SUMMER




BEING VOLUME TWO OF

_The Soul Enchanted_




By

ROMAIN ROLLAND




_Translated from the French by_

ELEANOR STIMSON & VAN WYCK BROOKS




NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1925




_Summer_ is the second volume of a work in several volumes that bears
the title: _The Soul Enchanted_.

The first volume is entitled _Annette and Sylvie_.




To strive, to seek, _not_ to find, and not to yield.




CONTENTS
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
PART TWO
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
PART THREE
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLIII
CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLVI
CHAPTER XLVII
CHAPTER XLVIII
CHAPTER XLIX
CHAPTER L
CHAPTER LI




_SUMMER_

PART ONE




I


On the half-light of the room, with its closed shutters, Annette was
sitting on her bed, smiling, with her white dressing-gown wrapped about
her. Her unbound hair, which she had just washed, covered her shoulders.
Through the open windows could be seen the motionless, golden warmth of
an August mid-afternoon; without observing it, one felt out there the
torpor of the Jardin de Boulogne sleeping in the sunlight. Annette
shared in this beatitude. She could rest there for hours, stretched out,
without stirring, without thinking, without needing to think. It was
enough for her to know that there were two of her; and she did not even
make an effort to talk with the "little one" who was inside her,
because--of this she was sure--he felt what she felt, they understood
one another without speaking. Waves of tenderness passed through the
happy somnolence of her body. And then she relapsed again into a happy
smile.

But if her mind was drowsy, her senses had retained a marvelous
clairvoyance; they followed from moment to moment the fine vibrations of
the air and the light. . . . A fragrant odor of strawberries in the
garden. . . . She enjoyed it with her nostrils and her tongue. Her
amused ear caught the slightest sound, the leaves brushed by a breeze, a
footstep on the gravel, a voice in the street, a bell ringing for
vespers. And the rumble ascending from the great crowds: Paris in
1900 . . . the summer of the Exposition. In the vat of the Champ de Mars
thousands of human grapes were fermenting in the sun. . . . Far enough
away, yet close enough to the monstrous bubbling to feel its presence
and to be safe from it, Annette rejoiced in the contrast of the peace
and the shade of her nest. Vain tumult! The truth dwells within
me. . . .





II


Her hearing, subtle and wandering like that of a cat, seized upon every
sound that passed, one after another, and idly let it fall again; from
the floor below she caught the ring of the door-bell and recognized the
little steps of Sylvie, who was always in a hurry. Annette would have
preferred to be left alone. But she was so solidly settled in her
happiness that, no matter who came, nothing could disturb her.

It was only eight days since Sylvie had received her news. Since last
spring she had heard nothing from her sister. A personal adventure that
had not affected her very much had yet been enough to fill her thoughts:
she had not realized how long the silence had been. But when the affair
was settled and she found her mind free again, with time to think of it,
she began to be troubled. She went to her aunt at the Boulogne house for
news. She was very much surprised to hear that Annette had come back
some time before. She was rather inclined to give the forgetful soul a
good snubbing, but Annette tactfully turned her to another subject that
surprised her; gently but feelingly, she had simply told her the whole
story. Sylvie found it very difficult to listen to the end. That
Annette, the sensible Annette, had done this mad thing and refused to
marry afterwards, no, it was unheard of, she simply wouldn't tolerate
it! . . . This little Lucretia was scandalized. She railed at Annette;
she called her an idiot. Annette remained calm. It was plain that
nothing could make her change her mind. Sylvie realized that she had no
hold on this obstinate soul: she would have liked to give her a good
whipping! . . . But how was it possible to remain angry with such a
lovable person who listened as you spoke with such a disarming smile!
And then the mysterious charm of this maternity. . . . Sylvie
anathematized it as a calamity, but she was too much a woman not to be
touched. . . .

And to-day she had come again, with her mind made up to give Annette a
good raking over the coals, to break down her stupid resistance, to
oblige her to insist on marriage. . . . "If you don't, if you don't, I
shall be furious! . . ." She came in like a gust of wind, smelling of
rice-powder and battle. And to make a start, without saying
good-morning, she began scolding about this mad way of passing one's
days, shut up in the dark. But catching sight of the happy eyes of
Annette, who stretched out her arms to her, she ran to her and hugged
her. She went on scolding: "Fool! Silly! Arch-fool! . . . With her
sweeping hair over her long white dressing-gown she looks like an
angel. . . . But what a mistake it would be to think she was! . . . The
sanctimonious wretch! The little scamp! . . ."

She shook her. Weariedly, contentedly, Annette let her have her way.
Sylvie stopped in the middle of her tirade, took her sister's forehead
between her hands and pushed back her hair. "She is fresh, she is pink,
never have I seen her with such beautiful color. And that look of
triumph! Good reason for it! Aren't you ashamed?"

"Not in the least!" said Annette. "I am happier than I have ever been
before. And so strong, so well. For the first time in my life I feel
complete, I desire nothing more. This longing that is going to be
fulfilled for a child goes back so far in my life! Ever since I was a
child myself. . . . Yes, when I was seven years old I was already
dreaming of it."

"That's a fib," said Sylvie. "Only six months ago you told me you had
never felt that maternity was your vocation."

"Do you really think that? Did I really say that?" said Annette,
disconcerted. "It's true, I did say it. But I haven't lied, just the
same, either now or then. . . . How explain it? I am not pretending. I
remember clearly."

"I know how it is," said Sylvie. "When I have a fancy for something, I
often immediately remember that I have never wanted anything but that
since the day I was born."

Annette frowned; she was not satisfied. "The nature I feel to-day is my
real nature. It always has been, but I didn't dare confess it to myself
before the time came; I was afraid I was mistaken. Now . . . Oh! now, I
see that it is even more beautiful than I had hoped. And it is my whole
self. I want nothing more."

"When you wanted Roger or Tullio," said Sylvie maliciously, "you wanted
nothing more."

