men. 

As for philosophical discussions, I thought they are absolutelyuseless. You cannot demonstrate or verify anything. What was truth, anyway?

I had a sense of good and evil. I would not have committed anindelicacy, even if certain of impunity. I would not have permittedmyself the slightest overstatement. 

If everyone were like me, all would be well. 

. . . . . 

It was already late. I was not going to do anything. I remainedseated there, at the end of the day, opposite the looking-glass. Inthe setting of the room that the twilight began to invade, I saw theoutline of my forehead, the oval of my face, and, under my blinkingeyelids, the gaze by which I enter into myself as into a tomb. 

My tiredness, the gloominess (I heard rain outside), the darkness thatintensified my solitude and made me look larger, and then somethingelse, I knew not what, made me sad. It bored me to be sad. I shookmyself. What was the matter? Nothing. Only myself. 

I have not always been alone in life as I was that evening. Love forme had taken on the form and the being of my little Josette. We hadmet long before, in the rear of the millinery shop in which she workedat Tours. She had smiled at me with singular persistence, and I caughther head in my hands, kissed her on the lips--and found out suddenlythat I loved her. 

I no longer recall the strange bliss we felt when, we first embraced. It is true, there are moments when I still desire her as madly as thefirst time. This is so especially when she is away. When she is withme, there are moments when she repels me. 

We discovered each other in the holidays. The days when we shall seeeach other again before we die--we could count them--if we dared. 

To die! The idea of death is decidedly the most important of allideas. I should die some day. Had I ever thought of it? I reflected. No, I had never thought of it. I could not. You can no more lookdestiny in the face than you can look at the sun, and yet destiny isgrey. 

And night came, as every night will come, until the last one, whichwill be too vast. 

But all at once I jumped up and stood on my feet, reeling, my heartthrobbing like the fluttering of wings. 

What was it? In the street a horn resounded, playing a hunting song. Apparently some groom of a rich family, standing near the bar of atavern, with cheeks puffed out, mouth squeezed tight, and an air offerocity, astonishing and silencing his audience. 

But the thing that so stirred me was not the mere blowing of a horn inthe city streets. I had been brought up in the country, and as a childI used to hear that blast far in the distance, along the road to thewoods and the castle. The same air, the same thing exactly. How couldthe two be so precisely alike?

And involuntarily my hand wavered to my heart. 

Formerly--to-day--my life--my heart--myself! I thought of all thissuddenly, for no reason, as if I had gone mad. 

. . . . . 

My past--what had I ever made of myself? Nothing, and I was already onthe decline. Ah, because the refrain recalled the past, it seemed tome as if it were all over with me, and I had not lived. And I had alonging for a sort of lost paradise. 

But of what avail to pray or rebel? I felt I had nothing more toexpect from life. Thenceforth, I should be neither happy nor unhappy. I could not rise from the dead. I would grow old quietly, as quiet asI was that day in the room where so many people had left their traces, and yet no one had left his own traces. 

This room--anywhere you turn, you find this room. It is the universalroom. You think it is closed. No, it is open to the four winds ofheaven. It is lost amid a host of similar rooms, like the light in thesky, like one day amid the host of all other days, like my "I" amid ahost of other I's. 

I, I! I saw nothing more now than the pallor of my face, with deeporbits, buried in the twilight, and my mouth filled with a silencewhich gently but surely stifles and destroys. 

I raised myself on my elbow as on a clipped wing. I wished thatsomething partaking of the infinite would happen to me. 

I had no genius, no mission to fulfil, no great heart to bestow. I hadnothing and I deserved nothing. But all the same I desired some sortof reward. 

Love. I dreamed of a unique, an unheard-of idyll with a woman far fromthe one with whom I had hitherto lost all my time, a woman whosefeatures I did not see, but whose shadow I imagined beside my own as wewalked along the road together. 

Something infinite, something new! A journey, an extraordinary journeyinto which to throw myself headlong and bring variety into my life. Luxurious, bustling departures surrounded by solicitous inferiors, alazy leaning back in railway trains that thunder along through wildlandscapes and past cities rising up and growing as if blown by thewind. 

Steamers, masts, orders given in barbarous tongues, landings on goldenquays, then strange, exotic faces in the sunlight, puzzlingly alike, and monuments, familiar from pictures, which, in my tourist's pride, seem to have come close to me. 

My brain was empty, my heart arid. I had never found anything, noteven a friend. I was a poor man stranded for a day in a boarding-houseroom where everybody comes and everybody goes. And yet I longed forglory! For glory bound to me like a miraculous wound that I shouldfeel and everybody would talk about. I longed for a following of whichI should be the leader, my name acclaimed under the heavens like a newclarion call. 

But I felt my grandeur slip away. My childish imagination played invain with those boundless fancies. There was nothing more for me toexpect from life. There was only I, who, stripped by the night, roseupward like a cry. 

I could hardly see any more in the dark. I guessed at, rather thansaw, myself in the mirror. I had a realising sense of my weakness andcaptivity. I held my hands out toward the window, my outstretchedfingers making them look like something torn. I lifted my face up tothe sky. I sank back and leaned on the bed, a huge object with a vaguehuman shape, like a corpse. God, I was lost! I prayed to Him to havepity on me. I thought that I was wise and content with my lot. I hadsaid to myself that I was free from the instinct of theft. Alas, alas, it was not true, since I longed to take everything that was not mine. 

CHAPTER II

The sound of the horn had ceased for some time. The street and thehouses had quieted down. Silence. I passed my hand over my forehead. My fit of emotion was over. So much the better. I recovered mybalance by an effort of will-power. 

I sat down at the table and took some papers out of my bag that I hadto look over and arrange. 

Something spurred me on. I wanted to earn a little money. I couldthen send some to my old aunt who had brought me up. She always waitedfor me in the low-ceilinged room, where her sewing-machine, afternoons, whirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock, and where, evenings, therewas a lamp beside her which somehow seemed to look like herself. 

Notes--the notes from which I was to draw up the report that would showmy ability and definitely decide whether I would get a position inMonsieur Berton's bank--Monsieur Berton, who could do everything for me, who had but to say a word, the god of my material life. 

I started to light the lamp. I scratched a match. It did not catchfire, the phosphorous end breaking off. I threw it away and waited amoment, feeling a little tired. 

Then I heard a song hummed quite close to my ear. 

. . . . . 

Some one seemed to be leaning on my shoulder, singing for me, only forme, in confidence. 

Ah, an hallucination! Surely my brain was sick--my punishment forhaving thought too hard. 

I stood up, and my hand clutched the edge of the table. I wasoppressed by a feeling of the supernatural. I sniffed the air, myeyelids blinking, alert and suspicious. 

The singing kept on. I could not get rid of it. My head was beginningto go round. The singing came from the room next to mine. Why was itso pure, so strangely near? Why did it touch me so? I looked at thewall between the two rooms, and stifled a cry of surprise. 

High up, near the ceiling, above the door, always kept locked, therewas a light. The song fell from that star. 

There was a crack in the partition at that spot, through which thelight of the next room entered the night of mine. 

I climbed up on the bed, and my face was on a level with the crack. Rotten woodwork, two loose bricks. The plaster gave way and an openingappeared as large as my hand, but invisible from below, because of themoulding. 

I looked. I beheld. The next room presented itself to my sightfreely. 

It spread out before me, this room which was not mine. The voice thathad been singing had gone, and in going had left the door open, and italmost seemed as though the door were still swinging on its hinges. There was nothing in the room but a lighted candle, which trembled onthe mantelpiece. 

At that distance the table looked like an island, the bluish andreddish pieces of furniture, in their vague outline, like the organs ofa body almost alive. 

I looked at the wardrobe. Bright, confused lines going straight up, its feet in darkness. The ceiling, the reflection of the ceiling inthe glass, and the pale window like a human face against the sky. 

I returned to my room--as if I had really left it--stunned at first, mythoughts in a whirl, almost forgetting who I was. 

I sat down on my bed, thinking things over quickly and trembling alittle, oppressed by what was to come. 

I dominated, I possessed that room. My eyes entered it. I was in it. All who would be there would be there with me without knowing it. Ishould see them, I should hear them, I should be as much in theircompany as though the door were open. 

. . . . . 

A moment later I raised my face to the hole and looked again. 

The candle was out, but some one was there. It was the maid. No doubtshe had come in to put the room in order. Then she paused. 

She was alone. She was quite near me. But I did not very well see theliving being who was moving about, perhaps because I was dazzled byseeing it so truly--a dark blue apron, falling down from her waist likerays of evening, white wrists, hands darker than her wrists from toil, a face undecided yet striking, eyes hidden yet shining, cheeksprominent and clear, a knot on top of her head gleaming like a crown. 

A short time before I had seen the girl on the staircase bending overcleaning the banisters, her reddened face close to her large hands. Ihad found her repulsive because of those blackened hands of hers andthe dusty chores that she stooped over. I had also seen her in ahallway walking ahead of me heavily, her hair hanging loose and herbody giving out an unpleasant odour, so that you felt it was obnoxiousand wrapped in dirty underwear. 

. . . . . 

And now I looked at her again. The evening gently dispelled theugliness, wiped out the misery and the horror, changed the dust intoshadow, like a curse turned into a blessing. All that remained of herwas colour, a mist, an outline; not even that; a thrill and the beatingof her heart. Every trace of her had disappeared save her true self. 

That was because she was alone. An extraordinary thing, a dash of thedivine in it, to be actually alone. She was in that perfect innocence, that purity which is solitude. 

I desecrated her solitude with my eyes, but she did not know it, and so/she/ was not desecrated. 

She went over to the window with brightening eyes and swinging hands inher apron of the colour of the nocturnal sky. Her face and the upperpart of her body were illuminated. She seemed to be in heaven. 

She sat down on the sofa, a great low red shadow in the depths of theroom near the window. She leaned her broom beside her. Her dust clothfell to the floor and was lost from sight. 

She took a letter from her pocket and read it. In the twilight theletter was the whitest thing in the world. The double sheet trembledbetween her fingers, which held it carefully, like a dove in the air. She put the trembling letter to her lips, and kissed it. From whom wasthe letter? Not from her family. A servant girl is not likely to haveso much filial devotion as to kiss a letter from her parents. A lover, her betrothed, yes. Many, perhaps, knew her lover's name. I did not, but I witnessed her love as no other person had. And that simplegesture of kissing the paper, that gesture buried in a room, strippedbare by the dark, had something sublime and awesome in it. 

She rose and went closer to the window, the white letter folded in hergrey hand. 

The night thickened--and it seemed to me as if I no longer knew her age, nor her name, nor the work she happened to be doing down here, noranything about her--nothing at all. She gazed at the pale immensity, which touched her. Her eyes gleamed. You would say she was crying, but no, her eyes only shed light. She would be an angel if realityflourished upon the earth. 

She sighed and walked to the door slowly. The door closed behind herlike something falling. 

She had gone without doing anything but reading her letter and kissingit. 

. . . . . 

I returned to my corner lonely, more terribly alone than before. Thesimplicity of this meeting stirred me profoundly. Yet there had beenno one there but a human being, a human being like myself. Then thereis nothing sweeter and stronger than to approach a human being, whoeverthat human being may be. 

This woman entered into my intimate life and took a place in my heart. How? Why? I did not know. But what importance she assumed! Not ofherself. I did not know her, and I did not care to know her. Sheassumed importance by the sole value of the momentary revelation of herexistence, by the example she gave, by the wake of her actual presence, by the true sound of her steps. 

It seemed to me as if the supernatural dream I had had a short whilebefore had been granted, and that what I called the infinite had come. What that woman, without knowing it, had given me by showing me hernaked kiss--was it not the crowning beauty the reflection of whichcovers you with glory?

. . . . . 

The dinner bell rang. 

This summons to everyday reality and one's usual occupations changedthe course of my thoughts for the moment. I got ready to go down todinner. I put on a gay waistcoat and a dark coat, and I stuck a pearlin my cravat. Then I stood still and listened, hoping to hear afootstep or a voice. 

While doing these conventional things, I continued to be obsessed bythe great event that had happened--this apparition. 

I went downstairs and joined the rest of my fellow-boarders in thebrown and gold dining-room. There was a general stir and bustle andthe usual empty interest before a meal. A number of people seatedthemselves with the good manners of polite society. Smiles, the soundof chairs being drawn up to the table, words thrown out, conversationsstarted. Then the concert of plates and dishes began and grew steadilylouder. 

My neighbours talked to those beside them. I heard their murmur, whichaccentuated my aloneness. I lifted my eyes. In front of me a shiningrow of foreheads, eyes, collars, shirtfronts, waists, and busy handsabove a table of glistening whiteness. All these things attracted myattention and distracted it at the same time. 

I did not know what these people were thinking about. I did not knowwho they were. They hid themselves from one another. Their shiningfronts made a wall against which I dashed in vain. 

Bracelets, necklaces, rings. The sparkling of the jewels made me feelfar away from them as do the stars. A young girl looked at me withvague blue eyes. What could I do against that kind of sapphire?

They talked, but the noise left each one to himself, and deafened me, as the light blinded me. 

Nevertheless, at certain moments these people, because in the course ofconversation they thought of things they had at heart, revealedthemselves as if they were alone. I recognized the revelation of thistruth, and felt myself turning pale on remembering that otherrevelation. 

Some one spoke of money, and the subject became general. The assemblywas stirred by an ideal. A dream of grasping and touching shonethrough their eyes, just as a little adoration had come into the eyesof the servant when she found herself alone. 

They recalled military heroes triumphantly, and some men thought, "Me, too!" and worked themselves up into a fever, showing what they werethinking of, in spite of their ridiculously low station and the slaveryof their social position. One young girl seemed dazzled, lookedoverwhelmed. She could not restrain a sigh of ecstasy. She blushedunder the effect of an inscrutable thought. I saw the surge of bloodmount to her face. I saw her heart beaming. 

They discussed the phenomena of occultism and the Beyond. "Who knows?"some one said. Then they discussed death. Two diners, at oppositeends of the table, a man and a woman who had not spoken to each otherand seemed not to be acquainted, exchanged a glance that I caught. Andseeing that glance leap from their eyes at the same time, under theshock of the idea of death, I understood that these two loved eachother. 

. . . . . 

The meal was over. The young people went into the parlour. A lawyerwas telling some people around him about a murder case that had beendecided that day. The nature of the subject was such that he expressedhimself very cautiously, as though confiding a secret. A man hadinjured and then murdered a little girl and had kept singing at the topof his voice to prevent the cries of his little victim from beingheard. One by one the people stopped talking and listened with the airof really not listening, while those not so close to the speaker feltlike drawing up right next to him. About this image risen in theirmidst, this paroxysm so frightful to our timid instincts, the silencespread in a circle in their souls like a terrific noise. 

Then I heard the laugh of a woman, of an honest woman, a dry cracklinglaugh, which she thought innocent perhaps, but which caressed her wholebeing, a burst of laughter, which, made up of formless instinctivecries, was almost fleshy. She stopped and turned, silent again. Andthe speaker, sure of his effect, continued in a calm voice to hurl uponthese people the story of the monster's confession. 

A young mother, whose daughter was sitting beside her, half got up, butcould not leave. She sat down again and bent forward to conceal herdaughter. She was eager and yet ashamed to listen. 

Another woman was sitting motionless, with her head leaning forward, but her mouth compressed as if she were defending herself tragically. And beneath the worldly mask of her face, I saw a fanatical martyr'ssmile impress itself like handwriting. 

And the men! I distinctly heard one man, the man who was so calm andsimple, catch his breath. Another man, with a characterless businessman's face, was making a great effort to talk of this and that to ayoung girl sitting next to him, while he watched her with a look ofwhich he was ashamed and which made him blink. And everybody condemnedthe satyr in terms of the greatest abuse. 

And so, for a moment, they had not lied. They had almost confessed, perhaps unconsciously, and even without knowing what they hadconfessed. They had almost been their real selves. Desire had leapedinto their eyes, and the reflection passed--and I had seen what happenedin the silence, sealed by their lips. 

It is this, it is this thought, this kind of living spectre, that Iwished to study. I rose, shrugging my shoulders, and hurried out, impelled by eagerness to see the sincerity of men and women unveiledbefore my eyes, beautiful as a masterpiece in spite of its ugliness. So, back in my room again, I placed myself against the wall as if toembrace it and look down into the Room. 

There it was at my feet. Even when empty, it was more alive than thepeople one meets and associates with, the people who have the vastnessof numbers to lose themselves in and be forgotten in, who have voicesfor lying and faces to hide themselves behind. 

CHAPTER III

Night, absolute night. Shadows thick as velvet hung all around. 

Everything sank into darkness. I sat down and leaned my elbow on theround table, lighted by the lamp. I meant to work, but as a matter offact I only listened. 

I had looked into the Room a short time before. No one had been there, but no doubt some one was going to come. 

Some one was going to come, that evening perhaps, or the next day, orthe day after. Some one was bound to come. Then other human beingswould follow in succession. I waited, and it seemed to me as if thatwas all I was made for. 

I waited a long time, not daring to go to sleep. Then, very late, whensilence had been reigning so long that it paralysed me, I made aneffort. I leaned up against the wall once more and looked prayerfully. The Room was black, all things blending into one, full of the night, full of the unknown, of every possible thing. I dropped back into myown room. 

. . . . . 

The next day I saw the Room in the simplicity of daylight. I saw thedawn spread over it. Little by little, it began to come out of itsruins and to rise. 

It was arranged and furnished on the same plan as my own room. Opposite me was the mantelpiece with the looking-glass above. On theright was the bed, and on the left, on the same side as the window, asofa, chairs, armchairs, table, wardrobe. The rooms were identical, but the history of mine was finished while the history of the other onehad not yet begun. 

After an insipid breakfast, I returned to the spot that attracted me, the hole in the partition. Nothing. I climbed down again. 

It was close. A faint smell from the kitchen lingered even here. Ipaused in the infinite vastness of my empty room. 

I opened my door a little bit, then all the way. In the hall the doorof each room was painted brown, with numbers carved on brass plates. All were closed. I took a few steps, which I alone heard--heard echoingtoo loudly in that house, huge and immobile. 

The passage was very long and narrow. The wall was hung with imitationtapestry of dark green foliage, against which shone the copper of a gasfixture. I leaned over the banister. A servant (the one who waited atthe table and was wearing a blue apron now, hardly recognisable withher hair in disorder) came skipping down from the floor above withnewspapers under her arm. Madame Lemercier's little girl, with acareful hand on the banister, was coming upstairs, her neck thrustforward like a bird, and I compared her little footsteps to fragmentsof passing seconds. A lady and a gentleman passed in front of me, breaking off their conversation to keep me from catching what they weresaying, as if they refused me the alms of their thoughts. 

These trifling events disappeared like scenes of a comedy on which thecurtain falls. 

I passed the whole afternoon disheartened. I felt as if I were aloneagainst them all, while roaming about inside this house and yet outsideof it. 

As I passed through the hallway, a door went shut hastily, cutting offthe laugh of a woman taken by surprise. A senseless noise oozed fromthe walls, worse than silence. From under each door a broken ray oflight crept out, worse than darkness. 

I went downstairs to the parlour, attracted by the sound ofconversation. 

A group of men were talking, I no longer remember about what. Theywent out, and I was alone. I heard them talking in the hall. Thentheir voices died away. 

A fashionable lady came in, with a rustle of silk and the smell offlowers and perfume. She took up a lot of room because of herfragrance and elegance. She carried her head held slightly forward andhad a beautiful long face set off by an expression of great sweetness. But I could not see her well, because she did not look at me. Sheseated herself, picked up a book, and turned the pages, and the leavescast upon her face a reflection of whiteness and thoughtfulness. 

I watched her bosom rising and falling, and her motionless face, andthe living book that was merged with her. Her complexion was sobrilliant that her mouth seemed almost dark. Her beauty saddened me. I looked at this unknown woman with sublime regret. She caressed me byher presence. A woman always caresses a man when she comes near himand they are alone. In spite of all sorts of separation, there isalways an awful beginning of happiness between them. 

But she went out. That was the end of her. Nothing had happened, andnow it was over. All this was too simple, too hard, too true. 

A gentle despair that I had never experienced before troubled me. Since the previous day I had changed. Human life, its living truth, Iknew it as we all know it. I had been familiar with it all my life. Ibelieved in it with a kind of fear now that it had appeared to me in adivine form. 

CHAPTER IV

I went for several days without seeing anything. Those days werefrightfully warm. At first the sky was grey and rainy. Now Septemberwas flaming to a close. Friday! Why, I had been in that house a weekalready. 

One sultry morning I sat in my room and sank into dreamy musings andthought of a fairy tale. 

The edge of a forest. In the undergrowth on the dark emerald carpet, circles of sunlight. Below, a hill rising from the plain, and abovethe thick yellow and dark-green foliage, a bit of wall and a turret asin a tapestry. A page advanced dressed like a bird. A buzzing. Itwas the sound of the royal chase in the distance. Unusually pleasantthings were going to happen. 

. . . . . 

The next afternoon was also hot and sunny. I remembered similarafternoons, years before and the present seemed to be that past, as ifthe glowing heat had effaced time and had stifled all other daysbeneath its brooding wings. 

The room next to mine was almost dark. They had closed the shutters. Through the double curtains made out of some thin material I saw thewindow streaked with shining bars, like the grating in front of a fire. 

In the torrid silence of the house, in the large slumber it enclosed, bursts of laughter mounted and broke, voices died away, as they had theday before and as they always would. 

From out of these remoter sounds emerged the distinct sound offootsteps, coming nearer and nearer. I propped myself up against thewall and looked. The door of the Room opened, as if pushed in by theflood of light that streamed through it, and two tiny shadows appeared, engulfed in the brightness. 

They acted as though they were being pursued. They hesitated on thethreshold, the doorway making a frame around those little creatures. And then they entered. 

The door closed. The Room was now alive. I scrutinised the newcomers. I saw them indistinctly through the dark red and green spots dancing infront of my eyes, which had been dazzled by the flood of light. Alittle boy and a little girl, twelve or thirteen years old. 

They sat down on the sofa, and looked at each other in silence. Theirfaces were almost alike. 