"Oh, you don't understand anything! . . . Can the two things be
compared? When I was in love (what you call 'love'), it wasn't I who
wished it, I was forced. . . . How I suffered from that force that held
me, without being able to resist it! . . . And now you see how my little
one has come to my rescue when I was struggling in the bonds of the
misery they call love, how he came, how he has saved me. My little
liberator!"

Sylvie began to laugh. She had not in the least understood her sister's
reasons. But she did not need any reasons to understand her maternal
instinct: on that subject the two sisters would always be in accord.
They began to chat affectionately about the little unknown creature (was
it going to be a man or a woman?)--discussing a thousand nothings,
serious and foolish, about its coming, things about which a woman never
wearies of chattering.

They had been talking this way for a long time when Sylvie remembered
that she had come to administer her lesson, not to sing a duet.
"Annette," she said, "enough of this nonsense! There is a time for
everything. Roger owes you marriage, and you must insist on it."

Annette made a weary gesture. "Why go back to that? I have told you that
Roger offered it to me and that I refused."

"Well, when one has been stupid one should recognize it and change."

"I have no desire to change."

"Why don't you want to? You loved this man. I am sure you still love
him. What has happened?"

Annette was unwilling to reply. Sylvie insisted, tactlessly seeking for
the deep, personal reasons for their disagreement. Annette made an
impatient gesture. Sylvie looked at her, astonished. Annette's
expression was angry, her brows were knitted, her eyes full of
irritation.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," said Annette, turning aside hastily.

Sylvie had touched a wound that she wanted to forget. Through an
inconsistency she could not have explained, but which came from the
depths of her nature, she who rejoiced at the coming of the child bore a
grudge against the man who had given it to her; she could not forgive
herself because her senses had been taken by surprise, because of the
passion that had betrayed her in this way--she could not forgive the man
who had seized such an opportunity. This instinctive recoil had been the
true, hidden reason (hidden from her as from the others) for her flight
from Roger and her refusal to see him again. In the depths of her being
she hated him because she had loved him. But as her mind was
straightforward she repressed these instincts which she felt to be evil.
Why was Sylvie forcing her to become aware of them? . . .

Sylvie looked at her and insisted no more. Annette, calm again, ashamed
of what she had allowed to become visible, of what she had seen herself,
tried to change the subject and said quietly, "I don't want to marry. I
am not made for these exclusive bonds. You may tell me that millions of
women get used to them, that I exaggerate their seriousness. But I am
made in such a way that I take everything seriously. If I give myself, I
give myself, too much, and then I am smothered; I feel as if I were
drowning with a stone around my neck. Perhaps I am not strong enough. My
personality is not firmly established. Ties that are too close are
bind-weeds that drain my energy; and there is not enough left for me. I
try to please the 'other person,' to be like the image of what he wants
me to be, and this ends badly. For in renouncing too much of one's
nature one loses one's self-respect and cannot live any more; or one
revolts and causes suffering. No, I am an egoist, Sylvie. I was made to
live alone."

(Although she was not in any sense lying, she was uttering pretexts that
masked the truth from herself.)

"You amuse me," said Sylvie. "You are the last woman to live without
love."

"I hate it," said Annette. "But it will not catch me again now. I am
protected from it."

"Beautifully protected!" said Sylvie. "He won't protect you in the
least; you will have to protect him. You don't want to bind yourself,
but have you thought of the fetters this little bundle is going to mean
for you?"

"Happiness! With my arms filled, these arms that have been empty so
long!"

"You are talking without thinking. Who is going to bring him up?"

"I."

"What about the father? He has rights over his child."

A new cloud of irritation passed over Annette's brows. . . . Rights!
Rights over his child! . . . His child! The child of that man, that
blind moment which he has already forgotten and which binds me for
life! . . . Never! . . . My child is mine! . . . She said, "My child
belongs to me."

"He will belong to whom he likes."

"Oh, I know whom he's going to like!"

"Seducer! And suppose that, in spite of everything, he reproaches you
some day for depriving him of a father!"

"I shall fill his heart so full that there won't remain the tiniest
place for regrets for anyone else."

"You are a monster of egoism."

"I said I was."

"You will be punished."

"Well, so much the worse for me if I can't make him love me! What's to
prevent me from loving him and why shouldn't he love me?"

"If you really love him you should think first of his future. Plenty of
other people have been obliged to accept a disagreeable marriage for the
sake of the child."

"You revolt me," said Annette, "praising those women who condemn
themselves to a false marriage, sometimes one built on hatred, out of
love for the child. You remind me of that mother who told her daughter
she had endured hell for her sake by remaining married. The daughter
replied: 'Do you think hell is a good home for a child?'"

"The child needs a father."

"But how about the thousands of people who have gone without one? How
many have never known one at all! How many have lost their fathers in
early childhood and have been brought up by their mothers alone! Are
they inferior to other people? The child needs a protecting love. Why
should not mine be enough?"

"You overestimate your strength. Do you know what is awaiting you?"

"I know, I know! The little arms of a child about my neck."

"But do you know the price the world will make you pay for it? It would
be much better for you to be married and an adulteress four times over
than to have people brand you with the name of an unmarried mother. To
dare to assume the pains and responsibilities of motherhood without
having first accepted the stamp of their official marriage is something
for which a woman of their class is never pardoned. It would be all
right for me. What people like myself do is of no consequence. Your
bourgeois people even find that it pays to have things so. They are
ready enough to praise free love in the working-class, as they do in
_Louise_, but a girl of the bourgeoisie belongs in a private preserve.
You are their property. They can buy you by contract, before a lawyer;
you can't give yourself in the presence of heaven and say, 'It's my
right.' Good Lord, where would we end if property revolted against its
master and said, 'I am free! Let anyone who wishes come and cultivate
me.'"

Even when she was indignant Sylvie could not speak seriously.

Annette smiled and said, "Customs are made by man. I know. He condemns
the woman who dares to have her children outside of marriage without
dedicating herself for life to the father of her children. But for many
women this means slavery, for they do not love their husbands. Many a
woman would remain free and alone with her little ones if she had the
courage. I shall try to have it."

Sylvie said, with a touch of pity, "Poor innocent! Your life has been
shielded from hardships by the double windows of this bourgeoisie that
shuts you in with its prejudices--and its privileges also. Once you
leave it, you will never be allowed to enter it again, and you will have
a glimpse then of what life is!"

"Well, Sylvie, that's only fair; you are right in saying that I have
been privileged; it will be good for me to have my share in what you
suffer."

"Too late! One must learn that in childhood. At your age it's no longer
possible. Luckily you are rich, you will never know material suffering.
But the other, moral suffering . . . your class will cast you out,
public opinion will condemn you, every day you will have to endure some
little insult. . . . You have a proud and tender heart. It will bleed."

"It will bleed, but one enjoys happiness all the more if one has to pay
for it. I want nothing but health and an honest mind. Public opinion has
no terrors for me."

"But what if your child suffers from it?"

"Would they dare? Well, we shall fight together against the cowards."

Sitting upright again on her bed, she shook her hair like a lioness.

Sylvie studied her, did her best to preserve her look of severity, was
unable to do so, laughed, shrugged her shoulders and sighed, "Poor
little idiot!"

Annette coaxingly asked her, "Will you help us?"

Sylvie hugged her furiously. And she shook her fist at the wall.
"Beware, anyone who touches you!"


She left. Annette, fatigued by the discussion, fell back into her
reverie. This time she had won in the encounter with her sister. But one
disturbing thing remained from the conversation, one word uttered by
Sylvie . . . Would the child some day reproach her? . . .

Stretched out on her back, with her hands crossed over her breast, she
listened to what was within her. The tiny creature was beginning to
stir. Annette, with her lips closed, spoke to him as she had so often
done. She asked him if she was doing right in keeping him for herself
alone; she begged him instantly to tell her if she was right, if he was
satisfied: for she would do nothing for which he could blame her.
Whereupon the child, naturally enough, replied that she was doing right,
that he was satisfied. He said he wanted to be hers, hers alone, and
that in order to dedicate herself to him she should remain free and live
with him alone. She and he. . . .

Annette laughed with happiness. Her heart was so full that she could not
speak. And with her head heavy and intoxicated with her joy she fell
asleep. . . .




III


As soon as Annette's condition began to be visible, Sylvie obliged her
sister to move away from Paris. It was the beginning of autumn; before
long her friends would be coming back from their vacations. Surprisingly
enough, Annette offered no resistance. She was not afraid of public
opinion, but anything that might mean discord just now would have been
intolerable to her; nothing must disturb her harmony!

She allowed herself to be conducted by Sylvie to a place on the Côte
d'Azure, but she did not stay there. It offered her no peaceful
seclusion. The neighborhood of the sea made her feel uncomfortable.
Annette was a landswoman. She could marvel at the ocean, but she could
not live on familiar terms with it. She submitted to the powerful
fascination of its breath, but this breath was not beneficial to her. It
reawoke in her too many hidden anxieties; it aroused what she did not
wish to be conscious of . . . not yet, not now. . . . There are beings
whom we do not love because, they say, we are afraid to love them. (Does
that mean we do love them?) Annette fought against the sea because she
was fighting against herself, against a dangerous Annette from whom she
was trying to escape. . . .

She set out again northward, to the neighborhood of the Savoyard lakes,
and took quarters for the winter in a little town at the foot of the
mountains. Sylvie was only informed after she was settled. Kept in Paris
by her work, she could only make her sister brief, occasional visits,
and it troubled her to know that Annette was alone in this forsaken
spot. But Annette, during this time, could not be alone enough, nor
could the spot be sufficiently forsaken. She would have found a
hermitage delightful. The richer her inner life was, the more need she
felt for a clear, soundless atmosphere. She did not suffer, as Sylvie
supposed, from being abandoned to strange hands in her condition. In the
first place, she had so much affection to give that no one seemed to her
a stranger, and, as sympathy attracts sympathy, she did not long remain
a stranger to anyone else. It was not that the country-people, who had
little curiosity, put themselves out to know her. They bowed back and
forth, exchanged a few cordial words as they passed, or from their
doorsteps or over the hedges. They wished each other well. Probably in
case of need she could not have counted too far on this good will, but,
such as it was, it still meant a good deal in the daily round. The days
were lighter for it. Annette found the cool kindness of these good
souls, of whom she knew nothing and who left her alone, more to her
taste than the tyrannical exactions of relatives and friends who assume
over us the rights of heavy-handed guardians.

Mid-November. . . . Sitting by the window, sewing, she looked out at the
new-fallen snow over the fields and the white-capped trees. But her eyes
returned to a wedding announcement. . . . The marriage of Roger Brissot
to a young girl of the political world in Paris. (Annette knew
her.) . . . Roger had lost no time. The Brissot ladies, angered by
Annette's flight, had hastened to bring about another wedding before people
should begin to gossip about their son's discomfiture, and Roger, in his
resentment, had accepted their choice. Annette could feel no surprise,
nor could she complain. She forced herself to think that she was glad
for poor Roger's sake. But the news disturbed her more than she would
have wished. So many memories quivered in her soul and her flesh! And
there, in that flesh, was the life brought into being by him. . . . In
the depths of the shadow, the agitations of those former days were
stirring. . . . No, no, Annette would not allow them to come out into
the open! She felt an aversion for those fevers of the past. Everything
that was sensual wearied her. Disgust, revolt. And that animosity. (She
acknowledged it now.) The echo of the ancestral hatred of the female for
the male who has fertilized her.

She sewed; she sewed; she wanted to forget. Often when she was nervous
and saw a dangerous cloud gathering on the horizon, she had recourse to
the prayer-wheel of work. She sewed, and her thoughts slipped back into
their proper order.