. . . . . 

The boy murmured:

"You see, Hélène, there is no one here. "

And a hand pointed to the uncovered bed, and to the empty table andempty clothes-racks--the careful denudation of unoccupied rooms. 

Then the same hand began to tremble like a leaf. I heard the beatingof my heart. The voices whispered:

"We are alone. They did not see us. "

"This is about the first time we've ever been alone together. "

"Yet we have always known each other. "

A little laugh. 

They seemed to need solitude, the first step to a mystery toward whichthey were travelling together. They had fled from the others. Theyhad created for themselves the forbidden solitude. But you couldclearly tell that now that they had found solitude, they did not knowwhat else to look for. 

. . . . . 

Then I heard one of them stammer and say sadly, with almost a sob:

"We love each other dearly. "

Then a tender phrase rose breathlessly, groping for words, timidly, like a bird just learning to fly:

"I'd like to love you more. "

To see them thus bent toward each other, in the warm shadow, whichbathed them and veiled the childishness of their features, you wouldhave thought them two lovers meeting. 

Two lovers! That was their dream, though they did not yet know whatlove meant. 

One of them had said "the first time. " It was the time that they feltthey were alone, although these two cousins had been living closetogether. 

No doubt it was the first time that the two had sought to leavefriendship and childhood behind them. It was the first time thatdesire had come to surprise and trouble two hearts, which until now hadslept. 

. . . . . 

Suddenly they stood up, and the slender ray of sunlight, which passedover them and fell at their feet, revealed their figures, lighted uptheir faces and hair, so that their presence brightened the room. 

Were they going away? No, they sat down again. Everything fell backinto shadow, into mystery, into truth. 

In beholding them, I felt a confused mingling of my past and the pastof the world. Where were they? Everywhere, since they existed. Theywere on the banks of the Nile, the Ganges, or the Cydnus, on the banksof the eternal river of the ages. They were Daphnis and Chloë, under amyrtle bush, in the Greek sunshine, the shimmer of leaves on theirfaces, and their faces mirroring each other. Their vague littleconversation hummed like the wings of a bee, near the freshness offountains and the heat that consumed the meadows, while in the distancea chariot went by, laden with sheaves. 

The new world opened. The panting truth was there. It confused them. They feared the brusque intrusion of some divinity. They were happyand unhappy. They nestled as close together as they could. Theybrought to each other as much as they could. But they did not suspectwhat it was that they were bringing. They were too small, too young. They had not lived long enough. Each was to self a stifling secret. 

Like all human beings, like me, like us, they wished for what they didnot have. They were beggars. But they asked /themselves/ for charity. They asked for help from their /own/ persons. 

The boy, a man already, impoverished already by his feminine companion, turned, drawn towards her, and held out his awkward arms, withoutdaring to look at her. 

The girl, a woman already, leaned her face on the back of the sofa, hereyes shining. Her cheeks were plump and rosy, tinted and warmed by herheart. The skin of her neck, taut and satiny, quivered. Half-blownand waiting, a little voluptuous because voluptuousness alreadyemanated from her, she was like a rose inhaling sunlight. 

And I--I could not tear my eyes from them. 

. . . . . 

After a long silence, he murmured:

"Shall we stop calling each other by our first names?"

"Why?"

He seemed absorbed in thought. 

"So as to begin over again, " he said at last. 

"Shall we, Miss Janvier?" he asked again. 

She gave a visible start at the touch of this new manner of address, atthe word "Miss, " as if it were a kind of embrace. 

"Why, Mr. Lecoq, " she ventured hesitatingly, "it is as though somethinghad covered us, and we were removing--"

Now, he became bolder. 

"Shall we kiss each other on our mouths?"

She was oppressed, and could not quite smile. 

"Yes, " she said. 

They caught hold of each other's arms and shoulders and held out theirlips, as if their mouths were birds. 

"Jean!" "Hélène!" came softly. 

It was the first thing they had found out. To embrace the embracer, isit not the tiniest caress and the least sort of a bond? And yet it isso sternly prohibited. 

Again they seemed to me to be without age. 

They were like all lovers, while they held hands, their faces joined, trembling and blind, in the shadow of a kiss. 

. . . . . 

They broke off, and disengaged themselves from their embrace, whosemeaning they had not yet learned. 

They talked with their innocent lips. About what? About the past, which was so near and so short. 

They were leaving their paradise of childhood and ignorance. Theyspoke of a house and a garden where they had both lived. 

The house absorbed them. It was surrounded by a garden wall, so thatfrom the road all you could see was the tip of the eaves, and youcouldn't tell what was going on inside of it. 

They prattled:

"The rooms, when we were little and they were so big--"

"It was easier to walk there than anywhere else. "

To hear the children talk, you would have thought there was somethingbenevolent and invisible, something like the good God of the past, behind those walls. She hummed an air she had heard there, and saidthat music was easier to remember than people. They dropped back intothe past easily and naturally. They wrapped themselves up in theirmemories as though they were cold. 

"The other day, just before we left, I took a candle and walked alonethrough the rooms, which scarcely woke up to watch me pass. "

In the garden, so prim and well kept, they thought only of the flowers, and little else. They saw the pool, the shady walk, and the cherrytree, which, in winter when the lawn was white, they made believe hadtoo many blossoms--snow blossoms. 

The day before they had still been in the garden, like brother andsister. Now life seemed to have grown serious all at once, and they nolonger knew how to play. I saw that they wanted to kill the past. When we are old, we let it die; when we are young and strong, we killit. 

She sat up straight. 

"I don't want to remember any more, " she said. 

And he:

"I don't want us to be like each other any more. I don't want us to bebrother and sister any more. "

Gradually their eyes opened. 

"To touch nothing but each other's hands, " he muttered, trembling. 

"Brother--sister--that's nothing. "

It had come--the hour of beautiful, troubled decisions, of forbiddenfruits. They had not belonged to each other before. The hour had comewhen they sought to be all in all to each other. 

They were a little self-conscious, a little ashamed of themselvesalready. A few days before, in the evening, it had given them profoundpleasure to disobey their parents and go out of the garden althoughthey had been forbidden to leave it. 

"Grandmother came to the top of the steps and called to us to come in. "

"But we were gone. We had slipped through the hole in the hedge wherea bird always sang. There was no wind, and scarcely any light. Eventhe trees didn't stir. The dust on the ground was dead. The shadowsstole round us so softly that we almost spoke to them. We werefrightened to see night coming on. Everything had lost its colour. But the night was clear, and the flowers, the road, even the wheat weresilver. And it was then that my mouth came closest to your mouth. "

"The night, " she said, her soul carried aloft on a wave of beauty, "thenight caresses the caresses. "

"I took your hand, and I knew that you would live life whole. When Iused to say 'Hélène, ' I did not know what I was saying. Now, when Ishall say 'she, ' it will be everything. "

Once more their lips joined. Their mouths and their eyes were those ofAdam and Eve. I recalled the ancestral lesson from which sacredhistory and human history flow as from a fountain. They wandered inthe penetrating light of paradise without knowledge. They were as ifthey did not exist. When--through triumphant curiosity, thoughforbidden by God himself--they learned the secret, the sky was darkened. The certainty of a future of sorrow had fallen upon them. Angelspursued them like vultures. They grovelled on the ground from day today, but they had created love, they had replaced divine riches by thepoverty of belonging to each other. 

The two little children had taken their parts in the eternal drama. Bytalking to each other as they did they had restored to their firstnames their full significance. 

"I should like to love you more. I should like to love you harder. How could I?"

. . . . . 

They said no more, as though there were no more words for them. Theywere completely absorbed in themselves, and their hands trembled. 

Then they rose, and as they did so, the door opened. There stood theold stooping grandmother. She came out of the grey, out of the realmof phantoms, out of the past. She was looking for them as if they hadgone astray. She called them in a low voice. She put into her tone agreat gentleness, almost sadness, strangely harmonising with thechildren's presence. 

"You are here, children?" she said, with a kind little laugh. "Whatare you doing here? Come, they are looking for you. "

She was old and faded, but she was angelic, with her gown fastened upto her neck. Beside these two, who were preparing for the large life, she was, thenceforth, like a child, inactive, useless. 

They rushed into her arms, and pressed their foreheads against hersaintly mouth. They seemed to be saying good-by to her forever. 

. . . . . 

She went out. And a moment afterwards they followed her, hastily, asthey had come, united now by an invisible and sublime bond. On thethreshold, they looked at each other once more. 

And now that the room was empty like a deserted sanctuary, I thought oftheir glance, their first glance of love, which I had seen. 

No one before me had ever seen a first glance of love. I was besidethem, but, far away. I understood and read it without being part ofthe infatuation myself, without being lost in the sensation. That iswhy I saw that glance. They did not know when it began, they did notknow that it was the first. Afterwards they would forget. The urgentflowering of their hearts would destroy those preludes. We can no moreknow our first glance of love than our last. I shall remember it whenthey will have forgotten it. 

I do not recall my own first glance of love, my own first gift of love. Yet it happened. Those divine simplicities are erased from my heart. Good God, then what do I retain that is of value? The little boy thatI was is dead forever, before my eyes. I survived him, butforgetfulness tormented me, then overcame me, the sad process of livingruined me, and I scarcely know what he knew. I remember things atrandom only, but the most beautiful, the sweetest memories are gone. 

Well, this tender canticle that I overheard, full of infinity andoverflowing with fresh laughter, this precious song, I take and holdand cherish. It pulses in my heart. I have stolen, but I havepreserved truth. 

CHAPTER V

For a day, the Room remained vacant. Twice I had high hopes, thendisillusionment. 

Waiting had become a habit, an occupation. I put off appointments, delayed my walks, gained time at the risk of losing my position. Iarranged my life as for a new love. I left my room only to go down todinner, where nothing interested me any more. 

The second day, I noticed that the Room was ready to receive a newoccupant. It was waiting. I had a thousand dreams of who the guestwould be, while the Room kept its secret, like some one thinking. 

Twilight came, then evening, which magnified the room but did notchange it. I was already in despair, when the door opened in thedarkness, and I saw on the threshold the shadow of a man. 

. . . . . 

He was scarcely to be distinguished in the evening light. 

Dark clothing, milky white cuffs from which his grey tapering handshung down; a collar a little whiter than the rest. In his roundgreyish face I could see the dusky hollows of his eyes and mouth, underthe chin a cavity of shadow. The yellow of his forehead shoneunclearly. His cheekbone made an obscure bar in the dusk. You wouldhave called him a skeleton. What was this being whose physiognomy wasso monstrously simple?

He came nearer, and his face kindled, assumed life. I saw that he washandsome. 

He had a charming serious face, fringed with a fine black beard, a highforehead and sparkling eyes. A haughty grace guided and refined hismovements. 

He came forward a step or two, then returned to the door, which wasstill open. The shadow of the door trembled, a silhouette appeared andtook shape. A little black-gloved hand grasped the knob, and a womanstole into the room, with a questioning face. 

She must have been a few steps behind him in the street. They had notwished to enter the room together, in which they both sought refuge toescape pursuit. 

She closed the door, and leaned her whole weight against it, to closeit still tighter. Slowly she turned her head to him, paralysed for amoment, it seemed to me, with fear that it was not he. They staredinto each other's faces. A cry burst from them, passionate, restrained, almost mute, echoing from one to the other. It seemed toopen up their wound. 

"You!"

"You!"

She almost fainted. She dropped on his breast as though swept by astorm. She had just strength enough to fall into his arms. I saw theman's two large pale hands, opened but slightly crooked, resting on thewoman's back. A sort of desperate palpitation seized them, as if animmense angel were in the Room, struggling and making vain efforts toescape. And it seemed to me that the Room was too small for thiscouple, although it was full of the evening. 

"They didn't see us!"

It was the same phrase which had come the other day from the twochildren. 

He said, "Come!" leading her over to the sofa, near the window, andthey seated themselves on the red velvet. I saw their arms joinedtogether as though by a cord. They remained there, engrossed, gathering about them all the shadow of the world, reviving, beginningto live again in their element of night and solitude. 

What an entry, what an entry! What an irruption of anathema!

I had thought, when this form of sin presented itself before me, whenthe woman appeared at the door, plainly driven toward him, that Ishould witness bliss in its plenitude, a savage and animal joy, asmomentous as nature. On the contrary, I found that this meeting waslike a heart-rending farewell. 

"Then we shall always be afraid?"

She seemed just a little more tranquil, and said this with an anxiousglance at him, as if really expecting a reply. 

She shuddered, huddled in the shadows, feverishly stroking and pressingthe man's hand, sitting upright, stiffly. I saw her throat rising andfalling like the sea. They stayed there, touching one another; but alingering terror mingled with their caresses. 

"Always afraid--always afraid, always. Far from the street, far fromthe sun, far from everything. I who had so much wanted full daylightand sunlight!" she said, looking at the sky. 

They were afraid. Fear moulded them, burrowed into their hearts. Their eyes, their hearts were afraid. Above all, their love wasafraid. 

A mournful smile glided across the man's face. He looked at his friendand murmured:

"You are thinking of /him. "/

She was sitting with her cheeks in her hands and her elbows on herknees and her face thrust forward. She did not reply. 

She /was/ thinking of him. Doubled up, small as a child, she gazedintently into the distance, at the man who was not there. She bowed tothis image like a suppliant, and felt a divine reflection from itfalling upon her--from the man who was not there, who was beingdeceived, from the offended man, the wounded man, from the master, fromhim who was everywhere except where they were, who occupied the immenseoutside, and whose name made them bow their heads, the man to whom theywere a prey. 

Night fell, as if shame and terror were in its shadows, over this manand woman, who had come to hide their embraces in this room, as in atomb where dwells the Beyond. 

. . . . . 

He said to her:

"I love you!"

I distinctly heard those grand words. 

I love you! I shuddered to the depths of my being on hearing theprofound words which came from those two human beings. I love you!The words which offer body and soul, the great open cry of the creatureand the creation. I love you! I beheld love face to face. 

Then it seemed to me that sincerity vanished in the hasty incoherentthings he next said while clasping her to him. It was as though he hada set speech to make and was in a hurry to get through with it. 

"You and I were born for each other. There is a kinship in our soulswhich must triumph. It was no more possible to prevent us from meetingand belonging to each other than to prevent our lips from uniting whenthey came together. What do moral conventions or social barriersmatter to us? Our love is made of infinity and eternity. "

"Yes, " she said, lulled by his voice. 

But I knew he was lying or was letting his words run away with him. Love had become an idol, a thing. He was blaspheming, he was invokinginfinity and eternity in vain, paying lip service to it by daily prayerthat had become perfunctory. 

They let the banality drop. The woman remained pensive for a while, then she shook her head and she--/she/ pronounced the word of excuse, ofglorification; more than that, the word of truth:

"I was so unhappy!"

. . . . . 

"How long ago it was!" she began. 

It was her work of art, her poem and her prayer, to repeat this story, low and precipitately, as if she were in the confessional. You feltthat she came to it quite naturally, without transition, so completelydid it possess her whenever they were alone. 

She was simply dressed. She had removed her black gloves and her coatand hat. She wore a dark skirt and a red waist upon which a thin goldchain was hanging. 

She was a woman of thirty, perhaps, with regular features and smoothsilken hair. It seemed to me that I knew her, but could not place her. 

She began to speak of herself quite loudly, and tell of her past whichhad been so hard. 

"What a life I led! What monotony, what emptiness! The little town, our house, the drawing-room with the furniture always arranged just so, their places never changed, like tombstones. One day I tried to putthe table that stood in the centre in another place. I could not doit. "

Her face paled, grew more luminous. 

He listened to her. A smile of patience and resignation, which soonwas like a pained expression of weariness, crept across his handsomeface. Yes, he was really handsome, though a little disconcerting, withhis large eyes, which women must have adored, his drooping moustache, his tender, distant air. He seemed to be one of those gentle peoplewho think too much and do evil. You would have said that he was aboveeverything and capable of everything. Listening to her with a certainremoteness, but stirred by desire for her, he had the air of waiting. 

And suddenly the veil fell from my eyes, and reality lay strippedbefore me. I saw that between these two people there was an immensedifference, like an infinite discord, sublime to behold because of itsdepths, but so painful that it bruised my heart. 

/He/ was moved only by his longing for her; /she, / by her need ofescaping from her ordinary life. Their desires were not the same. They seemed united, but they dwelt far apart. 

They did not talk the same language. When they spoke of the samethings, they scarcely understood each other, and to my eyes, from thevery first, their union appeared to be broken more than if they hadnever known each other. 

But he did not say what was really in his mind. You felt it in thesound of his voice, the very charm of his intonation, his lyricalchoice of words. He thought to please her, and he lied. He wasevidently her superior, but she dominated him by a kind of inspiredsincerity. While he was master of his words, she offered her wholeself in her words. 

She described her former life. 

"From the windows in my room and the dining-room, I could look out onthe square. The fountain in the centre, with its shadow at its base. I watched the day go round there, on that little, white, round place, like a sundial. 

"The postman crossed it regularly, without thinking. At the arsenalgate stood a soldier doing nothing. Nobody else ever came there. Whennoon rang like a knell, still no one. What I remember best of all wasthe way noon rang like a knell--the middle of the day, absolute ennui. 

"Nothing ever happened to me, nothing ever would happen to me. Therewas nothing for me. The future no longer existed for me. If my dayswere to go on like that, nothing would separate me from my death--nothing! Not a thing! To be bored is to die! My life was dead, andyet I had to live. It was suicide. Others killed themselves withpoison or with a revolver. I killed myself with minutes and hours. "

"Amy!" said the man. 

"Then, by dint of seeing the days born in the morning and miscarryingin the evening, I became afraid to die, and this fear was my firstpassion. 

"Often, in the middle of a visit I was paying, or in the night, or whenI came home after a walk, the length of the convent wall, I shudderedwith hope because of this passion. 

"But who would free me from it? Who would save me from this invisibleshipwreck, which I perceived only from time to time? Around me was asort of conspiracy, composed of envy, meanness and indifference. Whatever I saw, whatever I heard, tended to throw me back into thenarrow road, that stupid narrow road along which I was going. 

"Madame Martet, the one friend with whom I was a little bit intimate, you know, only two years older than I am, told me that I must becontent with what I had. I replied, 'Then, that is the end ofeverything, if I must be content with what I have. Do you reallybelieve what you say?' She said she did. Oh, the horrid woman!

"But it was not enough to be afraid. I had to hate my ennui. How didI come to hate it? I do not know. 

"I no longer knew myself. I no longer was myself. I had such need ofsomething else. In fact, I did not know my own name any more. 

"One day, I remember (although I am not wicked) I had a happy dreamthat my husband was dead, my poor husband who had done nothing to me, and that I was free, free, as large as the world!

"It could not last. I couldn't go on forever hating monotony so much. Oh, that emptiness, that monotony! Of all the gloomy things in theworld monotony is the darkest, the gloomiest. In comparison night isday. 

"Religion? It is not with religion that we fill the emptiness of ourdays, it is with our own life. It was not with beliefs, with ideasthat I had to struggle, it was with myself. 

"Then I found the remedy!"

She almost cried, hoarsely, ecstatically:

"Sin, sin! To rid myself of boredom by committing a crime, to break upmonotony by deceiving. To sin in order to be a new person, anotherperson. To hate life worse than it hated me. To sin so as not to die. 

"I met you. You wrote verses and books. You were different from therest. Your voice vibrated and gave the impression of beauty, and aboveall, you were there, in my existence, in front of me! I had only tohold out my arms. Then I loved you with all my heart, if you can callit love, my poor little friend!"

She spoke now in a low quick voice, both oppressed and enthusiastic, and she played with her companion's hand as if it were a child's toy. 

"And you, too, you loved me, naturally. And when we slipped into ahotel one evening, the first time, it seemed to me as if the dooropened of itself, and I was grateful for having rebelled and havingbroken my destiny. And then the deceit--from which we suffer sometimes, but which, after reflection, we no longer detest--the risks, the dangersthat give pleasure to each minute, the complications that add varietyto life, these rooms, these hiding-places, these black prisons, whichhave fled from the sunlight I once knew!

"Ah!" she said. 

It seemed to me that she sighed as if, now that her aspiration wasrealized, she had nothing so beautiful to hope for any more. 

. . . . . 

She thought a moment, and then said:

"See what we are. I too may have believed at first in a sort ofthunderbolt, a supernatural and fatal attraction, because of yourpoetry. But in reality I came to you--I see myself now--with clenchedfists and closed eyes. "

She added:

"We deceive ourselves a good deal about love. It is almost never whatthey say it is. 

"There may be sublime affinities, magnificent attractions. I do notsay such a love may not exist between two human beings. But we are notthese two. We have never thought of anything but ourselves. I know, of course, that I am in love with you. So are you with me. There isan attraction for you which does not exist for me, since I do not feelany pleasure. You see, we are making a bargain. You give me a dream, I give you joy. But all this is not love. "

He shrugged his shoulders, half in doubt, half in protest. He did notwant to say anything. All the same, he murmured feebly:

"Even in the purest of loves we cannot escape from ourselves. "

"Oh, " she said with a gesture of pious protest, the vehemence of whichsurprised me, "that is not the same thing. Don't say that, don't saythat!"

It seemed to me there was a vague regret in her voice and the dream ofa new dream in her eyes. 

She dispelled it with a shake of her head. 

"How happy I was! I felt rejuvenated, like a new being. I had a senseof modesty again. I remember that I did not dare to show the tip of myfoot from under my dress. I even had a feeling about my face, myhands, my very name. "

. . . . . 

Then the man continued the confession from the point where she had leftoff, and spoke of their first meetings. He wished to caress her withwords, to win her over gradually with phrases and with the charm ofmemories. 

"The first time we were alone--"

She looked at him. 

"It was in the street, one evening, " he said. "I took your arm. Youleaned more and more upon my shoulder. People swarmed around us, butwe seemed to be quite alone. Everything around us changed intoabsolute solitude. It seemed to me that we were both walking on thewaves of the sea. "

"Ah!" she said. "How good you were! That first evening your face waslike what it never was afterwards, even in our happiest moments. "

"We spoke of one thing and another, and while I held you close to me, clasped like a bunch of flowers, you told me about people we knew, youspoke of the sunlight that day and the coolness of the evening. Butreally you were telling me that you were mine. I felt your confessionrunning through everything you said, and even if you did not expressit, you actually gave me a confession of love. 