So they slipped back to-day. After half an hour of silent application,
her anxiety had passed, her smile had reappeared. As Annette lifted the
forehead that was bent over her work, her eyes were peaceful and she
said, "So be it!"

The sun laughed over the snow. Annette left her work and dressed to go
out. Her ankles and her feet were a little swollen and she had to force
herself to walk; but once she was outside she found that she enjoyed it.
For her little companion was with her as she strolled along. He was
making his presence known now. In the evening especially he measured the
dimensions of his nest; he groped about in all directions.

"Heavens, how narrow this is!" he seemed to say. "Is it never going to
end?"

Then he went to sleep again. By day, when she was out walking, he was
well-behaved. But he seemed to be looking out through his mother's eyes,
for to these eyes everything appeared to be new. What fresh colors!
Nature had just placed them on the canvas. Annette's cheeks too had a
beautiful color. Her heart beat more vigorously and her blood ran. She
enjoyed every odor, every taste; when nobody was looking she would eat a
little snow by the roadside. Delicious! She remembered that as a child
she had done the same thing when her nurse's back was turned. And she
sucked the stems of the damp, frozen reeds. She had a shiver of
epicurean delight down the whole length of her throat; as the snowflakes
melted on her tongue, she too melted with the luxurious pleasure of it.

After she had walked for an hour or two in the country, along the snowy
roads, alone yet not alone, alone but with all the company in the world,
under the grey canopy of the winter sky, listening to the song of her
own springtime, she turned back towards the town, her cheeks whipped red
by the cold wind, her eyes shining. Before the baker's window she would
yield to the attraction of some dainty made of chocolate or honey. (What
a glutton the little fellow was!) Then she would go and sit down, at
nightfall, in the church, before an altar, dark and golden like the
honey. And she who had no practical religion, no religious faith--or
thought she had no faith--would remain there till they closed the doors,
dreaming, praying, loving. Night fell; the altar-lamps, faintly
swinging, collected the last gleams in the darkness. Annette became
stiff, chilly, a little numb in her woolen overcoat as she warmed
herself at her own sun. A holy calm was within her. She was dreaming for
the child of a life enveloped in sweetness, in silence--in her own
loving arms.




IV


On one of the first days of the year the child was born. A boy. Sylvie
arrived just in time to welcome him. In spite of her suffering, which
drew from her an occasional groan--no tears, Annette, interested,
absorbed, was a little disappointed to find, surprisingly, that she was
more present at the event than the cause of it. The great emotion she
had expected had not appeared. When travail begins, one is caught in a
trap. No means of escaping: one has to go through with it. One resigns
oneself and bends all one's strength to reach the end as quickly as
possible. One's mind is clear, but one's energy is entirely occupied in
enduring the pain. One scarcely thinks of the child at all. No room for
tender or exalted feelings. Those that have previously filled one's
heart vanish. It is truly hard, harsh "labor," a labor of the flesh and
the muscles, wholly physical, with nothing beautiful or beneficent about
it. Up to the very moment when one's liberation comes, when one feels
the little body slip from one's own body . . . At last!

Then, instantly, one's joy returns. With her teeth chattering, worn out,
almost collapsing at the bottom of an Arctic ocean, Annette stretched
out her cold hands to grasp and press to her own bruised limbs her
living fruit--her dearly beloved.

There were no longer two of her now. They were no longer two in one, as
before. A fragment of herself was detached in space like a little
satellite, drawn by gravity about a star, an additional tiny force the
effect of which was immense in the psychic atmosphere. A strange thing
that, in this new couple formed by the segmentation of a being, the
larger should depend more for support upon the smaller than the smaller
upon the larger. Its wailing cry, through its very weakness, was a
source of strength for Annette. Oh, the wealth that comes to us from a
loved one who cannot exist without us! Annette, with her stiffened
breasts, at which the little animal greedily tugged, eagerly poured into
the body of her son the flood of milk and hope with which she was
swollen.

Then began to unroll the first touching cycle of the _vita nuova_, that
discovery of the world, as old as the world, which every mother
experiences again as she bends over the cradle. The tireless watcher
awaiting with beating heart the awakening of her Sleeping Beauty. In his
sapphire eyes, with their violet depths, Annette found herself
reflected--they were so brilliant. What did it see, this gaze, as
indefinite and limitless as the great blue eye of heaven--empty or
profound, one couldn't say which? And what sudden shadows were cast upon
this pure mirror by those clouds of suffering, those invisible furies,
those unknown passions, come heaven knows whence! Was it from her past
or from his future? The face or the reverse of the same medal. . . .
"You are what I have been. I am what you will be. What will you be? What
am I?". . . Annette questioned herself in the eyes of her sphinx. And as
she observed this consciousness rising hourly from the depths, she lived
over again, without realizing it, in this homunculus, the birth of
humanity.

One by one little Marc opened his windows to the world. There began to
pass over the uniform surface of his liquid stare more definite gleams,
like a flock of birds seeking for a place to alight. After a few weeks
the flower of a smile appeared on the living shrub. And then the birds
that had settled there began to chirp. Forgotten was the tragic
nightmare of the first days, forgotten the terror of the unknown earth,
the cries of the being brutally dragged from the maternal shell, cast
naked and bruised into the cruel light. The little man was comforted and
took possession of life. And he found it good. He explored it, touched
and tasted it greedily with his mouth, his eyes, his feet, his hands,
his back. He gloried in his prize, playing in astonishment with the
sounds that emerged from his pipe. One prize more, his voice! He
listened to himself singing. But his singing did not give him more
delight than it gave his mother. Annette was intoxicated by it. This
little stream of a voice made her heart melt. The shrill cries that rose
from the instrument gave her an exquisite pleasure as they pierced her
ear.

"Cry louder, my darling! Yes, assert the life that is in you!"

He asserted it with an energy that had no need of encouragement. Joy,
anger, whims, he protested them loudly in every key. Annette, who was a
novice in motherhood and a scandalously bad educator, found it all
charming; she did not have the strength to resist these tyrannical
appeals. She would get up ten times during the night rather than hear
him groan. And from dawn to dark she let him cling to her breast like a
greedy leech. The child could not have been happier, but it was not very
good for her.

When she saw her sister again in the spring, Sylvie found her thinner,
and she was disturbed. Annette still seemed to be just as happy, but her
expression had become a little feverish; the tears came into her eyes at
any affectionate word. She admitted that she did not sleep enough, that
she did not know how to get proper help, and she felt inadequate before
the practical difficulties that arose in regard to the care and health
of the child. She said all this, affecting to laugh at her
faint-heartedness, but the fine assurance she had felt at the outset had
vanished. She was startled to discover that she was not as robust as she
had thought; as she had never been ill, she had not known the limits of
her strength, and she believed she could use it uncalculatingly. She
realized now that these limits were narrow and that she could not pass
them with impunity. What a fragile thing life is! At other times this
realization would not have affected her. But now that her life was
double, and someone else, even more fragile than herself, depended upon
this fragile thing. . . . Heavens, what would happen if she disappeared?
During her sleepless nights Annette turned this fear over in her mind
many a time. . . . She listened to her sleeping child, and at the least
change in its respiration, a slightly quicker breath, a cry or even a
silence, her own heart stopped beating. And as soon as this anxiety had
once entered it took up its abode in her. Annette no longer knew the
solemn, carefree calm of the night hours when the motionless body and
the thought-free mind, dreaming without sleeping, floated like
water-flowers, motionless, on the nocturnal pond. An Elysian quietude,
in which the grace that is granted one is only felt by the heart after
it has been lost. Henceforth, the watching soul is distrustful every
moment. In the most confident moments apprehension lies concealed.

Sylvie was not mistaken. Under Annette's valiant smile, as she joked
about her weakness, she perceived how physically disordered she was,
perceived her animal need of joining her own kind again. She decided
that Annette should leave her retreat and come back and settle in some
house in the country a few hours from Paris where Sylvie could see her
almost every day and the news of her return would not become known.
Annette had no objection, but she insisted upon returning boldly to her
own house in Paris. She would not hear of any opposition to this. In
vain Sylvie pointed out to her that it would be most unwise, that her
peace of mind would be endangered. Annette was immovable. Her pride
would not endure anything that looked like running away in the face of
public opinion. During the happy year when she had been brooding over
the child, she had not thought of public opinion. She had lived alone
with her happiness; there was no room for a third person. For several
months her happiness had not diminished; she would have liked the world
to know of it, and it was painful to her to admit to herself that she
must hide it. The constant thought of this had hurt her. What, did she
have to conceal as something shameful this jewel that was all her pride?
She would seem to be denying it!

"Deny you, my treasure!" She kissed him passionately. "I should not have
run away. I should have forced people to accept you from the very
beginning. But no more of this secrecy! I shall show you to people and
say, 'Look at my beautiful baby! You other mothers haven't anything like
him, have you?'"




V


She returned to Paris and settled there. The daughter of Raoul Rivière
knew very well that it would not be so easy to induce people to accept
her situation. But although she had inherited her father's contemptuous
attitude towards the world, she had not acquired from him the habit of
yielding outwardly to its prejudices in order to escape from it all the
more effectively. She meant to face it down and get the better of it.

Her first experience was favorable enough. In Annette's absence her old
Aunt Victorine had remained in charge of the house, as she had done now
for many years. This diminutive person of more than sixty had a fresh
complexion, unwrinkled cheeks and tight little ringlets close about her
face. Calm, gentle, inoffensive, excessively timid, she had kept herself
sheltered from everything that might have disturbed her. From her
childhood Annette had always seen this Dame Trot of an aunt about the
house, looking after all the bothersome domestic duties, seeing that
everything was clean and comfortable and watching over the kitchen (for
she was an epicure), playing the part of an old family servant for whom,
just because she was part of the household furniture, nobody put himself
out. Her opinions had no weight; as a matter of fact, she had none. In
the course of the thirty years she had passed under her brother's roof
Aunt Victorine might have seen and heard strange things. But she had
seen nothing, heard nothing. It would have required force to make her
see what she did not wish to see. Raoul had taken no precautions. In his
circle of intimates he called her the deaf-mute of his seraglio. He made
fun of her to her face, fooled her, was rude to her, called her a
blockhead, made her cry, and then coaxed her back into a good humor,
gave her a noisy smack on both cheeks and induced her to coddle him as
if he had been a big boy. She had remembered him as a man with a heart
of gold, indeed as a saint--which would have amused him very much in his
grave if, for a Raoul Rivière, a tireless lover of the superficial
things of this world, anything that lay beneath had been worth so much
as a smile.

It would not have been difficult for Annette to impress upon Aunt
Victorine's eyes an equally advantageous image of her personality. She
had inherited, along with the house, the worship which the old family
tabby rendered to the master. The only thing that was necessary was not
to disturb her illusions. Annette hesitated a long time before making up
her mind to do so. She had kept her aunt in ignorance of her adventure.
In leaving Paris she had used her health and her desire to travel as a
pretext. Far as this was from corresponding with the facts, her aunt had
appeared to believe it; she was not inquisitive and shrank from hearing
anything that might upset her. But, sooner or later, she had to know the
truth. Sylvie, after the child's birth, undertook to inform her. The
poor woman was completely taken aback. It was very hard for her to
understand the situation; she had never been brought face to face with
anything of the kind. She sent Annette several frantic letters, so
incoherent that Annette might have thought--at her age people have no
pity--that Aunt Victorine herself had just had the baby. She consoled
her as best she could. Sylvie was convinced that the old lady would
leave the house. But to leave the house was the last thought that could
have entered Aunt Victorine's head. For the rest, her mind was thrown
into the most inextricable confusion. She was quite incapable of giving
any advice, for advice was what she herself needed. The only thing she
could do was to lament. But one does not live by lamentation, and, as
one has to live in spite of everything, she ended by discovering in
Annette's misfortune a trial sent by heaven. She was beginning to get
used to it, in the absence of her niece, whose removal kept the
disgraceful occurrence at a distance, when Annette announced that she
was coming back.