"Ah, how great things are in the beginning! There is never anypettiness in the beginning. 

"Once when we met in the public garden, I took you back at the end ofthe afternoon through the suburbs. The road was so peaceful and quietthat our footsteps seemed to disturb nature. Benumbed by emotion, weslackened our pace. I leaned over and kissed you. "

"There, " she said. 

She put her finger on his neck. 

"Gradually the kiss grew warmer. It crept toward your lips and stoppedthere. The first time it went astray, the second time it pretended itwent astray. Soon I felt against my mouth"--he lowered his voice--"yourmouth. "

She bowed her head, and I saw her rosy mouth. 

"It was all so beautiful in the midst of the watchfulness imprisoningme, " she sighed, ever returning to her mild, pathetic preoccupation. 

How she needed the stimulus of remembering her emotions, whetherconsciously or not! The recalling of these little dramas and formerperils warmed her movements, renewed her love. That was the reason whyshe had had the whole story told her. 

And he encouraged her. Their first enthusiasm returned, and now theytried to evoke the most exciting memories. 

"It was sad, the day after you became mine, to see you again at areception in your own home--inaccessible, surrounded by other people, mistress of a regular household, friendly to everybody, a bit timid, talking commonplaces. You bestowed the beauty of your face oneverybody, myself included. But what was the use?

"You were wearing that cool-looking green dress, and they were teasingyou about it. I did not dare to look at you when you passed me, and Ithought of how happy we had been the day before. "

"Ah, " she sighed, as the beauty widened before her of all her memories, her thoughts, of all her soul, "love is not what they say it is. I, too, was stirred with anguish. How I had to conceal it, dissimulatingevery sign of my happiness, locking it hastily away within the cofferof my heart. At first I was afraid to go to sleep for fear of sayingyour name in a dream, and often, fighting against the stealthy invasionof sleep, I have leaned on my elbow, and remained with wide-open eyes, watching heroically over my heart. 

"I was afraid of being recognised. I was afraid people would see thepurity in which I was bathed. Yes, purity. When in the midst of lifeone wakes up from life, and sees a different brilliance in thedaylight, and recreates everything, I call that purity. 

. . . . . 

"Do you remember the day we lost our way in the cab in Paris--the day hethought he recognised us from a distance, and jumped into another cabto follow us?"

She gave a start of ecstasy. 

"Oh, yes, " she murmured, "that was the great day!"

His voice quivered as if shaken by the throbbing of his heart, and hisheart said:

"Kneeling on the seat, you looked out of the little window in the backof the cab and cried to me, 'He is nearer! He is further off! He willcatch us. I do not see him any more. He has lost us. ' Ah!"

And with one and the same movement their lips joined. 

She breathed out like a sigh:

"That was the one time I enjoyed. "

"We shall always be afraid, " he said. 

These words interlaced and changed into kisses. Their whole lifesurged into their lips. 

Yes, they had to revive their past so as to love each other, they hadconstantly to be reassembling the pieces so as to keep their love fromdying through staleness, as if they were undergoing, in darkness and indust, in an icy ebbing away, the ruin of old age, the impress of death. 

They clasped each other. 

They were drowned in the darkness. They fell down, down into theshadows, into the abyss that they had willed. 

He stammered:

"I will love you always. "

But she and I both felt that he was lying again. We did not deceiveourselves. But what matter, what matter?

Her lips on his lips, she murmured like a thorny caress among thecaresses:

"My husband will soon be home. "

How little they really were at one! How, actually, there was nothingbut their fear that they had in common, and how they stirred their fearup desperately. But their tremendous effort to commune somehow wassoon to be over. 

They stopped talking. Words had already accomplished the work ofreviving their love. She merely murmured:

"I am yours, I am yours. I give myself to you. No, I do not givemyself to you. How can I give myself when I do not belong to myself?"

"Are you happy?" she asked again. 

"I swear you are everything in the world to me. "

* * * * * * * * *

Now, she felt, their bliss had already become a mere memory, and shesaid almost plaintively:

"May God bless the bit of pleasure one has. "

A doleful lament, the first signal of a tremendous fall, a prayerblasphemous yet divine. 

I saw him look at the clock and at the door. He was thinking ofleaving. He turned his face gently away from a kiss she was about togive him. There was a suggestion of uneasiness, almost disgust, in hisexpression. 

"No, " she said, "you are not going to love me always. You are going toleave me. But I regret nothing. I never will regret anything. Afterwards, when I return from--/this/--for good, to the great sorrowthat will never leave me again, I shall say, 'I have had a lover, ' andI shall come out from my nothingness to be happy for a moment. "

He did not want to answer. He could not answer any more. Hestammered:

"Why do you doubt me?"

But they turned their eyes toward the window. They were afraid, theywere cold. They looked down at the space between the two houses andsaw a vague remnant of twilight slip away like a ship of glory. 

It seemed to me that the window beside them entered the scene. Theygazed at it, dim, immense, blotting out everything around it. Afterthe brief interval of sinful passion, they were overwhelmed as if, looking at the stainless azure of the window, they had seen a vision. Then their eyes met. 

"See, we stay here, " she said, "looking at each other like twomiserable curs. "

They separated. He seated himself on a chair, a sorry figure in thedusk. 

His mouth was open, his face was contracted. His eyes and his jaw wereself-condemnatory. You expected that in a few moments he would becomeemaciated, and you would see the eternal skeleton. 

And at last both were alike in their setting, made so as much by theirmisery as by their human form. The night swallowed them up. I nolonger saw them. 

. . . . . 

Then, where is God, where is God? Why does He not intervene in thisfrightful, regular crisis? Why does He not prevent, by a miracle, thatfearful miracle by which one who is adored suddenly or gradually comesto be hated? Why does he not preserve man from having to mourn theloss of all his dreams? Why does he not preserve him from the distressof that sensuousness which flowers in his flesh and falls back on himagain like spittle?

Perhaps because I am a man like the man in the room, like all othermen, perhaps because what is bestial engrosses my attention now, I amutterly terrified by the invincible recoil of the flesh. 

"It is everything in the world, " he had said. "It is nothing, " he hadalso said, but later. The echo of those two cries lingered in my ears. Those two cries, not shouted but uttered in a low scarcely audiblevoice, who shall declare their grandeur and the distance between them?

Who shall say? Above all, who shall know?

The man who can reply must be placed, as I am, above humanity, he mustbe both among and apart from human beings to see the smile turn intoagony, the joy become satiety, and the union dissolve. For when youtake full part in life you do not see this, you know nothing about it. You pass blindly from one extreme to the other. The man who utteredthe two cries that I still hear, "Everything!" and "Nothing!" hadforgotten the first when he was carried away by the second. 

Who shall say? I wish some one would tell. What do words matter orconventions? Of what use is the time-honoured custom of writers ofgenius or mere talent to stop at the threshold of these descriptions, as if full descriptions were forbidden? The thing ought to be sung ina poem, in a masterpiece. It ought to be told down to the very bottom, if the purpose be to show the creative force of our hopes, of ourwishes, which, when they burst into light, transform the world, overthrow reality. 

What richer alms could you bestow on these two lovers, when again lovewill die between them? For this scene is not the last in their doublestory. They will begin again, like every human being. Once more theywill try together, as much as they can, to seek shelter from life'sdefeats, to find ecstasy, to conquer death. Once more they will seeksolace and deliverance. Again they will be seized by a thrill, by theforce of sin, which clings to the flesh like a shred of flesh. 

Yet once again, when once again they see that they put infinity intodesire all in vain, they will be punished for the grandeur of theiraspiration. 

I do not regret having surprised this simple, terrible secret. Perhapsmy having taken in and retained this sight in all its breadth, myhaving learned that the living truth is sadder and more sublime than Ihad ever believed, will be my sole glory. 

CHAPTER VI

All was silent. They were gone. They had hidden elsewhere. Thehusband was coming. I gathered that from what they had said. But didI really know what they had said?

I paced up and down in my room, then dined, as in a dream, and wentout, lured by humanity. 

A cafe! The bright lighting beckoned to me to enter. Calm, simple, care-free people, who have no task like mine to accomplish. 

Sitting by herself at a table, constantly looking around, was a girlwith a painted face. A full glass was set in front of her and she helda little dog on her lap. His head reached over the edge of the marbletable, and he comically sued on behalf of his mistress for the glances, even the smiles of the passersby. 

The woman looked at me with interest. She saw I was not waiting foranybody or anything. 

A sign, a word, and she, who was waiting for everybody, would come overto me with a smile. But no! I was simpler than that. If lovetroubled me, it was because of a great thought and not a mere instinct. 

It was my misfortune to have a dream greater and stronger than I couldbear. 

Woe to those who dream of what they do not possess! They are right, but they are too right, and so are outside of nature. The simple, theweak, the humble pass carelessly by what is not meant for them. Theytouch everything lightly, without anguish. But the others! But I!

I wanted to take what was not mine. I wanted to steal. I wanted tolive all lives, to dwell in all hearts. 

Ah! I saw now how I should be punished for having entered into theliving secrets of man. My punishment would fit my crime. I wasdestined to undergo the infinite misery I read in the others. I was tobe punished by every mystery that kept its secret, by every woman whowent by. 

Infinity is not what we think. We associate it with heroes of legendand romance, and we invest fiery, exceptional characters, like aHamlet, with infinity as with a theatrical costume. But infinityresides quietly in that man who is just passing by on the street. Itresides in me, just as I am, with my ordinary face and name, in me, whowant everything I have not. And there is no reason why there should beany limits to what I want. 

So, step by step, I followed the track of the infinite. It made mesuffer. Ah, if I did wrong, that great misery of mine, the tragedy ofstriving for the impossible, redeemed me. But I do not believe inredemption. I was suffering, and doubtless I looked like a martyr. 

I had to go home to fulfil my martyrdom in the whole of its wretchedduration. I had to go on looking. I was losing time in the worldoutside. I returned to my room, which welcomed me like a living being. 

. . . . . 

I passed two idle days, watching fruitlessly. 

I took to my hasty pacing to and fro again and succeeded, not withoutdifficulty, in gaining a few days of respite, in making myself forgetfor a while. 

I dwelt within these walls quiet in a feverish sort of way and inactiveas a prisoner. I walked up and down my room a great part of the day, attracted by the opening in the wall and not daring to go away to adistance from it again. 

The long hours went by, and in the evening I was worn out by myindefatigable hope. 

. . . . . 

The room was in disorder. Amy was there with her husband. They hadcome back from a journey. 

I had not heard them enter. I must have been too tired. 

He had his hat on and was sitting on a chair beside the bed. She wasdressing. I saw her disappear behind the washroom door. I looked atthe husband. His features were regular and even seemed to show acertain nobility. The line of his forehead was clear cut. Only hismouth and moustache were somewhat coarse. He had a healthier, strongerappearance than her lover. His hand, which was toying with a cane, wasfine, and there was a forceful elegance about his whole personality. 

That was the man she hated and was deceiving. It was that head, thatface, that expression which had lowered and disfigured themselves inher eyes, and were synonymous with her unhappiness. 

All at once she was there in full view. My heart stood still andcontracted and drew me toward her. She had nothing on but a short, thin chemise. She had come back a bit tired out by the thousands oflittle nothings she had already done. She had a toothbrush in herhand, her lips were moist and red, her hair dishevelled. Her legs weredainty, and the arch of her little feet was accentuated by her high-heeled shoes. 

The air in the closed room was heavy with a mixture of odours--soap, face powder, the pungent scent of cologne. 

She went out and came back again, warm and soapy, drying her face. This time she was all fresh and rosy. 

He was talking about something, with his legs stretched out a little, sometimes looking at her, sometimes not looking at her. 

"You know, the Bernards have not accepted. "

He glanced at her, then looked down at the carpet and gave adisappointed cluck with his tongue, absorbed in this matter thatinterested him, while she kept going and coming, showing the lovelycurves of her body. 

She /was/ lovely. But her husband went on droning his commonplaces, phrases that meant nothing to her, that were strange to her, and thatseemed blasphemous in the room which held her beauty. 

She put her garments on, one by one. Her husband continued in hisbestial indifference, and dropped back into his reflections. 

She went to the mirror over the mantelpiece with toilet articles spreadout before her. Probably the mirror in the washroom was too small. 

While keeping on with her toilet, she spoke as if to herself in a gay, animated, chatty way, because it was still the springtime of the day. She gave herself careful attention and took much time to groom herself. But this was an important matter, and the time was not lost. Besides, she was really hurrying. 

Now she went to a wardrobe and took out a light dress of delicatetexture, which she held out in her arms carefully. 

She started to put the dress on, then an idea suddenly occurred to herand she stopped. 

"No, no, no, decidedly not, " she said. 

She put the dress back and looked for another one, a dark skirt and ablouse. 

She took a hat, fluffed the ribbon a bit, then held the trimming ofroses close to her face in front of the mirror. Then she began tosing, evidently satisfied. 

. . . . . 

He did not look at her, and when he did look at her, he did not seeher. 

It was a solemn spectacle, a drama, but a drama dismal and depressing. That man was not happy, and yet I envied him his happiness. Howexplain this except by the fact that happiness is within us, withineach of us, and is the desire for what we do not possess?

These two were together, but in reality far apart. They had left eachother without leaving each other. A sort of intrigue about nothingheld them together. They would never come nearer again, for betweenthem lay the impassable barrier of love over and done with. Thissilence and this mutual ignorance are the cruelest things in the world. To cease to love is worse than to hate, for say what you will, death isworse than suffering. 

I am sorry for the men and women who go through life together in thechains of indifference. I am sorry for the poor heart that has what ithas for so short a time. I am sorry for the men who have the heart notto love any more. 

And for a moment, seeing this simple harrowing scene, I underwent alittle of the enormous suffering of those innumerable people who sufferall. 

. . . . . 

Amy finished dressing. She put on a coat to match her skirt, leavingit partly open to show her transparent flesh-coloured lingerie waist. Then she left us--her husband and me. 

He, too, made ready to leave, but the door opened again. Was it Amycoming back? No, it was the maid, who, seeing the room was occupied, started to withdraw. 

"Excuse me, sir. I came to put the room in order, but I don't want todisturb you. "

"You may stay. "

She began to pick things up and close drawers. He raised his head andlooked at her out of the corner of his eye. Then he rose and went overto her awkwardly, as though fascinated. A scuffling and an outcry, stifled by a coarse laugh. She dropped her brush and the gown she washolding. He caught her from behind and put his arms around her waist. 

"Oh, go on! Stop! What-che doing?"

He did not say anything, but pressed her closer to him. 

She laughed. Her hair came partly undone and fell down over her blowsyface. He trod on Amy's gown, which had dropped from the girl's hand. Then she felt the thing had gone far enough. 

"Now, that'll do, that'll do, " she said. 

Since he still said nothing and brought his jaw close to her neck, shegot angry. 

"I told you, that'll do. Stop, I say. What's the matter with you?"

At length he let her go, and left, laughing a devilish laugh of shameand cynicism. 

He went out, his passion still seething. But it was not only theoverwhelming instinct that was stirring in him. A moment before thatexquisite woman had unfolded herself in his presence in all herexquisite beauty, and he had not desired her. 

Perhaps she denied herself to him. Perhaps they had an agreement witheach other. But I plainly saw that even his eyes did not care, thosesame eyes which kindled at the sight of the servant girl, that ignobleVenus with untidy hair and dirty finger nails. 

Because he did not know her, because she was different from the onewhom he knew. To have what one has not. So, strange as it may seem, it was an idea, a lofty, eternal idea that guided his instinct. 

I understood--I to whom it was given to behold these human crises--Iunderstood that many things which we place outside ourselves are reallyinside ourselves, and that this was the secret. 

How the veils drop off! How the intricacies unravel, and simplicityappears!

. . . . . 

One dark stormy night two women came and occupied the Room. I couldnot see them and caught only fragments of their strange, whispered talkof love. From that time on the meals of the boarding-house had a magicattraction for me. I studied all the faces, trying to identify thosetwo beings. 

But I questioned pairs of faces in vain. I made efforts to detectresemblances. There was nothing to guide me. I knew them no more thanif they had been buried in the dark night outside. 

There were five girls or young women in the dining-room. One of them, at least, must have been an occupant of the Room that night. But astronger will than mine shut off her countenance. I did not know, andI was overwhelmed by the nothingness of what I saw. 

They left, one at a time. I did not know. My hands twitched in theinfinity of uncertainty, and my fingers pressed the void. My face wasthere, my face, which was a definite thing, confronting everythingpossible, everything indefinite. 

. . . . . 

The lady there! I recognised Amy. She was talking to the landladybeside the window. I did not notice her at first, because of the otherboarders between us. 

She was eating grapes, daintily, with a rather studied manner. 

I turned towards her. Her name was Madame Montgeron or Montgerot. Itsounded funny to me. Why did she have that name? It seemed not tosuit her, or to be useless. It struck me how artificial words andsigns are. 

The meal was over. Almost everybody had gone out. Coffee cups andsticky little liqueur glasses were scattered on the table on which asunbeam shone, mottling the tablecloth and making the glasses sparkle. A coffee stain had dried on the cloth and gave out fragrance. 

I joined in the conversation between Amy and Madame Lemercier. Shelooked at me. I scarcely recognised her look, which I had seen soclearly before. 

The man-servant came in and whispered a few words to Madame Lemercier. She rose, excused herself, and went out of the room. I was left withAmy. There were only two or three people in the dining-room, who werediscussing what they were going to do in the afternoon. 

I did not know what to say to her. The conversation flagged and diedout. She must have thought that she did not interest me--this woman, whose heart I had seen, and whose destiny I knew as well as GodHimself. 

She reached for a newspaper lying on the table, read a line or two, then folded it, rose and also left the room. 

Sickened by the commonplaceness of life and dull from the heaviness ofthe after-lunch hour, I leaned drowsily on the long, long table, thesunlit table disappearing into infinity, and I made an effort to keepmy arms from giving way, my chin from dropping, and my eyes fromclosing. 

And in that disorderly room, where the servants were already hasteningquietly to clear the table and make ready for the evening meal, Ilingered almost alone, not knowing whether I was happy or unhappy, notknowing what was real and what was supernatural. 

Then I understood. It came upon me softly, heavily. I looked aroundat all those simple, peaceful things. Then I closed my eyes, and saidto myself, like a seer who gradually becomes conscious of the nature ofthe revelation he has seen, "The infinite--why, this is the infinite. It is true. I can no longer doubt. " It came upon me with force thatthere is nothing strange on earth, that the supernatural does notexist, or, rather, that it is everywhere. It is in reality, insimplicity, in peace. It is here, inside these walls. The real andthe supernatural are one and the same. There can no more be mystery inlife than there can be a fourth dimension. 

I, like other men, am moulded out of infinity. But how confused it allwas to me! And I dreamed of myself, who could neither know myself wellnor rid me of myself--myself who was like a deep shadow between my heartand the sun. 

CHAPTER VII

The same background, the same half-light tarnishing them as when Ifirst saw them together. Amy and her lover were seated beside eachother, not far from me. 

They seemed to have been talking for some time already. 

She was sitting behind him, on the sofa, concealed by the shadow of theevening and the shadow of the man. He was bending over, pale andvaguely outlined, with his hands on his knees. 

The night was still cloaked in the grey silken softness of evening. Soon it would cast off this mantle and appear in all its bare darkness. It was coming on them like an incurable illness. They seemed to have apresentiment of it and sought refuge from the fatal shadows in talkingand thinking of other things. 

They talked apathetically about this and that. I heard the names ofplaces and people. They mentioned a railway station, a public walk, aflorist. 

All at once she stopped and hid her face in her hands. 

He took her wrists, with a sad slowness that showed how much he wasused to these spells, and spoke to her without knowing what to say, stammering and drawing as close as he could to her. 

"Why are you crying? Tell me why you are crying. "

She did not answer. Then she took her hands away from her eyes andlooked at him. 

"Why? Do I know? Tears are not words. "

. . . . . 

I watched her cry--drown herself in a flood of tears. It is a greatthing to be in the presence of a rational being who cries. A weak, broken creature shedding tears makes the same impression as an all-powerful god to whom one prays. In her weakness and defeat Amy wasabove human power. 

A kind of superstitious admiration seized me before this woman's facebathed from an inexhaustible source, this face sincere and truthful. 

. . . . . 

She stopped crying and lifted her head. Without his questioning heragain she said:

"I am crying because one is alone. 

"One cannot get away from one's self. One cannot even confessanything. One is alone. And then everything passes, everythingchanges, everything takes flight, and as soon as everything takesflight one is alone. There are times when I see this better than atother times. And then I cannot help crying. "

She was getting sadder and sadder, but then she had a little access ofpride, and I saw a smile gently stir her veil of melancholy. 

"I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people wouldnot notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments oflucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, allalone. "

Disturbed to see her growing distress, he tried to raise her spirits. 

"We cannot say that, we who have reshaped our destiny. You, who haveachieved a great act of will--"

But what he said was borne away like chaff. 

"What good was it? Everything is useless. In spite of what I havetried to do, I am alone. My sin cannot change the face of things. 

"It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor isit by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctivedecisions and which is neither good nor evil. It is by none of thesethings that one reaches happiness. One /never/ reaches happiness. "

She paused, and said, as if she felt her fate recoiling upon her:

"Yes, I know I have done wrong, that those who love me most woulddetest me if they knew. My mother, if she knew--she who is soindulgent--would be so unhappy. I know that our love exists with thereprobation of all that is wise and just and is condemned by mymother's tears. But what's the use of being ashamed any more? Mother, if you knew, you would have pity on my happiness. "

"You are naughty, " he murmured feebly. 

She stroked the man's forehead lightly, and said in a tone ofextraordinary assurance:

"You know I don't deserve to be called naughty. You know what I amsaying is above a personal application. You know better than I do thatone is alone. One day when I was speaking about the joy of living andyou were as sad as I am to-day, you looked at me, and said you did notknow what I was thinking, in spite of my explanations. You showed methat love is only a kind of festival of solitude, and holding me inyour arms, you ended by exclaiming, 'Our love--I am our love, ' and Igave the inevitable answer, alas, 'Our love--I am our love. '"

He wanted to speak, but she checked him. 