Annette was deeply moved on her return home. Sylvie had come to the
station to meet her. Aunt Victorine could not make up her mind to do
this; and, when she heard the house-door opening, she precipitately
mounted the stairs which she had half descended and ran and shut herself
up in her room. There Annette found her in tears. Her aunt, throwing her
arms about her, repeated, "My poor child! How is it possible? How is it
possible?"

Annette, more disturbed than she wished to appear, assumed an air of
assurance and said bluntly, with a laugh, "There will be time enough to
explain it all. Let's go down to dinner now."

The old lady allowed herself to be led downstairs. She continued to
whimper. Annette said to her, "Hush, hush, dear aunt! You mustn't cry."

Her aunt tried to remember what she had wanted to say. There were a good
many things, lamentations, rebukes, questions, exclamations. But out of
them all she could extract nothing: nothing emerged but one great sigh
after another. Annette took her at once into the presence of the baby,
who was sleeping blissfully, its whole little body relaxed and plump,
its head thrown back. She fell into an ecstasy and clasped her hands:
the old retainer's heart instantly swore fealty to the new head of the
house. From this moment, young once more, she attached herself to the
chariot of the little god. At times she remembered that, in spite of
all, he was an object of scandal, and she found herself in confusion
again. Annette, talking with an affected indifference, watched with the
corner of her eye the good old face that was growing so long. "Come,
what's the matter?" she asked. "You must give some reason."

Once more Aunt Victorine began her confused lamentations.

"Yes," said Annette, drumming with her fingers. "Yes . . . But, after
all, what's to be done? Would you like to have us lose our dear little
boy?"

(She knew very well what she was doing in making a point of this coaxing
"our.")

Her superstitious aunt, quite upset, protested, "Annette, don't say
that. It's dangerous. How can you say such things?"

"Well, then, you mustn't look that way. As long as our little one is
here, as long as he has come, what are we going to do about it? What
better can we do than to love him and be happy?"

Her aunt might have replied, "Yes, but why should he have come?" But she
no longer had the strength to wish him away. Morality might have wished
it. The world and religion. Dignity and peace of mind. Peace of mind,
above all, perhaps. Her innermost thought, which she did not confess to
herself, was, "Heaven help us! If only that unhappy child had not told
me anything about it!"

In the end, as it was impossible to reconcile contradictory thoughts,
Aunt Victorine ceased to think at all. Abandoning herself to instinct,
she became the old hen that has spent her life bringing up the chicks of
others. She accepted it.

But Annette had no particular reason to congratulate herself. There are
allies who bring more trouble than help. Through her aunt, annoyances
from outside speedily began to reach Annette. Madame Victorine was a
gossip, and she lent her ear to everything the neighborhood had to say
about her niece's return. She would come running home, bathed in tears,
to repeat it to Annette. Annette would scold her affectionately, but she
could not help being affected by this stupid tittle-tattle. When the old
woman came in she would wonder now with a shiver, "What is she going to
tell me this time?"

She forbade her to talk. But when her aunt was silent, it was even
worse, thanks to what she did not say, her sighs, her look of distress.
And Annette was storing up an increasing irritation against this
poisonous public opinion which she pretended to ignore.

If she had been prudent she would at least have avoided occasions for
coming in contact with it. But she was too much alive to be prudent.
People are only prudent when they have suffered from not being so. Human
nature is so made that Annette, who contemptuously turned her back on
the judgment of the world, burned to know what people were saying behind
her back. And, dreading every morning that the day would not pass
without bringing her the echo of some disturbing remark, she was ready
to go out in search of them when no such remarks came. She was spared
the trouble. From her family, from her cousins of both sexes, with whom
she maintained only the most distant connection, she received
scandalized letters and lectures that she could hardly endure. Their
claim to pose as judges of her conduct and champions of the family honor
should have seemed less irritating than grotesque to one who, like
Annette, had been only too well informed by her father about the secret
history of the family and knew how to take the measure of these
Aristarchuses. But Annette was in no laughing mood: she would seize her
pen and send off a biting reply, which added spite to their other
motives for condemning her and rendered the latter implacable.

These austere censors could invoke as an excuse for their intervention
the much abused but still customary rights of relationship. But what
rights did strangers have to be severe with her, strangers who were not
harmed in any way because she did as she chose with herself? Meeting in
the street some amiable society woman in whose drawing-room she had once
been received, she would stop to exchange a few civil words. The other,
looking her over curiously and letting her talk, scarcely answering
herself, would presently pass on with a cold politeness. One woman, to
whom Annette had written asking for some information, did not reply.
Pursuing her inquiry, Annette wrote to a friend of her mother's, an old
lady whom she respected and who had shown some affectionate feeling for
herself; she suggested going to see her. In reply came an embarrassed
letter, expressing regret that the latter was unable to receive her: she
was leaving Paris. These little constantly repeated affronts wounded
Annette's sensibility. She was afraid of other rebuffs, but the strange
thing was that this fear led her nervously to provoke them.

For example, in the case of her friend Lucile Cordier. The two young
women had known each other for a long time. In the society where they
moved Lucile was the person whom Annette liked best; and without being
very intimate they had always enjoyed seeing each other. Annette learned
from her aunt that Lucile's sister was going to be married. She had had
no word of this from Lucile. She wrote to congratulate her. Lucile
remained silent. Annette knew she ought not to insist. And yet she did
insist, through a strange need of being sure, of suffering.