"Stop! Take me, squeeze my hands, hold me close, give me a long, longkiss, do with me what you want--just to bring yourself close to me, close to me! And tell me that you are suffering. Why, don't you feel/my/ grief?"

He said nothing, and in the twilight shroud that wrapped them round, Isaw his head make the needless gesture of denial. I saw all the miseryemanating from these two, who for once by chance in the shadows did notknow how to lie any more. 

It was true that they were there together, and yet there was nothing tounite them. There was a void between them. Say what you will, do whatyou will, revolt, break into a passion, dispute, threaten--in vain. Isolation will conquer you. I saw there was nothing to unite them, nothing. 

She kept on in the same strain. 

He seemed to be used to these sad monologues, uttered in the same tone, tremendous invocations to the impossible. He did not answer any more. He held her in his arms, rocked her quietly, and caressed her withdelicate tenderness. He treated her as if she were a sick child he wasnursing, without telling her what was the matter. 

But he was disturbed by her contact. Even when prostrate and desolate, she quivered warm in his arms. He coveted this prey even thoughwounded. I saw his eyes fixed on her, while she gave herself up freelyto her sadness. He pressed his body against hers. It was she whom hewanted. Her words he threw aside. He did not care for them. They didnot caress him. It was she whom he wanted, she!

Separation! They were very much alike in ideas and temperament, andjust then they were helping each other as much as they could. But Isaw clearly--I who was a spectator apart from men and whose gaze soaredabove them--that they were strangers, and that in spite of allappearances they did not see nor hear each other any more. Theyconversed as best they could, but neither could yield to the other, andeach tried to conquer the other. And this terrible battle broke myheart. 

. . . . . 

She understood his desire. She said plaintively, like a child atfault:

"I am not feeling well. "

Then, in a sudden change of mood, she gave herself up to love, offeringher whole self with her wounded woman's heart. 

* * * * * * * * *

They rose and shook off the dream that had cast them to the ground. 

He was as dejected as she. I bent over to catch what he was saying. 

"If I had only known!" he breathed in a whisper. 

Prostrated but more distrustful of each other with a crime betweenthem, they went slowly over to the grey window, cleansed by a streak oftwilight. 

How much they were like themselves on the other evening. It /was/ theother evening. Never had the impression been borne in upon me sostrongly that actions are vain and pass like phantoms. 

The man was seized with a trembling. And, vanquished, despoiled of allhis pride, of all his masculine reserve, he no longer had the strengthto keep back the avowal of shamed regret. 

"One can't master one's self, " he stammered, hanging his head. "It isfate. "

They caught hold of each other's hands, shuddered slightly, panting, dispirited, tormented by their hearts. 

. . . . . 

Fate!

In so speaking they saw further than the flesh. In their remorse anddisgust it was not mere physical disillusionment that so crushed them. They saw further. They were overcome by an impression of bleak truth, of aridity, of growing nothingness, at the thought that they had somany times grasped, rejected, and vainly grasped again their frailcarnal ideal. 

They felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, thateverything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory tiesholding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bringthem together. On the contrary, they were separated by all the forceof their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, what disunion!

And the condemnation of love itself came from her, in a cry of agony:

"Oh, our great, our immense love! I feel that little by little I amrecovering from it!"

. . . . . 

She threw back her head, and raised her eyes. 

"Oh, the first time!" she said. 

She went on, while both of them saw that first time when their handshad found each other. 

"I knew that some day all that emotion would die, and, in spite of ourpromises, I wanted time to stand still. 

"But time did not stand still, and now we scarcely love each other. "

He made a gesture as of denial. 

"It is not only you, my dear, who are drifting away, " she continued. "I am, too. At first I thought it was only you. But then I understoodmy poor heart and realised that in spite of you, I could do nothingagainst time. "

She went on slowly, now with her eyes turned away, now looking at him. 

"Alas, some day, I may say to you, 'I no longer love you. ' Alas, alas, some day I may say to you, 'I have never loved you!'

"This is the wound--time, which passes and changes us. The separationof human beings that deceive themselves is nothing in comparison. Onecan live even so. But the passage of time! To grow old, to thinkdifferently, to die. I am growing old and I am dying, I. It has takenme a long time to understand it. I am growing old. I /am/ not old, but I am growing old. I have a few grey hairs already. The first greyhair, what a blow!

"Oh, this blotting out of the colour of your hair. It gives you thefeeling of being covered with your shroud, of dry bones, andtombstones. "

She rose and cried out into the void:

"Oh, to escape the network of wrinkles!"

. . . . . 

She continued:

"I said to myself, 'By slow degrees you will get there. Your skin willwither. Your eyes, which smile even in repose, will always bewatering. Your breasts will shrink and hang on your skeleton like looserags. Your lower jaw will sag from the tiredness of living. You willbe in a constant shiver of cold, and your appearance will becadaverous. Your voice will be cracked, and people who now find itcharming to listen to you will be repelled. The dress that hides youtoo much now from men's eyes will not sufficiently hide your monstrousnudity, and people will turn their eyes away and not even dare to thinkof you. '"

She choked and put her hands to her mouth, overcome by the truth, as ifshe had too much to say. It was magnificent and terrifying. 

He caught her in his arms, in dismay. But she was as in a delirium, transported by a universal grief. You would have thought that thisfunereal truth had just come to her like a sudden piece of bad news. 

"I love you, but I love the past even more. I long for it, I long forit, I am consumed with longing for it. The past! I shall cry, I shallsuffer because the past will never come back again. 

"But love the past as much as you will, it will never come back. Deathis everywhere, in the ugliness of what has been too long beautiful, inthe tarnishing of what has been clean and pure, in the forgetfulness ofwhat is long past, in daily habits, which are the forgetfulness of whatis near. We catch only glimpses of life. Death is the one thing wereally have time to see. Death is the only palpable thing. Of whatuse is it to be beautiful and chaste? They will walk over our gravesjust the same. 

"A day is coming when I shall be no more. I am crying because I shallsurely die. There is an invincible nothingness in everything andeverybody. So when one thinks of that, dear, one smiles and forgives. One does not bear grudges. But goodness won in that way is worse thananything else. "

. . . . . 

He bent over and kissed her hands. He enveloped her in a warm, respectful silence, but, as always, I felt he was master of himself. 

"I have always thought of death, " she continued in a changed voice. "One day I confessed to my husband how it haunted me. He launched outfuriously. He told me I was a neurasthenic and that he must look afterme. He made me promise to be like himself and never think of suchthings, to be healthy and well-balanced, as he was. 

"That was not true. It was he who suffered from the disease oftranquillity and indifference, a paralysis, a grey malady, and hisblindness was an infirmity, and his peace was that of a dog who livesfor the sake of living, of a beast with a human face. 

"What was I to do? Pray? No. That eternal dialogue in which you arealways alone is crushing. Throw yourself into some occupation? Work?No use. Doesn't work always have to be done over again? Have childrenand bring them up? That makes you feel both that you are done andfinished and that you are beginning over again to no purpose. However, who knows?"

It was the first time that she softened. 

"I have not been given the chance to practise the devotion, thesubmission, the humiliation of a mother. Perhaps that would haveguided me in life. I was denied a little child. "

For a moment, lowering her eyes, letting her hands fall, yielding tothe maternal impulse, she only thought of loving and regretting thechild that had not been vouchsafed to her--without perceiving that ifshe considered it her only possible salvation, it was because she didnot have it. 

"Charity? They say that it makes us forget everything. Oh, yes, to godistributing alms on the snowy streets, in a great fur cloak, " shemurmured and made a tired gesture, while the lover and I felt theshiver of the cold rainy evening and of all the winters past and yet tocome. 

"All that is diversion, deception. It does not alter the truth aparticle. We shall die, we are going to die. "

She stopped crying, dried her eyes and assumed a tone so positive andcalm that it gave the impression that she was leaving the subject. 

"I want to ask you a question. Answer me frankly. Have you everdared, dear, even in the depths of your heart, to set a date, a daterelatively far off, but exact and absolute, with four figures, and tosay, 'No matter how old I shall live to be, on that day I shall bedead--while everything else will go on, and little by little my emptyplace will be destroyed or filled again?'"

The directness of her question disturbed him. But it seemed to me thathe tried most to avoid giving her a reply that would heighten herobsession. 

And all at once, she remembered something he had once said to her, andcleverly reminded him of it so as to close his mouth in advance andtorture herself still more. 

"Do you remember? One evening, by lamplight. I was looking through abook. You were watching me. You came to me, you knelt down and putyour arms around my waist, and laid your head in my lap. There weretears in your eyes. I can still hear you. 'I am thinking, ' you said, 'that this moment will never come again. I am thinking that you aregoing to change, to die, and go away. I am thinking so truly, sohotly, how precious these moments are, how precious you are, you whowill never again be just what you are now, and I adore your ineffablepresence as it is now. ' You looked at my hand, you found it small andwhite, and you said it was an extraordinary treasure, which woulddisappear. Then you repeated, 'I adore you, ' in a voice which trembledso, that I have never heard anything truer or more beautiful, for youwere right as a god is right. 

"Alas!" he said. 

He saw the tears in her eyes. Then he bowed his head. When he liftedit again, I had a vague intuition that he would know what to answer, but had not yet formulated how to say it. 

"Poor creatures, a brief existence, a few stray thoughts in the depthsof a room--that is what we are, " she said, lifting her head and lookingat him, hoping for an impossible contradiction, as a child cries for astar. 

He murmured:

"Who knows what we are?"

. . . . . 

She interrupted him with a gesture of infinite weariness. 

"I know what you are going to say. You are going to talk to me aboutthe beauty of suffering. I know your noble ideas. I love them, mylove, your beautiful theories, but I do not believe in them. I wouldbelieve them if they consoled me and effaced death. "

With a manifest effort, as uncertain of himself as she was of herself, feeling his way, he replied:

"They would efface it, perhaps, if you believed in them. "

She turned toward him and took one of his hands in both of hers. Shequestioned him with inexorable patience, then she slipped to her kneesbefore him, like a lifeless body, humbled herself in the dust, wreckedin the depths of despair, and implored him:

"Oh, answer me! I should be so happy if you could answer me. I feelas though you really could!"

He bent over her, as if on the edge of an abyss of questioning:"Do you know what we are?" he murmured. "Everything we say, everythingwe think, everything we believe, is fictitious. We know nothing. Nothing is sure or solid. "

"You are wrong, " she cried. "There /is/ something absolute, oursorrow, our need, our misery. We can see and touch it. Denyeverything else, but our beggary, who can deny that?"

"You are right, " he said, "it is the only absolute thing in the world. "

. . . . . 

"Then, /we/ are the only absolute thing in the world, " he deduced. 

He caught at this. He had found a fulcrum. "We--" he said. He hadfound the cry against death, he repeated it, and tried again. "We--"

It was sublime to see him beginning to resist. 

"It is we who endure forever. "

"Endure forever! On the contrary, it is we who pass away. "

"We see things pass, but we endure. "

She shrugged her shoulders with an air of denial. There almost washatred in her voice as she said:

"Yes--no--perhaps. After all, what difference does it make to me? Thatdoes not console me. "

"Who knows--maybe we need sadness and shadow, to make joy and light. "

"Light would exist without shadow, " she insisted. 

"No, " he said gently. 

"That does not console me, " she said again. 

. . . . . 

Then he remembered that he had already thought out all these things. 

"Listen, " he said, in a voice tremulous and rather solemn as if he weremaking a confession. "I once imagined two beings who were at the endof their life, and were recalling all they had suffered. "

"A poem!" she said, discouraged. 

"Yes, " he said, "one of those which might be so beautiful. "

It was remarkable to see how animated he became. For the first time heappeared sincere--when abandoning the living example of their owndestiny for the fiction of his imagination. In referring to his poem, he had trembled. You felt he was becoming his genuine self and that hehad faith. She raised her head to listen, moved by her tenacious needof hearing something, though she had no confidence in it. 

"The man and the woman are believers, " he began. "They are at the endof their life, and they are happy to die for the reasons that one issad to live. They are a kind of Adam and Eve who dream of the paradiseto which they are going to return. The paradise of purity. Paradiseis light. Life on earth is obscurity. That is the motif of the song Ihave sketched, the light that they desire, the shadow that they are. "

"Like us, " said Amy. 

He told of the life of the man and the woman of his poem. Amy listenedto him, and accepted what he was saying. Once she put her hands on herheart and said, "Poor people!" Then she got a little excited. Shefelt he was going too far. She did not wish so much darkness, maybebecause she was tired or because the picture when painted by some oneelse seemed exaggerated. 

Dream and reality here coincided. The woman of the poem also protestedat this point. 

I was carried away by the poet's voice, as he recited, swayingslightly, in the spell of the harmony of his own dream:

"At the close of a life of pain and suffering the woman still lookedahead with the curiosity she had when she entered life. Eve ended asshe had begun. All her subtle eager woman's soul climbed toward thesecret as if it were a kind of kiss on the lips of her life. Shewanted to be happy. "

Amy was now more interested in her companion's words. The curse of thelovers in the poem, sister to the curse she felt upon herself, gave herconfidence. But her personality seemed to be shrinking. A few momentsbefore she had dominated everything. Now she was listening, waiting, absorbed. 

"The lover reproached the woman for contradicting herself in claimingearthly and celestial happiness at the same time. She answered himwith profundity, that the contradiction lay not in herself, but in thethings she wanted. 

"The lover then seized another healing wand and with desperateeagerness, he explained, he shouted, 'Divine happiness has not the sameform as human happiness. Divine happiness is outside of ourselves. '

"The woman rose, trembling. 

"'That is not true! That is not true!' she exclaimed. 'No, myhappiness is not outside of me, seeing it is /my/ happiness. Theuniverse is God's universe, but I am the god of my own happiness. WhatI want, ' she added, with perfect simplicity, 'is to be happy, I, justas I am, and with all my suffering. '"

Amy started. The woman in the poem had put her problem in a clearerand deeper manner, and Amy was more like that woman than herself. 

"'I, with all my suffering, ' the man repeated. 

"Suffering--important word! It leads us to the heart of reality. Humansuffering is a positive thing, which requires a positive answer, andsad as it is, the word is beautiful, because of the absolute truth itcontains. 'I, with all my suffering!' It is an error to believe thatwe can be happy in perfect calm and clearness, as abstract as aformula. We are made too much out of shadow and some form ofsuffering. If everything that hurts us were to be removed, what wouldremain?

"And the woman said, 'My God, I do not wish for heaven!'"

"Well, then, " said Amy, trembling, "it follows that we can be miserablein paradise. "

"Paradise is life, " said the poet. 

Amy was silent and remained with her head lifted, comprehending at lastthat the whole poem was simply a reply to her question and that he hadrevived in her soul a loftier and a juster thought. 

"Life is exalted to perfection as it ends, " the poet went on. "'It isbeautiful to reach the end of one's days, ' said the lover. 'It is inthis way that we have lived paradise. '

"There is the truth, " the poet concluded. "It does not wipe out death. It does not diminish space, nor halt time. But it makes us what we arein essential. Happiness needs unhappiness. Joy goes hand in hand withsorrow. It is thanks to the shadow that we exist. We must not dreamof an absurd abstraction. We must guard the bond that links us toblood and earth. 'Just as I am!' Remember that. We are a greatmixture. We are more than we believe. Who knows what we are?"

On the woman's face, which the terror of death had rigidly contracted, a smile dawned. She asked with childish dignity:

"Why did you not tell me this right away when I asked you?"

"You would not have understood me then. You had run your dream ofdistress into a blind alley. I had to take the truth along a differentway so as to present it to you anew. "

. . . . . 

After that they fell silent. For a fraction of time they had come asclose to each other as human beings can come down here below--because oftheir august assent to the lofty truth, to the arduous truth (for it ishard to understand that happiness is at the same time happy andunhappy). She believed him, however, she, the rebel, she, theunbeliever, to whom he had given a true heart to touch. 

CHAPTER VIII

The window was wide open. In the dusty rays of the sunset I saw threepeople with their backs to the long reddish-brown beams of light. Anold man, with a care-worn, exhausted appearance and a face furrowedwith wrinkles, seated in the armchair near the window. A tall youngwoman with very fair hair and the face of a madonna. And, a littleapart, a woman who was pregnant. 

She held her eyes fixed in front of her, seeming to contemplate thefuture. She did not enter into the conversation, perhaps because ofher humbler condition, or because her thoughts were bent upon the eventto come. The two others were conversing. The man had a cracked, uneven voice. A slight feverish tremour sometimes shook his shoulders, and now and then he gave a sudden involuntary jerk. The fire had diedout of his eyes and his speech had traces of a foreign accent. Thewoman sat beside him quietly. She had the fairness and gentle calm ofthe northern races, so white and light that the daylight seemed to diemore slowly than elsewhere upon her pale silver face and the abundantaureole of her hair. 

Were they father and daughter or brother and sister? It was plain thathe adored her but that she was not his wife. 

With his dimmed eyes he looked at the reflection of the sunlight uponher. 

"Some one is going to be born, and some one is going to die, " he said. 

The other woman started, while the man's companion cried in a low tone, bending over him quickly. 

"Oh, Philip, don't say that. "

He seemed indifferent to the effect he had produced, as though herprotest had not been sincere, or else were in vain. 

Perhaps, after all, he was not an old man. His hair seemed to mescarcely to have begun to turn grey. But he was in the grip of amysterious illness, which he did not bear well. He was in a constantstate of irritation. He had not long to live. That was apparent fromunmistakable signs--the look of pity in the woman's eyes mingled withdiscreetly veiled alarm, and an oppressive atmosphere of mourning. 

. . . . . 

With a physical effort he began to speak so as to break the silence. As he was sitting between me and the open window, some of the things hesaid were lost in the air. 

He spoke of his travels, and, I think, also of his marriage, but I didnot hear well. 

He became animated, and his voice rose painfully. He quivered. Arestrained passion enlivened his gestures and glances and warmed hislanguage. You could tell that he must have been an active brilliantman before his illness. 

He turned his head a little and I could hear him better. 

He told of the cities and countries that he had visited. It was likean invocation to sacred names, to far-off different skies, Italy, Egypt, India. He had come to this room to rest, between two stations, and he was resting uneasily, like an escaped convict. He said he wouldhave to leave again, and his eyes sparkled. He spoke of what he stillwanted to see. But the twilight deepened, the warmth left the air, andall he thought of now was what he had seen in the past. 

"Think of everything we have seen, of all the space we bring with us. "

They gave the impression of a group of travellers, never in repose, forever in flight, arrested for a moment in their insatiable course, ina corner of the world which you felt was made small by their presence. 

. . . . . 

"Palermo--Sicily. "

Not daring to advance into the future, he intoxicated himself withthese recollections. I saw the effort he was making to draw near tosome luminous point in the days gone by. 

"Carpi, Carpi, " he cried. "Anna, do you remember that wonderfulbrilliant morning? The ferryman and his wife were at table in the openair. What a glow over the whole country! The table, round and palelike a star. The stream sparkling. The banks bordered with oleanderand tamarisk. The sun made a flower of every leaf. The grass shone asif it were full of dew. The shrubs seemed bejewelled. The breeze wasso faint that it was a smile, not a sigh. "

She listened to him, placid, deep, and limpid as a mirror. 

"The whole of the ferryman's family, " he continued, "was not there. The young daughter was dreaming on a rustic seat, far enough away notto hear them. I saw the light-green shadow that the tree cast uponher, there at the edge of the forest's violet mystery. 

"And I can still hear the flies buzzing in that Lombardy summer overthe winding river which unfolded its charms as we walked along thebanks. "

"The greatest impression I ever had of noonday sunlight, " he continued, "was in London, in a museum. An Italian boy in the dress of hiscountry, a model, was standing in front of a picture which representeda sunlight effect on a Roman landscape. The boy held his headstretched out. Amid the immobility of the indifferent attendants, andin the dampness and drabness of a London day, this Italian boy radiatedlight. He was deaf to everything around him, full of secret sunlight, and his hands were almost clasped. He was praying to the divinepicture. "

"We saw Carpi again, " said Anna. "We had to pass through it by chancein November. It was very cold. We wore all our furs, and the riverwas frozen. "

"Yes, and we walked on the ice. "

He paused for a moment, then asked:

"Why are certain memories imperishable?"

He buried his face in his nervous hands and sighed:

"Why, oh, why?"

"Our oasis, " Anna said, to assist him in his memories, or perhapsbecause she shared in the intoxication of reviving them, "was thecorner where the lindens and acacias were on your estate in thegovernment of Kiev. One whole side of the lawn was always strewn withflowers in summer and leaves in winter. "

"I can still see my father there, " he said. "He had a kind face. Hewore a great cloak of shaggy cloth, and a felt cap pulled down over hisears. He had a large white beard, and his eyes watered a little fromthe cold. "

"Why, " he wondered after a pause, "do I think of my father that way andno other way? I do not know, but that is the way he will live in me. That is the way he will not die. "

. . . . . 

The day was declining. The woman seemed to stand out in greater reliefagainst the other two and become more and more beautiful. 

I saw the man's silhouette on the faded curtains, his back bent, hishead shaking as in a palsy and his neck strained and emaciated. 

With a rather awkward movement he drew a case of cigarettes from hispocket and lit a cigarette. 

As the eager little light rose and spread like a glittering mask, I sawhis ravaged features. But when he started to smoke in the twilight, all you could see was the glowing cigarette, shaken by an arm asunsubstantial as the smoke that came from it. 

It was not tobacco that he was smoking. The odour of a drug sickenedme. 

He held out his hand feebly toward the closed window, modest with itshalf-lifted curtains. 

"Look--Benares and Allahabad. A sumptuous ceremony--tiaras--insignia, and women's ornaments. In the foreground, the high priest, with hiselaborate head-dress in tiers--a vague pagoda, architecture, epoch, race. How different we are from those creatures. Are /they/ right orare /we/ right?"

Now he extended the circle of the past, with a mighty effort. 

"Our travels--all those bonds one leaves behind. All useless. Travelling does not make us greater. Why should the mere covering ofground make us greater?"

The man bowed his wasted head. 

. . . . . 

He who had just been in ecstasy now began to complain. 

"I keep remembering--I keep remembering. My heart has no pity on me. "

"Ah, " he mourned, a moment afterwards, with a gesture of resignation, "we cannot say good-by to everything. "

The woman was there, but she could do nothing, although so greatlyadored. She was there with only her beauty. It was a superhumanvision that he evoked, heightened by regret, by remorse and greed. Hedid not want it to end. He wanted it back again. He loved his past. 

Inexorable, motionless, the past is endowed with the attributes ofdivinity, because, for believers as well as for unbelievers, the greatattribute of God is that of being prayed to. 

. . . . . 

The pregnant woman had gone out. I saw her go to the door, softly withmaternal carefulness of herself. 

Anna and the sick man were left alone. The evening had a grippingreality. It seemed to live, to be firmly rooted, and to hold itsplace. Never before had the room been so full of it. 

"One more day coming to an end, " he said, and went on as if pursuinghis train of thought:

"We must get everything ready for our marriage. "

"Michel!" cried the young woman instinctively, as if she could not holdthe name back. 

"Michel will not be angry at us, " the man replied. "He knows you lovehim, Anna. He will not be frightened by a formality, pure and simple--by a marriage /in extremis, "/ he added emphatically, smiling as thoughto console himself. 

They looked at each other. He was dry, feverish. His words came fromdeep down in his being. She trembled. 

With his eyes on her, so white and tall and radiant, he made a visibleeffort to hold himself in, as if not daring to reach her with a singleword. Then he let himself go. 

"I love you so much, " he said simply. 

"Ah, " she answered, "you will not die!"

"How good you were, " he replied, "to have been willing to be my sisterfor so long!"

"Think of all you have done for me!" she exclaimed, clasping her handsand bending her magnificent body toward him, as if prostrating herselfbefore him. 

You could tell that they were speaking open-heartedly. What a goodthing it is to be frank and speak without reticence, without the shameand guilt of not knowing what one is saying and for each to go straightto the other. It is almost a miracle. 

They were silent. He closed his eyes, though continuing to see her, then opened them again and looked at her. 

"You are my angel who do not love me. "

His face clouded. This simple sight overwhelmed me. It was theinfiniteness of a heart partaking of nature--this clouding of his face. 

I saw with what love he lifted himself up to her. She knew it. Therewas a great gentleness in her words, in her attitude toward him, whichin every little detail showed that she knew his love. She did notencourage him, or lie to him, but whenever she could, by a word, by agesture, or by some beautiful silence, she would try to console him alittle for the harm she did him by her presence and by her absence. 

After studying her face again, while the shadow drew him still nearerto her in spite of himself, he said:

"You are the sad confidante of my love of you. "

He spoke of their marriage again. Since all preparations had beenmade, why not marry at once?

"My fortune, my name, Anna, the chaste love that will be left to youfrom me when--when I shall be gone. "

He wanted to transform his caress--too light, alas--into a lastingbenefit for the vague future. For the present all he aspired to wasthe feeble and fictitious union implied in the word marriage. 

"Why speak of it?" she said, instead of giving a direct answer, feelingan almost insurmountable repugnance, doubtless because of her love forMichel, which the sick man had declared in her stead. While she hadconsented in principle to marrying him and had allowed the preliminarysteps to be taken, she had never replied definitely to his urgings. 

But it looked to me as if she were about to make a different decision, one contrary to her material interests, in all the purity of her soul, which was so transparent--the decision to give herself to him freely. 

"Tell me!" he murmured. 

There was almost a smile on her mouth, the mouth to which supplicationshad been offered as to an altar. 

The dying man, feeling that she was about to accept, murmured:

"I love life. " He shook his head. "I have so little time left, solittle time that I do not want to sleep at night any more. "

Then he paused and waited for her to speak. 

"Yes, " she said, and lightly touched--hardly grazed--the old man's handwith her own. 

And in spite of myself, my inexorable, attentive eye could not helpdetecting the stamp of theatrical solemnity, of conscious grandeur inher gesture. Even though devoted and chaste, without any ulteriormotive, her sacrifice had a self-glorifying pride, which I perceived--Iwho saw everything. 

. . . . . 

In the boarding-house, the strangers were the sole topic ofconversation. They occupied three rooms and had a great deal ofbaggage, and the man seemed to be very rich, though simple in histastes. They were to stay in Paris until the young woman's delivery, in a month or so. She expected to go to a hospital nearby. But theman was very ill, they said. Madame Lemercier was extremely annoyed. She was afraid he would die in her house. She had made arrangements bycorrespondence, otherwise she would not have taken these people in--inspite of the tone that their wealth might give to her house. She hopedhe would last long enough to be able to leave. But when you spoke toher, she seemed to be worried. 

When I saw him again, I felt he was really going to die soon. He satin his chair, collapsed, with his elbows on the arms of the chair andhis hands drooping. It seemed difficult for him to look at things, andhe held his face bowed down, so that the light from the window did notreveal his pupils, but only the edge of the lower lids, which gave theimpression of his eyes having been put out. I remembered what the poethad said, and I trembled before this man whose life was over, whoreviewed almost his entire existence like a terrible sovereign, and waswrapped in a beauty that was of God. 

CHAPTER IX

Some one knocked at the door. 

It was time for the doctor. The sick man raised himself uncertainly inawe of the master. 

"How have you been to-day?"

"Bad. "

"Well, well, " the doctor said lightly. 

They were left alone together. The man dropped down again with aslowness and awkwardness that would have seemed ridiculous if it hadnot been so sad. The doctor stood between us. 

"How has your heart been behaving?"

By an instinct which seemed tragic to me, they both lowered theirvoices, and in a low tone the sick man gave his daily account of theprogress of his malady. 

The man of science listened, interrupted, and nodded his head inapproval. He put an end to the recital by repeating his usualmeaningless assurances, in a raised voice now and with his usual broadgesture. 

"Well, well, I see there's nothing new. "

He shifted his position and I saw the patient, his drawn features andwild eyes. He was all shaken up by this talking about the dreadfulriddle of his illness. 

He calmed himself, and began to converse with the doctor, who lethimself down squarely into a chair, with an affable manner. He startedseveral topics, then in spite of himself returned to the sinister thinghe carried within him, his disease. 

"Disgusting!" he said. 

"Bah!" said the doctor, who was blasé. 

Then he rose. 

"Well, till to-morrow!"

"Yes, for the consultation. "

"Yes. Well, good-by!"

The doctor went out, lightly carrying the burden of misery and cruelmemories, the weight of which he had ceased to feel. 

. . . . . 

Evidently the consulting physicians had just finished their examinationof the patient in another room. The door opened, and two doctorsentered. 

Their manner seemed to me to be stiff. One of them was a young man, the other an old man. 

They looked at each other. I tried to penetrate the silence of theireyes and the night in their heads. The older man stroked his beard, leaned against the mantelpiece, and stared at the ground. 

"Hopeless, " he said, lowering his voice, for fear of being overheard bythe patient. 

The other nodded his head--in sign of agreement--of complicity, you mightsay. Both men fell silent like two guilty children. Their eyes metagain. 

"How old is he?"

"Fifty-three. "

"Lucky to live so long, " the young doctor remarked. 

To which the old man retorted philosophically:

"Yes, indeed. But his luck won't hold out any longer. "

A silence. The man with the grey beard murmured:

"I detected sarcoma. " He put his finger on his neck. "Right here. "

The other man nodded--his head seemed to be nodding continually--andmuttered:

"Yes. There's no possibility of operating. "

"Of course not, " said the old specialist, his eyes shining with a kindof sinister irony. "There's only one thing that could remove it--theguillotine. Besides, the malignant condition has spread. There ispressure upon the submaxillary and subclavicular ganglia, and probablythe axillary ganglia also. His respiration, circulation and digestionwill soon be obstructed and strangulation will be rapid. "

He sighed and stood with an unlighted cigar in his mouth, his facerigid, his arms folded. The young man sat down, leaning back in hischair, and tapped the marble mantelpiece with his idle fingers. 

"What shall I tell the young woman?"

"Put on a subdued manner and tell her it is serious, very serious, butno one can tell, nature is infinitely resourceful. "

"That's so hackneyed. "

"So much the better, " said the old man. 

"But if she insists on knowing?"

"Don't give in. "

"Shall we not hold out a little hope? She is so young. "

"No. For that very reason we mustn't. She'd become too hopeful. Myboy, never say anything superfluous at such a time. There's no use. The only result is to make them call us ignoramuses and hate us. "

"Does he realise?"

"I do not know. While I examined him--you heard--I tried to find out byasking questions. Once I thought he had no suspicion at all. Then heseemed to understand his case as well as I did. "

"Sarcoma forms like the human embryo, " said the younger doctor. 

"Yes, like the human embryo, " the other assented and entered into along elaboration of this idea. 

"The germ acts on the cell, as Lancereaux has pointed out, in the sameway as a spermatozoon. It is a micro-organism which penetrates thetissue, and selects and impregnates it, sets it vibrating, gives it/another life. / But the exciting agent of this intracellular activity, instead of being the normal germ of life, is a parasite. "

He went on to describe the process minutely and in highly scientificterms, and ended up by saying:

"The cancerous tissue never achieves full development. It keeps onwithout ever reaching a limit. Yes, cancer, in the strictest sense ofthe word, is infinite in our organism. "

The young doctor bowed assent, and then said:

"Perhaps--no doubt--we shall succeed in time in curing all diseases. Everything can change. We shall find the proper method for preventingwhat we cannot stop when it has once begun. And it is then only thatwe shall dare to tell the ravages due to the spread of incurablediseases. Perhaps we shall even succeed in finding cures for certainincurable affections. The remedies have not had time to provethemselves. We shall cure others--that is certain--but we shall not curehim. " His voice deepened. Then he asked:

"Is he a Russian or a Greek?"

"I do not know. I see so much into the inside of people that theiroutsides all look alike to me. "

"They are especially alike in their vile pretense of being dissimilarand enemies. "

The young man seemed to shudder, as if the idea aroused a kind ofpassion in him. He rose, full of anger, changed. 

"Oh, " he said, "what a disgraceful spectacle humanity presents. Inspite of its fearful wounds, humanity makes war upon humanity. We whodeal with the sores afflicting mankind are struck more than others byall the evil men involuntarily inflict upon one another. I am neithera politician nor a propagandist. It is not my business to occupymyself with ideas. I have too much else to do. But sometimes I ammoved by a great pity, as lofty as a dream. Sometimes I feel likepunishing men, at other times, like going down on my knees to them. "

The old doctor smiled sadly at this vehemence, then his smile vanishedat the thought of the undeniable outrage. 

"Unfortunately you are right. With all the misery we have to suffer, we tear ourselves with our own hands besides--the war of the classes, the war of the nations, whether you look at us from afar or from above, we are barbarians and madmen. "

"Why, why, " said the young doctor, who was getting excited, "why do wecontinue to be fools when we recognise our own folly?"

The old practitioner shrugged his shoulders, as he had a few momentsbefore when they spoke of incurable diseases. 

"The force of tradition, fanned by interested parties. We are notfree, we are attached to the past. We study what has always been done, and do it over again--war and injustice. Some day perhaps humanity willsucceed in ridding itself of the ghost of the past. Let us hope thatsome day we shall emerge from this endless epoch of massacre andmisery. What else is there to do than to hope?"

The old man stopped at this. The young man said:

"To will. "

The other man made a gesture with his hand. 

"There is one great general cause for the world's ulcer, " the youngerone kept on. "You have said it--servility to the past, prejudice whichprevents us from doing things differently, according to reason andmorality. The spirit of tradition infects humanity, and its twofrightful manifestations are--"

The old man rose from his chair, as if about to protest and as if tosay, "Don't mention them!"

But the young man could not restrain himself any more. 

"--inheritance from the past and the fatherland. "

"Hush!" cried the old man. "You are treading on ground on which Icannot follow. I recognise present evils. I pray with all my heartfor the new era. More than that, I believe in it. But do not speakthat way about two sacred principles. "

"You speak like everybody else, " said the young man bitterly. "We mustgo to the root of the evil, you know we must. /You/ certainly do. "And he added violently, "Why do you act as if you did not know it? Ifwe wish to cure ourselves of oppression and war, we have a right toattack them by all the means possible--all!--the principle of inheritanceand the cult of the fatherland. "

"No, we haven't the right, " exclaimed the old man, who had risen ingreat agitation and threw a look at his interlocutor that was hard, almost savage. 

"We have the right!" cried the other. 

All at once, the grey head drooped, and the old man said in a lowvoice:

"Yes, it is true, we have the right. I remember one day during thewar. We were standing beside a dying man. No one knew who he was. Hehad been found in the debris of a bombarded ambulance--whether bombardedpurposely or not, the result was the same. His face had been mutilatedbeyond recognition. All you could tell was that he belonged to one orother of the two armies. He moaned and groaned and sobbed and shriekedand invented the most appalling cries. We listened to the sounds thathe made in his agony, trying to find one word, the faintest accent, that would at least indicate his nationality. No use. Not a singleintelligible sound from that something like a face quivering on thestretcher. We looked and listened, until he fell silent. When he wasdead and we stopped trembling, I had a flash of comprehension. Iunderstood. I understood in the depths of my being that man is moreclosely knit to man than to his vague compatriots. 

"Yes, we have a right to attack oppression and war, we have a right to. I saw the truth several times afterward again, but I am an old man, andI haven't the strength to stick to it. "

"My dear sir, " said the young man, rising, with respect in his voice. Evidently he was touched. 

"Yes, I know, I know, " the old scientist continued in an outburst ofsincerity. "I know that in spite of all the arguments and the maze ofspecial cases in which people lose themselves, the absolute, simpletruth remains, that the law by which some are born rich and others poorand which maintains a chronic inequality in society is a supremeinjustice. It rests on no better basis than the law that once createdraces of slaves. I know patriotism has become a narrow offensivesentiment which as long as it lives will maintain war and exhaust theworld. I know that neither work nor material and moral prosperity, northe noble refinements of progress, nor the wonders of art, needcompetition inspired by hate. In fact, I know that, on the contrary, these things are destroyed by arms. I know that the map of a countryis composed of conventional lines and different names, that our innatelove of self leads us closer to those that are like-minded than tothose who belong to the same geographical group, and we are more trulycompatriots of those who understand and love us and who are on thelevel of our own souls, or who suffer the same slavery than of thosewhom we meet on the street. The national groups, the units of themodern world, are what they are, to be sure. The love we have for ournative land would be good and praiseworthy if it did not degenerate, aswe see it does everywhere, into vanity, the spirit of predominance, acquisitiveness, hate, envy, nationalism, and militarism. Themonstrous distortion of the patriotic sentiment, which is increasing, is killing off humanity. Mankind is committing suicide, and our age isan agony. "

The two men had the same vision and said simultaneously:

"A cancer, a cancer!"

The older scientist grew animated, succumbing to the evidence. 

"I know as well as you do that posterity will judge severely those whohave made a fetich of the institutions of oppression and havecultivated and spread the ideas supporting them. I know that the curefor an abuse does not begin until we refuse to submit to the cult thatconsecrates it. And I, who have devoted myself for half a century tothe great discoveries that have changed the face of the world, I knowthat in introducing an innovation one encounters the hostility ofeverything that is. 

"I know it is a vice to spend years and centuries saying of progress, 'I should like it, but I do not want it. ' But as for me, I have toomany cares and too much work to do. And then, as I told you, I am tooold. These ideas are too new for me. A man's intelligence is capableof holding only a certain quantum of new, creative ideas. When thatamount is exhausted, whatever the progress around you may be, onerefuses to see it and help it on. I am incapable of carrying on adiscussion to fruitful lengths. I am incapable of the audacity ofbeing logical. I confess to you, my boy, I have not the strength to beright. "

"My dear doctor, " said the young man in a tone of reproach, meeting hisolder colleague's sincerity with equal sincerity, "you have publiclydeclared your disapproval of the men who publicly fought the idea ofpatriotism. The influence of your name has been used against them. "

The old man straightened himself, and his face coloured. 

"I will not stand for our country's being endangered. "

I did not recognise him any more. He dropped from his great thoughtsand was no longer himself. I was discouraged. 

"But, " the other put in, "what you just said--"

"That is not the same thing. The people you speak of have defied us. They have declared themselves enemies and so have justified alloutrages in advance. "

"Those who commit outrages against them commit the crime of ignorance, "said the young man in a tremulous voice, sustained by a kind of vision. "They fail to see the superior logic of things that are in the processof creation. " He bent over to his companion, and, in a firmer tone, asked, "How can the thing that is beginning help being revolutionary?Those who are the first to cry out are alone, and therefore ignored ordespised. You yourself just said so. But posterity will remember thevanguard of martyrs. It will hail those who have cast a doubt on theequivocal word 'fatherland, ' and will gather them into the fold of allthe innovators who went before them and who are now universallyhonoured. "

"Never!" cried the old man, who listened to this last with a troubledlook. A frown of obstinacy and impatience deepened in his forehead, and he clenched his fists in hate. "No, that is not the same thing. Besides, discussions like this lead nowhere. It would be better, whilewe are waiting for the world to do its duty, for us to do ours and tellthis poor woman the truth. "

CHAPTER X

The two women were alone beside the wide open window. In the full, wise light of the autumn sun, I saw how faded was the face of thepregnant woman. 

All of a sudden a frightened expression came into her eyes. She reeledagainst the wall, leaned there a second, and then fell over with astifled cry. 

Anna caught her in her arms, and dragged her along until she reachedthe bell and rang and rang. Then she stood still, not daring to budge, holding in her arms the heavy delicate woman, her own face close to theface with the rolling eyes. The cries, dull and stifled at first, burst out now in loud shrieks. 

The door opened. People hurried in. Outside the door the servantswere on the watch. I caught sight of the landlady, who succeeded illin concealing her comic chagrin. 

They laid the woman on the bed. They removed ornaments, unfoldedtowels, and gave hurried orders. 

The crisis subsided and the woman stopped shrieking. She was so happynot to be suffering any more that she laughed. A somewhat constrainedreflection of her laugh appeared on the faces bending over her. Theyundressed her carefully. She let them handle her like a child. Theyfixed the bed. Her legs looked very thin and her set face seemedreduced to nothing. All you saw was her distended body in the middleof the bed. Her hair was undone and spread around her face like apool. Two feminine hands plaited it quickly. 

Her laughter broke and stopped. 

"It is beginning again. "

A groan, which grew louder, a fresh burst of shrieks. Anna, her onlyfriend, remained in the room. She looked and listened, filled withthoughts of motherhood. She was thinking that she, too, held withinher such travail and such cries. 

This lasted the whole day. For hours, from morning until evening, Iheard the heart-rending wail rising and falling from that pitifuldouble being. 

At certain moments I fell back, overcome. I could no longer look orlisten. I renounced seeing so much truth. Then once more, with aneffort, I stood up against the wall and looked into the Room again. 

Anna kissed the woman on her forehead, in brave proximity to theimmense cry. 

When the cry was articulate, it was: "No, no! I do not want to!"

Serious, sickened faces, almost grown old in a few hours with fatigue, passed and repassed. 

I heard some one say:

"No need to help it along. Nature must be allowed to take her course. Whatever nature does she does well. "

And in surprise my lips repeated this lie, while my eyes were fixedupon the frail, innocent woman who was a prey to stupendous nature, which crushed her, rolled her in her blood, and exacted all thesuffering from her that she could yield. 

The midwife turned up her sleeves and put on her rubber gloves. Shewaved her enormous reddish-black, glistening hands like Indian clubs. 

And all this turned into a nightmare in which I half believed. My headgrew heavy and I was sickened by the smell of blood and carbolic acidpoured out by the bottleful. 

At a moment when I, feeling too harrowed, was not looking, I heard acry different from hers, a cry that was scarcely more than the sound ofa moving object, a light grating. It was the new being that hadunloosened itself, as yet a mere morsel of flesh taken from her flesh--her heart which had just been torn away from her. 

This shook me to the depths of my being. I, who had witnessedeverything that human beings undergo, I, at this first signal of humanlife, felt some paternal and fraternal chord--I do not know what--vibrating within me. 

She laughed. "How quickly it went!" she said. 

. . . . . 

The day was coming to a close. Complete silence in the room. A plainnight lamp was burning, the flame scarcely flickering. The clock, likea poor soul, was ticking faintly. There was hardly a thing near thebed. It was as in a real temple. 

She lay stretched out in bed, in ideal quiet, her eyes turned towardthe window. Bit by bit, she saw the evening descending upon the mostbeautiful day in her life. 

This ruined mass, this languid face shone with the glory of havingcreated, with a sort of ecstasy which redeemed her suffering, and onesaw the new world of thoughts that grew out of her experience. 

She thought of the child growing up. She smiled at the joys andsorrows it would cause her. She smiled also at the brother or sisterit would have some day. 

And I thought of this at the same time that she did, and I saw hermartyrdom more clearly than she. 

This massacre, this tragedy of flesh is so ordinary and commonplacethat every woman carries the memory and imprint of it, and yet nobodyreally knows it. The doctor, who comes into contact with so much ofthe same sort of suffering, is not moved by it any more. The woman, who is too tender-hearted, never remembers it. Others who look on attravail have a sentimental interest, which wipes out the agony. But Iwho saw for the sake of seeing know, in all its horror, the agony ofchildbirth. I shall never forget the great laceration of life. 

The night lamp was placed so that the bed was plunged in shadow. Icould no longer see the mother. I no longer knew her. I believed inher. 

CHAPTER XI

The woman who had been confined was moved with exquisite care into thenext room, which she had occupied previously. It was larger and morecomfortable. 

They cleaned the room from top to bottom, and I saw Anna and Philipseated in the room again. 