She went to Lucile's house. There was a sound of voices in the
drawing-room. It was her day at home. Annette remembered this just as
she entered the room. It was too late to turn back. The conversation was
animated. A dozen persons, almost all known to Annette. At her
appearance the voices stopped point-blank. Only for a few seconds.
Annette, anxious, but feeling that she was committed to a fight,
entered. With a smile on her lips, without looking to right or left, she
went up to Lucile. Lucile rose, embarrassed. Small and blonde, with
half-open, caressing, gentle and yet shrewd eyes, a tired little smile,
a mouse-like expression and rather prominent teeth, lively, indifferent
to people and ideas while appearing to be devoted to the former and
attached to the latter, she was cautious, weak, and not very frank; she
liked to please; she was anxious not to fall out with anyone and to get
along with everyone. So far as she was concerned, Annette's conduct had
not troubled her at all. Her sharp, inquisitive nose, always on the
alert, was amused by scandal. The adventure struck her as absurd and
would merely have diverted her if, from the worldly point of view, it
had not been embarrassing. When Annette wrote to her that she was coming
back, Lucile had thought, "What bad luck! How am I going to answer her?"

She did not want to hurt Annette. On the other hand, she did not wish to
run the risk of being misjudged. Not being able to think of anything to
say in reply, she had put it off from day to day. She expected to see
Annette, but later (there was no hurry about it!)--when people would not
know about it. This did not prevent her from talking at Annette's
expense and assuming a scandalized air when she was with others.

And now Annette's sudden appearance placed her--("This is too
much!")--under the obligation of making an immediate choice. Lucile was
much more angry with Annette for playing this mean trick on her than for
having had a child. ("Two, if she likes, if she would only leave me
alone!")

With a furious little light in her eyes that was quickly extinguished,
she took the hand that Annette held out to her, answering her smile with
that honeyed smile of her own which Annette knew so well. (No one could
resist its tender seductiveness.) It lasted only for a moment. With all
those eyes flashing about her, with every ear alert, Lucile at once
perceived the irony of the company. Instantly her expression froze;
after a few words of welcome she affectedly resumed the interrupted
conversation, and with an unexpressed understanding everyone began to
talk again.

Annette, left outside the conversation, realized that she was rejected.
But she did not accept this at all. She knew the weakness of Lucile's
character. Armed with her proud smile, seated in the midst of a group
which, without appearing to see her, seemed to be wholly occupied in
exchanging words that were as empty as they were lively, she glanced
about with her calm eyes at everybody in the room. The glances of the
others, meeting hers, turned aside to avoid her. One pair of eyes,
however, did not have time to escape. They remained fixed upon her, full
of annoyance and spite. Annette recognized the large doll-like face of
Marie-Louise de Baudru, the daughter of a rich lawyer, the wife of a
judge, whose family had always remained socially on cordial terms with
the Rivières while cherishing towards them a deep-seated antipathy.
Marie-Louise de Baudru incarnated in her stout person the most
substantial qualities of the upper bourgeoisie: order, probity, the lack
of curiosity, of charity, especially of intelligence, all the legal
virtues, a firm verbal faith, empty as a butcher's shop of doubts and
thought, and the religious worship of propriety, all the proprieties,
her family, her property, her country, her Church, her moral code, her
tradition and her negations. In short, a massive and compact ego like a
block obstructing the sun. No room, near her, for the tub of Diogenes!
Nothing was so repugnant to the Baudrus as independence of any kind,
religious, moral, intellectual, political or social. A natural aversion!
They confounded all its forms under the common taunt of "anarchism."
This anarchism they had always suspected in the Rivières. And
instinctively Marie-Louise, like the rest of her family, had distrusted
Annette. She could not pardon the liberty which Annette had enjoyed in
her education and her life as a young girl. There may have been a touch
of envy in these unkind judgments. One sole consideration kept her from
expressing them, the Rivières' fortune. Wealth commands esteem: it is
one of the pillars--the firmest--of the social order. But this is on
condition that it does not disturb the basis of everything, the legally
established family. The supporters of society are on the watch there:
hands off! Annette had struck at the cardinal principles. The watch-dog
had awakened, though it held its peace, for it does not bark in society.
But its look spoke for it, Annette perceived the bitterest scorn in that
of Marie-Louise de Baudru. Her eyes rested calmly on those of her plump
judge; and, addressing her with a little familiar bow, she forced her to
respond. Marie-Louise, choking with anger at not being able to resist
the injunction, bowed also, avenging herself by giving her coldest look.
Annette had already turned indifferently away, and her eyes, which were
making the tour of the drawing-room, returned to Lucile.

Quite unembarrassed, she threw herself into the conversation that had
begun. She cut into the story Lucile was telling with a general remark
and obliged her to reply. They had to make room for her. They could not
help listening to her politely, with interest and even pleasure, for she
was so witty. But they did not reply, their minds wandered, they talked
about other things. The conversation died away, started up again in
little bursts, jumping from subject to subject. In the silence Annette
heard herself talking in a detached tone, and she listened to her own
voice as if it were that of a stranger: true woman that she was, fine,
sensitive and proud, she missed none of these little humiliations.
Accustomed from childhood to understand and use the equivocal language
of drawing-rooms, she could divine, under the veil of deliberate
inattentiveness, dubious smiles, disingenuous politeness, the wounds
that were intended for her. She was hurt, but she laughed, and she went
on talking. The others were thinking, "What poise that girl has!"

Lucile took advantage of the departure of one of the guests to accompany
her to the door and escape from Annette. The latter found herself
abandoned to a group that had made up its mind to ignore her. Giving up
any attempt to prolong the ordeal, she was on the point of rising to
leave in turn when, crossing the drawing-room, Marcel Franck approached
her. He had come in some time before, though she had not noticed him,
for all her attention was occupied by her effort not to yield to the
discouragement that was overcoming her. And as, with a humorous pity, he
watched her talking, he admired her pride. He said to himself, "What
made you come here and brave these idiots? Crazy little thing! It's
enough to wring one's heart."