"Take care, Philip, " Anna was saying, "you do not understand theChristian religion. You really do not know /exactly/ what it is. Youspeak of it, " she added, with a smile, "as women speak of men, or asmen when they try to explain women. Its fundamental element is love. It is a covenant of love between human beings who instinctively detestone another. It is also a wealth of love in our hearts to which werespond naturally when we are little children. Later all ourtenderness is added to it bit by bit, like treasure to treasure. It isa law of outpouring to which we give ourselves up, and it is the sourceof that outpouring. It is life, it is almost a work, it is almost ahuman being. "

"But, my dear Anna, that is not the Christian religion. That is you. "

. . . . . 

In the middle of the night, I heard talking through the partition. Istruggled with my sleepiness and got up. 

The man was alone, in bed. A lamp was burning dimly. He was asleepand talking in his sleep. 

He smiled and said "No!" three times with growing ecstasy. Then hissmile at the vision he saw faded away. For a moment his face remainedset, as if he were waiting, then he looked terrified, and his mouthopened. "Anna! Ah, ah!--Ah, ah!" he cried through gaping lips. At thishe awoke and rolled his eyes. He sighed and quieted down. He sat upin bed, still struck and terrified by what had passed through his minda few seconds before. 

He looked round at everything to calm himself and banish his nightmarecompletely. The familiar sight of the room, with the lamp, so wise andmotionless, enthroned in the middle, reassured him. It was balm tothis man who had just seen what does not exist, who had just smiled atphantoms and touched them, who had just been mad. 

. . . . . 

I rose the next morning, all broken up. I was restless. I had asevere headache. My eyes were bloodshot. When I looked at them in themirror, it was as if I saw them through a veil of blood. 

When I was alone, free from the visions and scenes to which I devotedmy life, all kinds of worries assailed me--worry about my position, which I was risking, worry about the steps I ought to be taking and yetwas not taking, worry over myself that I was so intent upon casting offall my obligations and postponing them, and repudiating my wage-earninglot, by which I was destined to be held fast in the slow wheelwork ofoffice routine. 

I was also worried by all kinds of minutiæ, annoying because they keptcropping up every minute--not make any noise, not light a light when theRoom was dark, hide myself, and hide myself all the time. One eveningI got a fit of coughing while listening at the hole. I snatched up mypillow and buried my head in it to keep the sound from coming out of mymouth. 

Everything seemed to be in a league to avenge itself upon me for I didnot know what. I felt as though I should not be able to hold out muchlonger. Nevertheless, I made up my mind to keep on looking as long asmy health and my courage lasted. It might be bad for me, but it was myduty. 

. . . . . 

The man was sinking. Death was evidently in the house. 

It was quite late in the evening. They were sitting at the tableopposite each other. 

I knew their marriage had taken place that afternoon, and that itspurpose had been only to solemnise their approaching farewell. Somewhite blossoms, lilies and azaleas, were strewn on the table, themantelpiece, and one armchair. He was fading away like those cutflowers. 

"We are married, " he said. "You are my wife. You are my wife, Anna!"

It was for the sweetness of saying, "You are my wife, " that he had solonged. Nothing more. But he felt so poor, with his few days of life, that it was complete happiness to him. 

He looked at her, and she lifted her eyes to him--to him who adored hersisterly tenderness--she who had become devoted to his adoration. Whatinfinite emotion lay hidden in these two silences, which faced eachother in a kind of embrace; in the double silence of these two humanbeings, who, I had observed, never touched each other, not even withthe tips of their fingers. 

The girl lifted her head, and said, in an unsteady voice:

"It is late. I am going to sleep. "

She got up. The lamp, which she set on the mantelpiece, lit up theroom. 

She trembled. She seemed to be in a dream and not to know how to yieldto the dream. Then she raised her arm and took the pins out of herhair. It fell down her back and looked, in the night, as if it werelit by the setting sun. 

The man made a sudden movement and looked at her in surprise. Not aword. 

She removed a gold brooch from the top of her blouse, and a bit of herbosom appeared. 

"What are you doing, Anna, what are you doing?"

"Why, undressing. "

She wanted to say this in a natural voice, but had not succeeded. Hereplied with an inarticulate exclamation, a cry from his heart, whichwas touched to the quick. Stupefaction, desperate regret, and also theflash of an inconceivable hope agitated him, oppressed him. 

"You are my husband. "

"Oh, " he said, "you know I am nothing. " He spoke feebly in a tragictone. "Married for form's sake, " he went on, stammering outfragmentary, incoherent phrases. "I knew it, I knew it--formality--ourconventions--"

She stopped, with her hand hesitating on her blouse like a flower, andsaid:

"You are my husband. It is your right. "

He made a faint gesture of denial. She quickly corrected herself. 

"No, no, it is not your right. I want to do it. "

I began to understand how kind she was trying to be. She wished togive this man, this poor man who was sinking at her feet, a reward thatwas worthy of her. She wanted to bestow upon him the gift of the sightof her body. 

But the thing was harder than the mere bestowal of a gift. It must notlook like the mere payment of a debt. He would not have consented tothat. She must make him believe it was a voluntary wifely act, awilling caress. She must conceal her suffering and repugnance like avice. Feeling the difficulty of giving this delicate shade to hersacrifice, she was afraid of herself. 

"No, Anna--dear Anna--think--" He was going to say, "Think of Michel, "but he did not have the strength at that moment to use this onedecisive argument, and only murmured, "You, you!"

"I want to do it, " she repeated. 

"But I do not want you to. No, no. "

He said this in a weaker voice now, overcome by love. Throughinstinctive nobility, he covered his eyes with his hand, but graduallyhis hand surrendered and dropped. 

She continued to undress, with uncertain movements that showed shehardly knew what she was doing. She took off her black waist, and herbust emerged like the day. When the light shone on her she quiveredand crossed her shining arms over her chest. Then she started tounhook the belt of her skirt, her arms curved, her reddened face bentdown and her lips tightly compressed, as if she had nothing in mind butthe unhooking of her skirt. It dropped to the ground and she steppedout of it with a soft rustle, like the sound the wind makes in a leafygarden. 

She leaned against the mantelpiece. Her movements were large, majestic, beautiful, yet dainty and feminine. She pulled off herstockings. Her legs were round and large and smooth as in a statue ofMichael Angelo's. 

She shivered and stopped, overcome by repugnance. 

"I feel a little cold, " she said in explanation and went on undressing, revealing her great modesty in violating it. 

"Holy Virgin!" the man breathed in a whisper, so as not to frightenher. 

. . . . . 

I have never seen a woman so radiantly beautiful. I had never dreamedof beauty like it. The very first day, her face had struck me by itsregularity and unusual charm, and her tall figure--taller than myself--had seemed opulent, yet delicate, but I had never believed in suchsplendid perfection of form. 

In her superhuman proportions she was like some Eve in grand religiousfrescoes. Big, soft and supple, broad-shouldered, with a fullbeautiful bosom, small feet, and tapering limbs. 

In a dreamy voice, going still further in the bestowal of her supremegift, she said:

"No one"--she stressed these words with an emphasis amounting to themention of a certain name--"/no one/--listen--no one, no matter whathappens, will ever know what I have just done. "

And now she, the giver of a gift, knelt--knelt to her adorer who wasprostrated before her like a victim. Her shining knees touched thecheap common carpet. Her chastity clothed her like a beautifulgarment. She murmured broken words of gratitude, as though she feltthat what she was doing was higher than her duty and more beautiful, and that it glorified her. 

. . . . . 

After she dressed and left the room without their having dared to sayanything to each other, I wavered between two doubts. Was she right, or was she wrong? I saw the man cry and I heard him mutter:

"Now I shall not be able to die. "

CHAPTER XII

The man was lying in bed. They moved about him carefully. He stirredfaintly, said a few words, asked for a drink, smiled and then becamesilent under the rush of thoughts. 

That morning they had seen him fold his hands, and they had asked himwhether he wanted them to send for a priest. 

"Yes--no, " he said. 

They went out, and a few minutes later, as if he had been waitingoutside the door, a dark-robed priest entered. The two were left alonetogether. 

The dying man turned his face toward the newcomer. 

"I am going to die, " he said. 

"What is your religion?" asked the priest. 

"The religion of my own country, the Greek Orthodox Church. "

"That is a heresy which you must instantly abjure. There is only onetrue religion, the Roman Catholic religion. Confess now. I willabsolve you and baptise you. "

The other did not reply. 

"Tell me what sins you have committed. You will repent and everythingwill be forgiven you. "

"My sins?"

"Try to remember. Shall I help you?" He nodded toward the door. "Whois that person?"

"My--wife, " said the man with slight hesitation, which did not escapethe priest, who was leaning over him with ears pricked. He smelt arat. 

"How long has she been your wife?"

"Two days. "

"Oh, two days! Now I have struck it. And before that, you sinned withher?"

"No, " said the man. 

The priest was put out of countenance. 

"Well, I suppose you are not lying. Why didn't you sin? It isunnatural. After all, " he insisted, "you are a man. "

The sick man was bewildered and began to get excited. Seeing this, thepriest said:

"Do not be surprised, my son, if my questions are direct and to thepoint. I ask you in all simplicity, as is my august duty as a priest. Answer me in the same simple spirit, and you will enter into communionwith God, " he added, not without kindness. 

"She is a young girl, " said the old man. "I took her under myprotection when she was quite a child. She shared the hardships of mytraveller's life, and took care of me. I married her before my deathbecause I am rich and she is poor. "

"Was that the only reason--no other reason at all?"

He fixed his look searchingly on the dying man's face, then said, "Eh?"smiling and winking an eye, almost like an accomplice. 

"I love her, " said the man. 

"At last, you are confessing!" cried the priest. He buried his eyes inthe eyes of the dying man. The things he said fairly hit him as he laythere. 

"So you desired this woman, the flesh of this woman, and for a longtime committed a sin in spirit? Didn't you? Eh?

"Tell me, when you were travelling together, how did you arrange forrooms and beds in the hotels?

"You say she took care of you? What did she have to do for you?"

The two men scanned each other's faces keenly, and I saw themisunderstanding between them growing. 

The dying man withdrew into himself and became hardened, incredulousbefore this stranger, with the vulgar appearance, in whose mouth thewords of God and truth assumed a grotesque aspect. 

However, he made an effort:

"If I have sinned in spirit, to use your words, " he said, "it provesthat I have not sinned in reality, and why should I repent of what wassuffering pure and simple?"

"No theories now. We are not here for theorising. I tell you, a sincommitted in spirit is committed in intention, and therefore in effect, and must be confessed and redeemed. Tell me how often you succumbed toguilty thoughts. Give me details. "

"But I resisted, " moaned the unfortunate man. "That is all I have tosay. "

"That is not enough. The stain--you are now convinced, I presume, ofthe justice of the term--the stain ought to be washed out by the truth. "

"Very well, " said the dying man. "I confess I have committed the sin, and I repent of it. "

"That is not a confession, and is none of my business, " retorted thepriest. "Now tell me, under exactly what circumstances did you yieldto temptation with that person, to the suggestions of the evil spirit?"

The man was swept by a wave of rebellion. He half rose and leaned onhis elbow, glaring at the stranger, who returned his look steadily. 

"Why have I the evil spirit in me?" he demanded. 

"You are not the only one. All men have it. "

"Then it is God who put it into them, since it is God who made them. "

"Ah, you are a debater! Well, if it gives you pleasure, I will answeryou. Man has both the spirit of good and the spirit of evil in him, that is to say, the possibility of doing the one or the other. If hesuccumbs to evil, he is damned. If he triumphs over it, he isrewarded. To be saved, he must earn salvation by struggling with allhis powers. "

"What powers?"

"Virtue and faith. "

"And if he does not have enough virtue and faith, is that his fault?"

"Yes, because that comes from his having too much iniquity andblindness in his soul. "

The man sat up again, seized by a new fit of anger which consumed himlike a fever. 

"Ah, " he said, "original sin! There's nothing that can excuse thesuffering of good people on earth. It is an abomination. "

The priest looked at the rebellious man blankly. 

"How else could souls be tried?" he said quite calmly. 

"Nothing can excuse the suffering of the good. "

"God's designs are inscrutable. "

The dying man flung out his emaciated arms. His eyes became hollow. 

"You are a liar!"

"Enough, " said the priest. "I have listened patiently to yourramblings and feel sorry for you. But there's no good arguing. Youmust prepare to appear before God, from whom you seem to have livedapart. If you have suffered, you will be consoled in His bosom. Letthat suffice for you. "

The invalid fell back and lay still for a while. He remainedmotionless under the white spread, like a reclining sepulchral statueof marble with a face of bronze. 

He regained his voice. 

"God cannot console me. "

"My son, my son, what are you saying?"

"God cannot console me, because He cannot give me what I want. "

"Ah, my poor child, how far gone you are in your blindness! Why didyou have me summoned?"

"I had hopes, I had hopes. "

"Hopes? Hopes of what?"

"I do not know. The things we hope for are always the things we do notknow. "

His hands wavered in the air, then fell down again. 

"Time is passing, " said the priest and began all over again. 

"Tell me the circumstances of your sin. Tell me. When you were alonewith this person, when you two were close together, did you talk toeach other, or did you keep quiet?"

"I do not believe in you, " said the man. 

The priest frowned. 

"Repent, and tell me that you believe in the Catholic religion, whichwill save you. "

But the other man shook his head in utter anguish and denied all hishappiness. 

"Religion--" he began. 

The priest interrupted brutally. 

"You are not going to start over again! Keep quiet. All yourarguments are worthless. Begin by /believing/ in religion and then youwill see what it means. I have come to force you to believe. "

It was a duel to the end. The two men at the edge of the grave glaredat each other like enemies. 

"You must believe. "

"I do not believe. "

"You must. "

"You would make truth different from what it is by threats. "

"Yes. " He stressed the clear, elementary command. "Whether you areconvinced or not, believe. Evidence does not count. The one importantthing is faith. God does not deign to convince the incredulous. Theseare no longer the days of miracles. The only miracle is in our hearts, and it is faith. Believe!" He hurled the same word ceaselessly, likestones. 

"My son, " he continued, more solemnly, standing up, with his large fathand uplifted, "I exact of you an act of faith. "

"Get out!" said the man, with hatred. 

But the priest did not stir. Goaded by the urgence of the case, impelled by the necessity of saving this soul in spite of itself, hebecame implacable. 

"You are going to die, " he said, "you are going to die. You have onlya few more minutes to live. Submit. "

"No, " said the man. 

The black-robed priest caught hold of both his hands. 

"Submit. No discussion. You are losing precious time. All yourreasoning is of no account. We are alone, you and I before God. "

He shook his head with the low bulging forehead, the prominent fleshynose, wide moist nostrils dark with snuff, thin yellow lips like twinetight across two projecting teeth that showed by themselves in thedarkness. There were lines on his forehead and between his eyebrowsand around his mouth. His cheeks and chin were covered with a greylayer. 

"I represent God, " he said. "You are in my presence as if you were inthe presence of God. Simply say 'I believe, ' and I will absolve you. 'I believe, ' that is all. The rest makes no difference to me. "

He bent lower and lower, almost gluing his face to that of the dyingman, trying to plant his absolution like a blow. 

"Simply say with me, 'Our Father, who art in heaven. ' I do not ask youto do anything else. "

The sick man's face contracted. 

"No--no!"

Suddenly the priest rose with a triumphant air. 

"At last! You have said it. "

"No. "

"Ah!" muttered the priest between his teeth. 

He twisted the man's hands in his. You felt he would have put his armsaround him to stifle him, assassinate him if his death rattle wouldhave brought a confession--so possessed was he with the desire topersuade him, to snatch from him the words he had come to seek on hislips. 

He let the withered hands go, paced the room like a wild beast, thencame back and stationed himself in front of the bed again. 

"Remember--you are going to die, " he stammered to the miserable man. "You will soon be in the earth. Say, 'Our Father, ' just these twowords, nothing else. "

He hung over him with his eyes on his mouth, his dark, crouching figurelike a demon lying in wait for a soul, like the whole Church over dyinghumanity. 

"Say it! Say it! Say it!"

The sick man tried to wrest himself free. There was a rattle of furyin his throat. With the remnant of his voice, in a low tone, hegasped:

"No!"

"Scoundrel!" cried the priest. 

And he struck him in the face. After that neither man made a move fora while. Then the priest went at it again. 

"At least you will die holding a crucifix, " he snarled. 

He drew a crucifix from his pocket, and put it down hard on his breast. 

The other man shook himself in a dull horror, as if religion werecontagious, and threw the crucifix on the floor. 

The priest stooped, mumbling insults. "Carrion, you want to die like adog, but I am here!" He picked up the crucifix, and with a gleam inhis eyes, sure of crushing him, waited for his final chance. 

The dying man panted, completely at the end of his strength. Thepriest, seeing him in his power, laid the crucifix on his breast again. This time the other man let it stay there, unable to do anything butlook at it with eyes of hatred. But his eyes did not make it fall. 

. . . . . 

When the black man had gone out into the night, and the patient littleby little recovered from the struggle and felt free once more, itoccurred to me that the priest in his violence and coarseness washorribly right. A bad priest? No, a good priest, who spoke strictlyaccording to his conscience and belief, and tried to apply his religionsimply, such as it was, without hypocritical concessions. Ignorant, clumsy, gross--yes, but honest and logical even in his fearful attempt. In the half-hour that I had listened to him, he had tried by all themeans that religion uses and recommends to follow his calling of makingconverts and giving absolution. He had said everything that a priestcannot help saying. Every dogma had come out clearly and definitelyfrom the mouth of this rough, common hewer of wood and drawer of waterfor his religion. If the sick man was right, so was the priest. 

. . . . . 

What was that thing near the bed, that thing which loomed so high anddid not stir and had not been there a moment before? It stood betweenme and the leaping flame of the candle placed near the sick man. 

I accidentally made a little noise in leaning against the wall, andvery slowly the thing turned a face toward me with a frightened look onit that frightened me. 

I knew that head. Was it not the landlord himself, a man with peculiarways, whom we seldom saw?

He had been walking up and down the hall, waiting for the sick man tobe left alone. And now he was standing beside him as he lay in bedeither asleep or helpless from weakness. 

He stretched his hand out toward a bag. In doing so, he kept his eyeson the dying man, so that his hand missed the bag twice. 

There was a creaking on the floor above, and both the man and Itrembled. A door slammed. He rose as if to keep back an exclamation. 

He opened the bag slowly, and I, no longer myself, I was afraid that hewould not have time. 

He drew a package out of the bag. It made a slight sound. When he sawthe roll of banknotes in his hand, I observed the extraordinary gleamon his face. All the sentiments of love were there, adoration, mysticism, and also brutal love, a sort of supernatural ecstasy and thegross satisfaction that was already tasting immediate joys. Yes, allthe loves impressed themselves for a moment on the profound humanity ofthis thief's face. 

Some one was waiting for him behind the half-open door. I saw an armbeckoning to him. 

He went out on tiptoe, first slowly, then quickly. 

I am an honest man, and yet I held my breath along with him. I/understood/ him. There is no use finding excuses for myself. With ahorror and a joy akin to his, I was an accomplice in his robbery. 

All thefts are induced by passion, even that one, which was cowardlyand vulgar. Oh, his look of inextinguishable love for the treasuresuddenly snatched up. All offences, all crimes are outragesaccomplished in the image of the immense desire for theft, which is thevery essence and form of our naked soul. 

Does that mean that we must absolve criminals, and that punishment isan injustice? No, we must protect ourselves. Since society rests uponhonesty, we must punish criminals to reduce them to impotence, andabove all to strike them with terror, and halt others on the thresholdof evil deeds. But once the crime is established, we must not look forexcuses for it. We run the danger then of always finding excuses. Wemust condemn it in advance, by virtue of a cold principle. Justiceshould be as cold as steel. 

But justice is not a virtue, as its name seems to indicate. It is anorganisation the virtue of which is to be feelingless. It does not aimat expiation. Its function is to establish warning examples, to makeof the criminal a thing to frighten off others. 

Nobody, nothing has the right to exact expiation. Besides, no one canexact it. Vengeance is too remote from the act and falls, so to speak, upon another person. Expiation, then, is a word that has noapplication in the world. 

CHAPTER XIII

He was very, very weak and lay absolutely still and silent, chainedfast by the baleful weight of his flesh. Death had already put an endto even his faintest quiverings. 

His wonderful companion sat exactly where his fixed eyes fell on her, at the foot of the bed. She held her arms resting on the base board ofthe bed with her beautiful hands drooping. Her profile sloped downwardslightly, that fine design, that delicate etching of eternal sweetnessupon the gentle background of the evening. Under the dainty arch ofher eyebrows her large eyes swam clear and pure, miniature skies. Theexquisite skin of her cheeks and forehead gleamed faintly, and herluxuriant hair, which I had seen flowing, gracefully encircled herbrow, where her thoughts dwelt invisible as God. 

She was alone with the man who lay there as if already in his grave--shewho had wished to cling to him by a thrill and to be his chaste widowwhen he died. He and I saw nothing on earth except her face. And intruth, there was nothing else to be seen in the deep shadows of theevening. 

A voice came from the bed. I scarcely recognised it. 

"I haven't said everything yet that I want to say, " said the voice. 

Anna bent over the bed as if it were the edge of a coffin to catch thewords that were to issue for the last time, no doubt, from themotionless and almost formless body. 

"Shall I have the time? Shall I?"

It was difficult to catch the whisper, which almost stuck in histhroat. Then his voice accustomed itself to existence again and becamedistinct. 

"I should like to make a confession to you, Anna. I do not want thisthing to die with me. I am sorry to let this memory be snuffed out. Iam sorry for it. I hope it will never die. 

"I loved once before I loved you. 

"Yes, I loved the girl. The image I have left of her is a sad, gentleone. I should like to snatch it from death. I am giving it to youbecause you happen to be here. "

He gathered himself together to have a clear vision of the woman ofwhom he was speaking. 

"She was fair-haired and fair-skinned, " he said. 

"You needn't be jealous, Anna. (People are jealous sometimes even whenthey are not in love. ) It was a few years after you were born. Youwere a little child then, and nobody turned to look at you on thestreets except the mothers. 

"We were engaged in the ancestral park of her parents. She had brightcurls tied with ribbons. I pranced on horseback for her. She smiledfor me. 

"I was young and strong then, full of hope and full of the beginning ofthings. I thought I was going to conquer the world, and even had thechoice of the means to conquer it. Alas, all I did was to crosshastily over its surface. She was younger than I, a bud so recently, blown, that one day, I remember, I saw her doll lying on the bench thatwe were sitting on. We used to say to each other, 'We shall come backto this park when we are old, shall we not?' We loved each other--youunderstand--I have no time to tell you, but you understand, Anna, thatthese few relics of memory that I give you at random are beautiful, incredibly beautiful. 

"She died the very day in spring when the date of our wedding was set. We were both taken sick with a disease that was epidemic that year inour country, and she did not have the strength to escape the monster. That was twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years, Anna, between herdeath and mine. 

"And now here is the most precious secret, her name. "

He whispered it. I did not catch it. 

"Say it over again, Anna. "

She repeated it, vague syllables which I caught without being able tounite them into a word. 

"I confide the name to you because you are here. If you were not here, I should tell it to anyone, no matter whom, provided that would saveit. "

He added in an even, measured voice, to make it hold out until the end:

"I have something else to confess, a wrong and a misfortune. "

"Didn't you confess it to the priest?" she asked in surprise. 

"I hardly told him anything, " was all he replied. 

And he resumed, speaking calmly, with his full voice:

"I wrote poems during our engagement, poems about ourselves. Themanuscript was named after her. We read the poems together, and weboth liked and admired them. 'Beautiful, beautiful!' she would say, clapping her hands, whenever I showed her a new poem. And when we weretogether, the manuscript was always with us--the most beautiful bookthat had ever been written, we thought. She did not want the poems tobe published and get away from us. One day in the garden she told mewhat she wanted. 'Never! Never!' she said over and over again, like anobstinate, rebellious child, tossing her dainty head with its dancinghair. "

The man's voice became at once surer and more tremulous, as he filledin and enlivened certain details in the old story. 

"Another time, in the conservatory, when it had been rainingmonotonously since morning, she asked, 'Philip'--she used to pronouncemy name just the way you do. "

He paused, himself surprised by the primitive simplicity of what he hadjust expressed. 

"'Do you know, ' she asked, 'the story of the English painter Rossetti?'and she told me the episode, which had so vividly impressed her, howRossetti had promised the lady he loved to let her keep forever themanuscript of the book he had written for her, and if she died, to layit beside her in her coffin. She died, and he actually carried out hispromise and buried the manuscript with her. But later, bitten by thelove of glory, he violated his promise and the tomb. 'You will let mehave your book if I die before you, and will not take it back, willyou, Philip?' And I promised laughingly, and she laughed too. 

"I recovered from my illness slowly. When I was strong enough, theytold me that she had died. When I was able to go out, they took me tothe tomb, the vast family sepulchre which somewhere hid her new littlecoffin. 

"There's no use my telling you how miserable I was and how I grievedfor her. Everything reminded me of her. I was full of her, and yetshe was no more! As I recovered from the illness, during which mymemory had faded, each detail brought me a recollection. My grief wasa fearful reawakening of my love. The sight of the manuscript broughtmy promise back to me. I put it in a box without reading it again, although I had forgotten it, things having been blotted out of my mindduring my convalescence. I had the slab removed and the coffin opened, and a servant put the book in her hands. 

"I lived. I worked. I tried to write a book. I wrote dramas andpoems. But nothing satisfied me, and gradually I came to want our bookback. 

"I knew it was beautiful and sincere and vibrant with the two heartsthat had given themselves to each other. Then, like a coward, threeyears afterward, I tried to re-write it--to show it to the world. Anna, you must have pity on us all! But I must say it was not only thedesire for glory and praise, as in the case of the English artist, which impelled me to close my ears to the sweet, gentle voice out ofthe past, so strong in its powerlessness, 'You will not take it backfrom me, will you, Philip?' It was not only for the sake of showingoff in a book of great beauty. It was also to refresh my memory, forall our love was in that book. 

"I did not succeed in reconstructing the poems. The weakening of myfaculties soon after they were written, the three years afterwardduring which I made a devout effort not to revive the poems even inthought, since they were not to keep on living--all this had actuallywiped the book out of my mind. It was with difficulty that I recalled--and then only by chance--the mere titles of some of the poems, or a fewof the verses. Of some parts, all I retained was just a confused echo. I needed the manuscript itself, which was in the tomb. 

"One night, I felt myself going there. 

"I felt myself going there after periods of hesitation and inwardstruggles which it is useless to tell you about because the strugglesthemselves were useless. I thought of the other man, of theEnglishman, of my brother in misery and crime as I walked along thelength of the cemetery wall while the wind froze my legs. I keptsaying to myself it was not the same thing, and this insane assurancewas enough to make me keep on. 

"I asked myself if I should take a light. With a light it would bequick. I should see the box at once and should not have to touchanything else--but then I should see /everything!/ I preferred to gropein the dark. I had rubbed a handkerchief sprinkled with perfume overmy face, and I shall never forget the deception of this odour. For aninstant, in the stupefaction of my terror, I did not recognise thefirst thing I touched--her necklace--I saw it again on her living body. The box! The corpse gave it to me with a squashing sound. Somethinggrazed me faintly. 

"I had meant to tell you only a few things, Anna. I thought I shouldnot have time to tell you how everything happened. But it is betterso, better for me that you should know all. Life, which has been socruel to me, is kind at this moment when you are listening, you whowill live. And my desire to express what I felt, to revive the past, which made of me a being accursed during the days I am telling youabout, is a benefit this evening which passes from me to you, and fromyou to me. "

The young woman was bending toward him attentively. She was motionlessand silent. What could she have said, what could she have done, thatwould have been sweeter than her silent attention?

"The rest of the night I read the stolen manuscript. Was it not theonly way to forget her death and think of her life?

"I soon saw that the poems were not what I had thought them to be. 

"They game me a growing impression of being confused and much toolengthy. The book so long adored was no better than what I had doneafterwards. I recalled, step by step, the background, the occasion, the vanished gesture that had inspired these verses, and in spite oftheir resurrection, I found them undeniably commonplace andextravagant. 

"An icy despair gripped me, as I bent my head over these remains ofsong. Their sojourn in the tomb seemed to have deformed and crushedthe life out of my verses. They were as miserable as the wasted handfrom which I had taken them. They had been so sweet! 'Beautiful, beautiful!' the happy little voice had cried so many times while sheclasped her hands in admiration. 

"It was because her voice and the poems had been vibrating with lifeand because the ardour and delirium of our love had adorned my rhymeswith all their charms, that they seemed so beautiful. But all that waspast, and in reality our love was no more. 

"It was oblivion that I read at the same time as I read my book. Yes, death had been contagious. My verses had remained there too long, sleeping down below there in awful peace--in the sepulchre into which Ishould never have dared to enter if love had still been alive. She wasindeed dead. 

"I thought of what a useless and sacrilegious thing I had done and howuseless and sacrilegious everything is that we promise and swear tohere below. 

"She was indeed dead. How I cried that night. It was my true night ofmourning. When you have just lost a beloved there is a wretchedmoment, after the brutal shock, when you begin to understand that allis over, and blank despair surrounds you and looms like a giant. Thatnight was a moment of such despair when I was under the sway of mycrime and the disenchantment of my poems, greater than the crime, greater than everything. 

"I saw her again. How pretty she was, with her bright, lively ways, her animated charm, her rippling laugh, the endless number of questionsshe was always asking. I saw her again in the sunlight on the brightlawn. She was wearing a dress of old rose satin, and she bent over andsmoothed the soft folds of her skirt and looked at her little feet. (Near us was the whiteness of a statue. ) I remembered how once I hadfor fun tried to find a single flaw in her complexion. Not a spot onforehead, cheek, chin--anywhere. Her skin was as smooth as if it hadbeen polished. I felt as though that exquisite delicate face weresomething ever in flight that had paused for an instant for my sake, and I stammered, almost with tears in my voice, 'It is too much! It istoo much!' Everybody looked on her as a princess. In the streets ofthe town the shopkeepers were glad to see her pass by. Did she nothave a queenly air as she sat half-reclining on the great carved stonebench in the park, that great stone bench which was now a kind of emptytomb?

"For a moment in the midst of time I knew how much I had loved her, shewho had been alive and who was dead, who had been the sun and who wasnow a kind of obscure spring under the earth. 

"And I also mourned the human heart. That night I understood theextremes of what I had felt. Then the inevitable forgetfulness came, the time came when it did not sadden me to remember that I had mourned. 

. . . . . 

"That is the confession I wanted to make to you, Anna. I wanted thisstory of love, which is a quarter of a century old, never to end. Itwas so real and thrilling, it was such a big thing, that I told it toyou in all simplicity, to you who will survive. After that I came tolove you and I do love you. I offer to you as to a sovereign the imageof the little creature who will always be seventeen. "

He sighed. What he said proved to me once more the inadequacy ofreligion to comfort the human heart. 

"Now I adore you and you alone--I who adored her, I whom she adored. How can there possibly be a paradise where one would find happinessagain?"

His voice rose, his inert arms trembled. He came out of his profoundimmobility for a moment. 

"Ah, /you/ are the one, /you/ are the one--/you/ alone. "

And a great cry of impotence broke from him. 

"Anna, Anna, if you and I had been really married, if we had livedtogether as man and wife, if we had had children, if you had beenbeside me as you are this evening, but really beside me!"

He fell back. He had cried out so loud that even if there had been nobreach in the wall, I should have heard him in my room. He voiced hiswhole dream, he threw it out passionately. This sincerity, which wasindifferent to everything, had a definite significance which bruised myheart. 

"Forgive me. Forgive me. It is almost blasphemy. I could not helpit. "

He stopped. You felt his will-power making his face calm, his soulcompelling him to silence, but his eyes seemed to mourn. 

He repeated in a lower voice, as if to himself, "You! You!"

He fell asleep with "You" on his lips. 

. . . . . 

He died that night. I saw him die. By a strange chance he was aloneat the last moment. 

There was no death rattle, no death agony, properly speaking. He didnot claw the bedclothes with his fingers, nor speak, nor cry. No lastsigh, no last flash. 

He had asked Anna for a drink. As there was no more water in the roomand the nurse happened to be away at that moment, she had gone out toget some quickly. She did not even shut the door. 

The lamplight filled the room. I watched the man's face and felt, bysome sign, that the great silence at that moment was drowning him. 

Then instinctively I cried out to him. I could not help crying out sothat he should not be alone. 

"I see you!"

My strange voice, disused from speaking, penetrated into the room. 

But he died at the very instant that I gave him my madman's alms. Hishead dropped back stiffly, his eyeballs rolled. Anna came in again. She must have caught the sound of my outcry vaguely, for she hesitated. 

She saw him. A fearful cry burst from her with all the force of herhealthy body, a true widow's cry. She dropped on her knees at thebedside. 

The nurse came in right after her and raised her arms. Silencereigned, that flashing up of incredible misery into which you sinkcompletely in the presence of the dead, no matter who you are or whereyou are. The woman on her knees and the woman standing up watched theman who was stretched there, inert as if he had never lived. They wereboth almost dead. 

Then Anna wept like a child. She rose. The nurse went to tell theothers. Instinctively, Anna, who was wearing a light waist, picked upa black shawl that the nurse had left on a chair and put it around her. 

. . . . . 

The room, so recently desolate, now filled with life. 

They lit candles everywhere, and the stars, visible through the window, disappeared. 

They knelt down, and cried and prayed to him. The dead man heldcommand. "He" was always on their lips. Servants were there whom Ihad not yet seen but whom he knew well. These people around him allseemed to be lying, as though it was they who were suffering, they whowere dying, and he were alive. 

"He must have suffered a great deal when he died, " said the doctor, ina low voice to the nurse, at a moment when he was quite near me. 

"But he was so weak, the poor man!"

"Weakness does not prevent suffering except in the eyes of others, "said the doctor. 

. . . . . 

The next morning the drab light of the early day fell upon the facesand the melancholy funeral lights. The coming of the day, keen andcold, had a depressing effect upon the atmosphere of the room, makingit heavier, thicker. 

A voice in a low apologetic tone for a moment interrupted the silencethat had lasted for hours. 

"You mustn't open the window. It isn't good for the dead body. "

"It is cold, " some one muttered. 

Two hands went up and drew a fur piece close. Some one rose, and thensat down again. Some one else turned his head. There was a sigh. 

It was as if they had taken advantage of these few words to come out ofthe calm in which they had been concealed. Then they glanced once moreat the man on the bier--motionless, inexorably motionless. 

I must have fallen asleep when all at once I heard the church bellsringing in the grey sky. 

After that harassing night there was a relaxation from rigid attentionto the stillness of death, and an inexplicable sweetness in the ringingof the bells carried me back forcibly to my childhood. I thought ofthe countryside where I used to hear the bells ringing, of my nativeland, where everything was peaceful and good, and the snow meantChristmas, and the sun was a cool disk that one could and should lookat. 

The tolling of the bells was over. The echo quietly died away, andthen the echo of the echo. Another bell struck, sounding the hour. Eight o'clock, eight sonorous detached strokes, beating with terribleregularity, with invincible calm, simple, simple. I counted them, andwhen they had ceased to pulsate in the air, I could not help countingthem over again. It was time that was passing--formless time, and thehuman effort that defined it and regularized it and made of it a workas of destiny. 

CHAPTER XIV

I was alone. It was late at night, and I was sitting at my table. Mylamp was buzzing like summer in the fields. I lifted my eyes. Thestars studded the heavens above. The city was plunged at my feet. Thehorizon escaped from nearby into eternity. The lights and shadowsformed an infinite sphere around me. 

I was not at ease that night. I was a prey to an immense distress. Isat as if I had fallen into my chair. As on the first day I looked atmy reflection in the glass, and all I could do was just what I had donethen, simply cry, "I!"

I wanted to know the secret of life. I had seen men, groups, deeds, faces. In the twilight I had seen the tremulous eyes of beings as deepas wells. I had seen the mouth that said in a burst of glory, "I ammore sensitive than others. " I had seen the struggle to love and makeone's self understood, the refusal of two persons in conversation togive themselves to each other, the coming together of two lovers, thelovers with an infectious smile, who are lovers in name only, who burythemselves in kisses, who press wound to wound to cure themselves, between whom there is really no attachment, and who, in spite of theirecstasy deriving light from shadow, are strangers as much as the sunand the moon are strangers. I had heard those who could find no crumbof peace except in the confession of their shameful misery, and I hadseen faces pale and red-eyed from crying. I wanted to grasp it all atthe same time. All the truths taken together make only one truth. Ihad had to wait until that day to learn this simple thing. It was thistruth of truths which I needed. 

Not because of my love of mankind. It is not true that we lovemankind. No one ever has loved, does love, or will love mankind. Itwas for myself, solely for myself, that I sought to attain the fulltruth, which is above emotion, above peace, even above life, like asort of death. I wanted to derive guidance from it, a faith. I wantedto use it for my own good. 

I went over the things I had seen since living in the boarding-house. They were so numerous that I had become a stranger to myself. Iscarcely had a name any more. I fairly listened to the memory of them, and in supreme concentration I tried to see and understand what I was. It would be so beautiful to know who I was. 

I thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who hadsuffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth. I thought of theLatin poet who wished to reassure and console men by showing them truthas unveiled as a statue. A fragment of his prelude came to my mind, learned long ago, then dismissed and lost like almost everything that Ihad taken the pains to learn up till then. He said he kept watch inthe serene nights to find the words, the poem in which to convey to menthe ideas that would deliver them. For two thousand years men havealways had to be reassured and consoled. For two thousand years I havehad to be delivered. Nothing has changed the surface of things. Theteachings of Christ have not changed the surface of things, and wouldnot even if men had not ruined His teachings so that they can no longerfollow them honestly. Will the great poet come who shall settle theboundaries of belief and render it eternal, the poet who will be, not afool, not an ignorant orator, but a wise man, the great inexorablepoet? I do not know, although the lofty words of the man who died inthe boarding-house have given me a vague hope of his coming and theright to adore him already. 

But what about me--me, who am only a glance from the eye of destiny? Iam like a poet on the threshold of a work, an accursed, sterile poetwho will leave no glory behind, to whom chance /lent/ the truth thatgenius would have /given/ him, a frail work which will pass away withme, mortal and sealed to others like myself, but a sublime worknevertheless, which will show the essential outlines of life and relatethe drama of dramas. 

. . . . . 

What am I? I am the desire not to die. I have always been impelled--not that evening alone--by the need to construct the solid, powerfuldream that I shall never leave again. We are all, always, the desirenot to die. This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life'scomplexity, but at bottom this is what it is: To continue to /be, / to/be/ more and more, to develop and to endure. All the force we have, all our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves inone way or another. We intensify ourselves with new impressions, newsensations, new ideas. We endeavour to take what we do not have and toadd it to ourselves. Humanity is the desire for novelty founded uponthe fear of death. That is what it is. I have seen it myself. Instinctive movements, untrammelled utterances always tend the sameway, and the most dissimilar utterances are all alike. 

. . . . . 

But afterwards! Where are the words that will light the way? What ishumanity in the world, and what is the world?

Everything is within me, and there are no judges, and there are noboundaries and no limits to me. The /de profundis, / the effort not todie, the fall of desire with its soaring cry, all this has not stopped. It is part of the immense liberty which the incessant mechanism of thehuman heart exercises (always something different, always!). And itsexpansion is so great that death itself is effaced by it. For howcould I imagine my death, except by going outside of myself, andlooking at myself as if I were not I but somebody else?

We do not die. Each human being is alone in the world. It seemsabsurd, contradictory to say this, and yet it is so. But there aremany human beings like me. No, we cannot say that. In saying that, weset ourselves outside the truth in a kind of abstraction. All we cansay is: I am alone. 

And that is why we do not die. 

Once, bowed in the evening light, the dead man had said, "After mydeath, life will continue. Every detail in the world will continue tooccupy the same place quietly. All the traces of my passing will dielittle by little, and the void I leave behind will be filled oncemore. "

He was mistaken in saying so. He carried all the truth with him. Yetwe, /we/ saw him die. He was dead for us, but not for himself. I feelthere is a fearfully difficult truth here which we must get, aformidable contradiction. But I hold on to the two ends of it, gropingto find out what formless language will translate it. Something likethis: "Every human being is the whole truth. " I return to what Iheard. We do not die since we are alone. It is the others who die. And this sentence, which comes to my lips tremulously, at once balefuland beaming with light, announces that death is a false god. 

But what of the others? Granted that I have the great wisdom to ridmyself of the haunting dread of my own death, there remains the deathof others and the death of so many feelings and so much sweetness. Itis not the conception of truth that will change sorrow. Sorrow, likejoy, is absolute. 

And yet! The infinite grandeur of our misery becomes confused withglory and almost with happiness, with cold haughty happiness. Was itout of pride or joy that I began to smile when the first white streaksof dawn turned my lamp pale and I saw I was alone in the universe?

CHAPTER XV

It was the first time I had seen her in mourning, and that evening heryouth shone more resplendent than ever. 

Her departure was close at hand. She looked about to see if she hadleft anything behind in the room, which had been made ready for otherpeople, the room which was already formless, already abandoned. 

The door opened. The young woman turned her head. A man appeared inthe sunny doorway. 

"Michel, Michel, Michel!" she cried. 

She stretched out her arms, hesitated, and for a few seconds remainedmotionless as light, with her full gaze upon him. 

Then, in spite of where she was and the purity of her heart and thechastity of her whole life, her legs shook and she was on the verge offalling over. 

He threw his hat on the bed with a sweeping romantic gesture. Hefilled the room with his presence, with his weight. His footsteps madethe floor creak. He kept her from falling. Tall as she was, he was awhole head taller. His marked features were hard and remarkably fine. His face under a heavy head of black hair was bright and clean, asthough new. He had a drooping moustache and full red lips. 

He put his hands on the young woman's shoulders, and looked at her, inreadiness for his eager embrace. 

They held each other close, staggering. They said the same word at thesame time, "At last!" That was all they said, but they said it overand over again in a low voice, chanting it together. Their eyesuttered the same sweet cry. Their breasts communicated it to eachother. It seemed to be tying them together and making them merge intoone. At last! Their long separation was over. Their love was victor. At last they were together. And I saw her quiver from head to foot. Isaw her whole body welcome him while her eyes opened and then closed onhim again. They made a great effort to speak to each other. The fewshreds of conversation held them back a moment. 

"How I waited for you! How I longed for you!" he stammered. "Ithought of you all the time. I saw you all the time. Your smile waseverywhere. " He lowered his voice and added, "Sometimes when peoplewere talking commonplaces and your name happened to be mentioned, itwould go through my heart like an electric current. "

He panted. His deep voice burst into sonorous tones. He seemed unableto speak low. 

"Often I used to sit on the brick balustrade at the top of the terraceof our house overlooking the Channel, with my face in my hands, wondering where you were. But it did not matter how far away you were, I could not help seeing you all the same. "

"And often I, " said Anna, bending her head, "would sit at the openwindow warm evenings, thinking of you. Sometimes the air was of asuffocating sweetness, as it was two months ago at the Villa of theRoses. Tears would come to my eyes. "

"You used to cry?"

"Yes, " she said in a low voice, "for joy. "

Their mouths joined, their two small purple mouths of exactly the samecolour. They were almost indistinguishable from each other, tense inthe creative silence of the kiss, a single dark stream of flesh. 

Then he drew away a little to get a better look at her, and the nextmoment caught her in his arms and held her close. 

His words fell on her like hammer blows. 

"Down there the scent of the sap and the flowers from the many gardensnear the coast used to intoxicate me, and I wanted to burrow my fingersin the dark burning earth. I would roam about and try to remember yourface, and draw in the perfume of your body. I would stretch my armsout in the air to touch as much as possible of your sunlight. "

"I knew you were waiting for me and that you loved me, " she said, in avoice gentler but just as deep with emotion. "I saw you in yourabsence. And often, when the light of dawn entered my room and touchedme, I thought of how completely consecrated I was to your love. Thinking of you sometimes in my room in the evening, I would admiremyself. "

A thrill went through him, and he smiled. 

He kept saying the same things in scarcely different words, as if heknew nothing else. He had a childish soul and a limited mind behindthe perfect sculpture of his forehead and his great black eyes, inwhich I saw distinctly the white face of the woman floating like aswan. 

She listened to him devoutly, her mouth half open, her head thrown backlightly. Had he not held her, she would have slipped to her kneesbefore this god who was as beautiful as she. 

"The memory of you saddened my joys, but consoled my sorrows. "

I did not know which of the two said this. They embraced vehemently. They reeled. They were like two tall flames. His face burned hers, and he cried:

"I love you, I love you! All through my sleepless nights of longingfor you--oh, what a crucifixion my solitude was!

"Be mine, Anna!"

She radiated consent, but her eyes faltered, and she glanced round theroom. 

"Let us respect this room, " she breathed. Then she was ashamed athaving refused, and immediately stammered, "Excuse me. "

The man also looked around the room. His forehead darkened with asavage frown of suspicion, and the superstition of his race shone inhis eyes. 

"It was here--that he died?"

"No, " she said. 

* * * * * * * * *

Afterwards they did as the others had done, as human beings always do, as they themselves would do many times again in the strange future--theysat with their eyes half-closed and the same uneasy look of shame andterror in them as Amy and her lover. 

But these two required no artificial stimulus for their love. They hadno need of the night. And they felt no culpability. They were twogrand young creatures, driven together naturally by the very force oftheir love, and their ardour cleansed everything, like fire. They wereinnocent. They had no regrets and felt no remorse. They thought theywere united. 

He took her soft hand in his dark hand, and said: "Now you are mine foralways. You have made me know divine ecstasy. You have my heart and Ihave yours. You are my wife forever. "

"You are everything to me, " she answered. 

They went forth into life like a couple in legend, inspired and rosywith anticipation--he, the knight with no shadows falling on him exceptthe dark of his hair, helmeted or plumed, and she, the priestess of thepagan gods, the spirit of nature. 

They would shine in the sunlight. They would see nothing around them, blinded by the daylight. They would undergo no struggles except thestrife of the sexes and the spying of jealousy; for lovers are enemiesrather than friends. 

I followed them with my eyes going through life, which would be nothingto them but fields, mountains, or forests. I saw them veiled in a kindof light, sheltered from darkness, protected for a time against thefearful spell of memory and thought. 

. . . . . 

I sat down and leaned on my elbows. I thought of myself. Where was Inow after all this? What was I going to do in life? I did not know. I would look about and would surely find something. 

So, sitting there, I quietly indulged in hopes. I must have no moresadness, no more anguish and fever. If the rest of my life was to passin calm, in peace, I must go far, far away from all those awful seriousthings, the sight of which was terrible to bear. 

Somewhere I would lead a wise, busy life--and earn my living regularly. 

And you, you will be beside me, my sister, my child, my wife. 

You will be poor so as to be more like all other women. In order forus to be able to live together I shall work all day and so be yourservant. You will work affectionately for us both in this room, and inmy absence there will be nothing beside you but the pure, simplepresence of your sewing machine. You will keep the sort of order bywhich nothing is forgotten, you will practice patience which is as longas life, and maternity which is as heavy as the world. 

I shall come in, I shall open the door in the dark, I shall hear youcome from the next room, bringing the lamp. A dawn will announce you. You will tell me the quiet story of your day's work, without any objectexcept to give me your thoughts and your life. You will speak of yourchildhood memories. I shall not understand them very well because youwill be able to give me, perforce, only insufficient details, but Ishall love your sweet strange language. 

We shall speak of the child we shall have, and you will bend your headand your neck, white as milk, and in our minds we shall hear therocking of the cradle like a rustling of wings. And when we are tiredout, and even after we have grown old, we shall dream afresh along withour child. 

After this revery our thoughts will not stray, but linger tenderly. Inthe evening we shall think of the night. You will be full of a happythought. Your inner life will be gay and shining, not because of whatyou see, but because of your heart. You will beam as blind peoplebeam. 

We shall sit up facing each other. But little by little, as it getslate, our words will become fewer and less intelligible. Sleep willlay bare your soul. You will fall asleep over the table, you will feelme watching over you more and more. 

Tenderness is greater than love. I do not admire carnal love when itis by itself and bare. I do not admire its disorderly selfishparoxysms, so grossly short-lived. And yet without love the attachmentof two human beings is always weak. Love must be added to affection. The things it contributes to a union are absolutely needed--exclusiveness, intimacy, and simplicity. 

CHAPTER XVI

I went out on the street like an exile, I who am an everyday man, whoresemble everybody else so much, too much. I went through the streetsand crossed the squares with my eyes fixed upon things without seeingthem. I was walking, but I seemed to be falling from dream to dream, from desire to desire. A door ajar, an open window gave me a pang. Awoman passing by grazed against me, a woman who told me nothing of whatshe might have told me. I dreamed of her tragedy and of mine. Sheentered a house, she disappeared, she was dead. 

I stood still, a prey to a thousand thoughts, stifled in the robe ofthe evening. From a closed window on the ground floor floated a strainof music. I caught the beauty of a sonata as I would catch distincthuman words, and for a moment I listened to what the piano wasconfiding to the people inside. 

Then I sat down on a bench. On the opposite side of the avenue lit bythe setting sun two men also seated themselves on a bench. I saw themclearly. They seemed overwhelmed by the same destiny, and a mutualsympathy seemed to unite them. You could tell they liked each other. One was speaking, the other was listening. 

I read a secret tragedy. As boys they had been immensely fond of eachother. They had always been of the same mind and shared their ideas. One of them got married, and it was the married one who was nowspeaking. He seemed to be feeding their common sorrow. 

The bachelor had been in the habit of visiting his home, always keepinghis proper distance, though perhaps vaguely loving the young wife. However, he respected her peace and her happiness. The married man wastelling him that his wife had ceased to love him, while he still adoredher with his whole being. She had lost interest in him, and turnedaway from him. She did not laugh and did not smile except when therewere other people present. He spoke of this grief, this wound to hislove, to his right. His right! He had unconsciously believed that hehad a right over her, and he lived in this belief. Then he found outthat he had no right. 

Here the friend thought of certain things she had said to him, of asmile she had given him. Although he was good and modest and stillperfectly pure, a warm, irresistible hope insinuated itself into hisheart. Listening to the story of despair that his friend confided tohim, he raised his face bit by bit and gave the woman a smile. Andnothing could keep that evening, now falling grey upon those two men, from being at once an end and a beginning. 

A couple, a man and a woman--poor human beings almost always go inpairs--approached, and passed. I saw the empty space between them. Inlife's tragedy, separation is the only thing one sees. They had beenhappy, and they were no longer happy. They were almost old already. He did not care for her, although they were growing old together. Whatwere they saying? In a moment of open-heartedness, trusting to thepeacefulness reigning between them at that time, he owned up to an oldtransgression, to a betrayal scrupulously and religiously hidden untilthen. Alas, his words brought back an irreparable agony. The past, which had gently lain dead, rose to life again for suffering. Theirformer happiness was destroyed. The days gone by, which they hadbelieved happy, were made sad; and that is the woe in everything. 

This couple was effaced by another, a young one, whose conversation Ialso imagined. They were beginning, they were going to love. Theirhearts were so shy in finding each other. "Do you want me to go onthat trip?" "Shall I do this and that?" She answered, "No. " Anintense feeling of modesty gave this first avowal of love so humblysolicited the form of a disavowal. But yet they were already thinkingof the full flower of their love. 

Other couples passed by, and still others. This one now--he talking, she saying nothing. It was difficult for him to master himself. Hebegged her to tell him what she was thinking of. She answered. Helistened. Then, as if she had said nothing, he begged her again, stillharder, to tell him. There he was, uncertain, oscillating betweennight and day. All he needed was for her to say one word, if he onlybelieved it. You saw him, in the immense city, clinging to that onebeing. The next instant I was separated from these two lovers whowatched and persecuted each other. 

Turn where you will, everywhere, the man and the woman ever confrontingeach other, the man who loves a hundred times, the woman who has thepower to love so much and to forget so much. I went on my way again. I came and went in the midst of the naked truth. I am not a man ofpeculiar and exceptional traits. I recognise myself in everybody. Ihave the same desires, the same longings as the ordinary human being. Like everybody else I am a copy of the truth spelled out in the Room, which is, "I am alone and I want what I have not and what I shall neverhave. " It is by this need that people live, and by this need thatpeople die. 

But now I was tired of having desired too much. I suddenly felt old. I should never recover from the wound in my breast. The dream of peacethat I had had a moment before attracted and tempted me only because itwas far away. Had I realised it, I should simply have dreamed anotherdream. 

. . . . . 

Now I looked for a word. The people who live my truth, what do theysay when they speak of themselves? Does the echo of what I am thinkingissue from their mouths, or error, or falsehood?

Night fell. I looked for a word like mine, a word to lean upon, a wordto sustain me. And it seemed to me that I was going along groping myway as if expecting some one to come from round the corner and tell meeverything. 

I did not return to my room. I did not want to leave the crowds thatevening. I looked for a place that was alive. 

I went into a large restaurant so as to hear voices around me. Therewere only a few vacant places, and I found a seat in a corner near atable at which three people were dining. I gave my order, and while myeyes mechanically followed the white-gloved hand pouring soup into myplate from a silver cup, I listened to the general hubbub. 

All I could catch was what my three neighbours were saying. They weretalking of people in the place whom they knew, then of various friends. Their persiflage and the consistent irony of their remarks surprisedme. 

Nothing they said was worth the while, and the evening promised to beuseless like the rest. 

A few minutes later, the head waiter, while serving me with filets ofsole, nodded his head and winked his eye in the direction of one of theguests. 

"M. Villiers, the famous writer, " he whispered proudly. 

I recognised M. Villiers. He resembled his portraits and bore hisyoung glory gracefully. I envied that man his ability to write and saywhat he thought. I studied his profile and admired its worldlydistinction. It was a fine modern profile, the straightness of itbroken by the silken point of his well-kept moustache, by the perfectcurve of his shoulder, and by the butterfly's wing of his whitenecktie. 

I lifted my glass to my lips when suddenly I stopped and felt all myblood rush to my heart. 

This is what I heard:

"What's the theme of the novel you're working on?"

"Truth, " replied Pierre Villiers. 

"What?" exclaimed his friend. 

"A succession of human beings caught just as they are. "

"What subject?" somebody asked. 

People turned and listened to him. Two young diners not far awaystopped talking and put on an idling air, evidently with their earspricked. In a sumptuous purple alcove, a man in evening clothes, withsunken eyes and drawn features, was smoking a fat cigar, his whole lifeconcentrated in the fragrant glow of his tobacco. His companion, herbare elbow on the table, enveloped in perfume and sparkling withjewels, and overloaded with the heavy artificiality of luxury, turnedher simple moon-like face toward the speaker. 

"This is the subject, " said Pierre Villiers. "It gives me scope toamuse and tell the truth at the same time. A man pierces a hole in thewall of a boarding-house room, and watches what is going on in the nextroom. "

. . . . . 

I must have looked at the speakers just then with a rather sorryexpression of bewilderment. Then I quickly lowered my head like achild afraid to be seen. 

They had spoken for /me, / and I sensed a strange secret serviceintrigue around me. Then, in an instant this impression, which had gotthe better of my common sense, gave way. Evidently a pure coincidence. Still I was left with the vague apprehension that they were going tonotice that I /knew, / and were going to recognise me. 

One of the novelist's friends begged him to tell more of his story. Heconsented. 

He was going to tell it in my presence!

. . . . . 

With admirable art in the use of words, gestures, and mimicry, and witha lively elegance and a contagious laugh, he described a series ofbrilliant, surprising scenes. Under cover of his scheme, which broughtall the scenes out into peculiar relief and gave them a specialintensity, he retailed a lot of amusing oddities, described comicalpersons and things, heaped up picturesque and piquant details, coinedtypical and witty proper names, and invented complicated and ingenioussituations. He succeeded in producing irresistible effects, and thewhole was in the latest style. 

They said, "Ah!" and "Oh!" and opened their eyes wide. 

"Bravo! A sure success! A corking funny idea!"

"All the characters who pass before the eyes of the man spying uponthem are amusing, even the man who kills himself. Nothing forgotten. The whole of humanity is there. "

But I had not recognized a single thing in the entire show. 

A stupor and a sort of shame overwhelmed me as I heard that man tryingto extract the utmost entertainment possible from the dark happeningsthat had been torturing me for a month. 

I thought of that great voice, now silenced, which had said so clearlyand forcefully that the writers of to-day imitate the caricaturists. I, who had penetrated into the heart of humanity and returned again, found nothing human in this jiggling caricature! It was so superficialthat it was a lie. 

He said in front of me--of me the awful witness:

"It is man stripped of all outward appearances that I want people tosee. Others are fiction, I am the truth. "

"It has a philosophical bearing, too. "

"Perhaps. But that wasn't my object. Thank God, I am a writer, andnot a thinker. "

And he continued to travesty the truth, and I was impotent--the truth, that profound thing whose voice was in my ears, whose shadow was in myeyes, and whose taste was in my mouth. 

Was I so utterly forsaken? Would no one speak the word I was in searchof?

. . . . . 

The Room was flooded with moonlight. In that magnificent setting therewas an obscure white couple, two silent human beings with marble faces. 

The fire was out. The clock had finished its work and had stopped, andwas listening with its heart. 

The man's face dominated. The woman was at his feet. They didnothing. An air of tenderness hovered over them. They looked likemonuments gazing at the moon. 

He spoke. I recognised his voice. It lit up his face for me, whichhad been shrouded from my sight before. It was /he, / the namelesslover and poet whom I had seen twice before. 

He was telling Amy that on his way that evening he had met a poorwoman, with her baby in her arms. 

She walked, jostled and borne along by the crowd returning home fromwork, and finally was tossed aside up against a post under a porch, andstopped as though nailed there. 

"I went up to her, " he said, "and saw she was smiling. 

. . . . . 

"What was she smiling at? At life, on account of her child. Under therefuge where she was cowering, facing the setting sun, she was thinkingof the growth of her child in the days to come. However terrible theymight be, they would be around him, for him, in him. They would be thesame thing as her breath, her walk, her look. 

"So profound was the smile of this creator who bore her burden and whoraised her head and gazed into the sun, without even looking down atthe child or listening to its babbling. 

"I worked this woman and child up into a poem. "

He remained motionless for a moment, then said gently without pausing, in that voice from the Beyond which we assume when we recite, obeyingwhat we say and no longer mastering it:

"The woman from the depths of her rags, a waif, a martyr--smiled. Shemust have a divine heart to be so tired and yet smile. She loved thesky, the light, which the unformed little being would love some day. She loved the chilly dawn, the sultry noontime, the dreamy evening. The child would grow up, a saviour, to give life to everything again. Starting at the dark bottom he would ascend the ladder and begin lifeover again, life, the only paradise there is, the bouquet of nature. He would make beauty beautiful. He would make eternity over again withhis voice and his song. And clasping the new-born infant close, shelooked at all the sunlight she had given the world. Her arms quiveredlike wings. She dreamed in words of fondling. She fascinated all thepassersby that looked at her. And the setting sun bathed her neck andhead in a rosy reflection. She was like a great rose that opens itsheart to the whole world. "

The poet seemed to be searching for something, to be seeing things, andbelieving infinitely. He was in another world where everything we seeis true and everything we say is unforgettable. 

Amy was still on her knees with eyes upraised to his. She was allattention, filled with it like a precious vase. 

"But her smile, " he went on, "was not only in wonder about the future. There was also something tragic in it, which pierced my heart. Iunderstood it perfectly. She adored life, but she detested men and wasafraid of them, always on account of the child. She already disputedover him with the living, although he himself was as yet scarcely amongthe living. She defied them with her smile. She seemed to say tothem, 'He will live in spite of you, he will use you, he will subdueyou either to dominate you or to be loved by you. He is alreadybraving you with his tiny breath, this little one that I am holding inmy maternal grasp. ' She was terrible. At first, I had seen her as anangel of goodness. Now, although she had not changed, she was like anangel of mercilessness and vengeance. I saw a sort of hatred for thosewho would trouble him distort her face, resplendent with superhumanmaternity. Her cruel heart was full of one heart only. It foresaw sinand shame. It hated men and settled accounts with them like adestroying angel. She was the mother with fearful nails, standingerect, and laughing with a torn mouth. "

Amy gazed at her lover in the moonlight. It seemed to me that herlooks and his words mingled. 

"I come back as I always do to the greatness of mankind's curse, and Irepeat it with the monotony of those who are always right--oh, withoutGod, without a harbour, without enough rags to cover us, all we have, standing erect on the land of the dead, is the rebellion of our smile, the rebellion of being gay when darkness envelops us. We are divinelyalone, the heavens have fallen on our heads. "

The heavens have fallen on our heads! What a tremendous idea! It isthe loftiest cry that life hurls. That was the cry of deliverance forwhich I had been groping until then. I had had a foreboding it wouldcome, because a thing of glory like a poet's song always givessomething to us poor living shadows, and human thought always revealsthe world. But I needed to have it said explicitly so as to bringhuman misery and human grandeur together. I needed it as a key to thevault of the heavens. 

These heavens, that is to say, the azure that our eyes enshrine, purity, plenitude--and the infinite number of suppliants, the sky oftruth and religion. All this is within us, and has fallen upon ourheads. And God Himself, who is all these kinds of heavens in one, hasfallen on our heads like thunder, and His infinity is ours. 

We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with itstoilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine. However wrongwe may go in the dark, whatever our efforts in the dark and the uselesswork of our hearts working incessantly, and whatever our ignorance leftto itself, and whatever the wounds that other human beings are, weought to study ourselves with a sort of devotion. It is this sentimentthat lights our foreheads, uplifts our souls, adorns our pride, and, inspite of everything, will console us when we shall become accustomed toholding, each at his own poor task, the whole place that God used tooccupy. The truth itself gives an effective, practical, and, so tospeak, religious caress to the suppliant in whom the heavens spread. 

. . . . . 

"I have such respect for the actual truth that there are moments when Ido not dare to call things by their name, " the poet ended. 

"Yes, " said Amy, very softly, and nothing else. She had been listeningintently. Everything seemed to be carried away in a sort of gentlewhirlwind. 

"Amy, " he whispered. 

She did not stir. She had fallen asleep with her head on her lover'sknees. He looked at her and smiled. An expression of pity andbenevolence flitted across his face. His hands stretched out part waytoward the sleeping woman with the gentleness of strength. I saw theglorious pride of condescension and charity in this man whom a womanprostrate before him deified. 

CHAPTER XVII

I have given notice. I am going away to-morrow evening, I with mytremendous memory. Whatever may happen, whatever tragedies may bereserved for me in the future, my thought will not be graver or moreimportant when I shall have lived my life with all its weight. 

But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs any more. Istagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smartingtears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My bodybecomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh isenraged against me. 

I hear voices through the wall. The next room vibrates with a distantsound, a mist of sound which scarcely comes through the wall. 

I shall not be able to listen any more, or look into the room, or hearanything distinctly. And I, who have not cried since my childhood, Icry now like a child because of all that I shall never have. I cryover lost beauty and grandeur. I love everything that I should haveembraced. 

Here they will pass again, day after day, year after year, all theprisoners of rooms will pass with their kind of eternity. In thetwilight when everything fades, they will sit down near the light, inthe room full of haloes. They will drag themselves to the window'svoid. Their mouths will join and they will grow tender. They willexchange a first or a last useless glance. They will open their arms, they will caress each other. They will love life and be afraid todisappear. Here below they will seek a perfect union of hearts. Upabove they will seek everlastingness among the shades and a God in theclouds. 

. . . . . 

The monotonous murmur of voices comes through the wall steadily, but Ido not catch what is being said. I am like anybody else in a room. 

I am lost, just as I was the evening I came here when I took possessionof this room used by people who had disappeared and died--before thisgreat change of light took place in my destiny. 

Perhaps because of my fever, perhaps because of my lofty pain, Iimagine that some one there is declaiming a great poem, that some oneis speaking of Prometheus. He has stolen light from the gods. In hisentrails he feels the pain, always beginning again, always fresh, gathering from evening to evening, when the vulture steals to him as itwould steal to its nest. And you feel that we are all like Prometheusbecause of desire, but there is neither vulture nor gods. 

There is no paradise except that which we create in the great tomb ofthe churches. There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy ofliving. 

There is no mysterious fire. I have stolen the truth. I have stolenthe whole truth. I have seen sacred things, tragic things, purethings, and I was right. I have seen shameful things, and I was right. And so I have entered the kingdom of truth, if, while preservingrespect to truth and without soiling it, we can use the expression thatdeceit and religious blasphemy employ. 

. . . . . 

Who shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simpleBible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of ourdoings, our goings, our original fall? Who will dare to telleverything, who will have the genius to see everything?

I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty willbe mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, themore I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certainmemories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. SometimesI myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence sostrong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like aforest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence criedout. 

But I have stolen all this, and I have profited by it, thanks to theshamelessness of the truth revealed. At the point in space in which, by accident, I found myself, I had only to open my eyes and to stretchout my mendicant hands to accomplish more than a dream, to accomplishalmost a work. 

What I have seen is going to disappear, since I shall do nothing withit. I am like a mother the fruit of whose womb will perish after ithas been born. 

What matter? I have heard the annunciation of whatever finer thingsare to come. Through me has passed, without staying me in my course, the Word which does not lie, and which, said over again, will satisfy. 

. . . . . 

But I have finished. I am lying stretched out, and now that I haveceased to see, my poor eyes close like a healing wound and a scar formsover them. 

And I seek assuagement for myself. I! The last cry, as it was thefirst. 

As for me, I have only one recourse, to remember and to believe. Tohold on with all my strength to the memory of the tragedy of the Room. 

I believe that the only thing which confronts the heart and the reasonis the shadow of that which the heart and the reason cry for. Ibelieve that around us there is only one word, the immense word whichtakes us out of our solitude, NOTHING. I believe that this does notsignify our nothingness or our misfortune, but, on the contrary, ourrealisation and our deification, since everything is within us. 

THE END