He decided to lend her a helping hand. He bowed to her pleasantly.
Annette's grateful eyes lighted up. Everybody about them became silent,
all those hard, watching faces. "Well," he said, "so the globe-trotter
is back again. Have you had enough of '_contemplé son azur, ô
Méditerranée'_?"

He wanted to turn the conversation to some harmless subject. But what
demon drove her on? Pride, the instinct of bravado, or simply frankness?
She replied gaily, "So far as the azure is concerned, I have scarcely
contemplated anything for months but my baby's eyes."

A little breeze of irony passed over those who were near them. Smiles
and glances were discreetly exchanged. But Marie-Louise de Baudru rose
indignantly; red, with her stout breast swollen with enough angry
contempt to burst her gown, she pushed back her chair and, without
bowing to anyone, started for the door and went out. The temperature of
the drawing-room fell several degrees. Annette remained alone in her
corner with Marcel Franck. He looked at her, sorry for her, half
banteringly, and murmured, "You are imprudent."

"How imprudent?" she asked in a clear voice.

She seemed to be looking for something at her feet. Then she rose,
without haste, and, coldly bowing and bowed to, went out.

No one who saw her in the street, walking along with her rhythmic step,
her head high, her cool, correct, indifferent air, would have suspected
the storm of contempt that was making her wounded heart leap. But, once
in the Boulogne house, she shut herself up in her room with the child
and pressed him to her with bitter tears. And she laughed defiantly.




VI


There were plenty of interesting houses in Paris where Annette would
have been honorably received--especially in the society that should have
been familiar to the daughter of Rivière the architect, among those
artists who live on the fringe of social Philistia, who, though they are
endowed with the traditional family spirit, have no prejudices and carry
the bourgeois virtues even into free unions. But Annette had little
acquaintance among the women of the artistic world. With a very orderly
mind and reserved manners that were anything but Bohemian, she had
little taste for their habits and conversation, though she had plenty of
respect for their great qualities of courage, good nature and endurance.
For it is certainly true that in ordinary life relations are founded
much less on respect than on a community of instincts and habits.
Besides, Raoul Rivière had long ago dropped his old companions. As soon
as his success had permitted him to enter the sphere of wealth and
official honors, this man of strong appetites had broken with the _haud
aurea mediocritas_. He had been too intelligent not to appreciate the
society of men who worked more than that of the Parisian drawing-rooms
which he criticized among his intimates with cruel irony, but he had
established himself in the latter because it gave him a wider pasturage.
He had managed to escape secretly into other and very mixed circles,
where he was able to satisfy his passion for pleasure and his need of
unrestrained independence, for he led a double or triple life. But few
were aware of this, and his daughter had had no knowledge of anything
but his outward and business life.

Annette's social circle was virtually limited to this rich and more or
less distinguished upper bourgeoisie which, as a new reigning class, has
ended by diligent effort in creating for itself a shadow of tradition.
Indeed, along with the other attributes of power, it has purchased the
lamp of enlightenment--a lamp, however, that only shines from under a
heavy shade and dreads nothing so much as being moved, nothing so much
as the enlarging of the illumined circle on the table; for the least
change of position threatens to destroy its certitudes. Annette, who
instinctively loved the light, had sought for it where she could, in
those university studies which in her set were regarded as pretentious.
But the light she had found there had been much filtered; it was the
light of lecture-rooms and libraries, refracted, never direct. There
Annette had acquired a certain boldness of thought that was entirely
abstract and did not prevent the best of her comrades from being timid
and completely chaotic in the face of reality. Another film was
interposed between her eyes and the daylight outside, her fortune. In
spite of all she could do, this barrier separated her from the general
community. Annette did not suspect how shut in she was. That is the
other side of wealth: it is a privileged enclosure, but an enclosure
none the less, a garden that is walled in.

And this was not all. Now that she had to leave her circle, Annette,
who, for a long time, had fearlessly considered what was awaiting her,
did not want to do so. Let him who disapproves of the illogical condemn
her! Man--woman still less--is not all of a piece, especially at those
transitional ages when the instincts of revolt and rebirth are mingled
with the conservative habits that paralyze them. One cannot at a stroke
liberate oneself from the prejudices of one's environment and the needs
one has acquired. Even the freest souls cannot do so. One has regrets,
doubts, one wants to lose nothing, one wants to have everything.
Annette, in her sincerity, with her need of love, with her need of being
free, with her desire not to be false, was still anxious not to
sacrifice her acquired advantages. She was willing to withdraw from her
social set; she could not endure being rejected by it; she could not
accept the idea of forfeiting it. And her youthful pride, which life had
not yet forced to lower its crest, refused to seek asylum in another
environment that was socially more humble, even if she respected it
more. This, in the eyes of the world, would have been to admit that she
was conquered. It was better to be isolated than _déclassée_.

Trifling as these considerations were, they were not unreasonable. In
the struggle between the conventions of a class and one of its revolting
members who braves them, the class, which forms a solid block against
the imprudent soul as it casts him forth, drives him elsewhere and
watches for his weaknesses in order to justify its interdiction.

In the world of Nature as soon as a symptom of weakness appears, and
some creature reveals itself as an object of prey, spider-webs are
stretched about it. There is nothing unfair about this, nothing
sinister. It is merely the natural law. Nature is always hunting.
Everyone in turn is hunter or hunted. Annette was the hunted.

The hunters made their appearance. All unsuspecting, Annette received a
call from her friend Marcel Franck.

She was alone in the house. The baby had gone out for his daily airing;
her aunt was with him. Annette, who was rather tired, was resting in her
room. She was not expecting to see anyone, but when Marcel's card was
brought to her she gladly sent word for him to come in. She was grateful
to him for having taken her part at Lucile's. Not that he had
compromised himself. But she had not expected that.

Stretched out in her _chaise longue_, she received him unceremoniously
as an old friend. She was still in her morning négligé. Since she had
become a mother, she had lost her devotion to order and the meticulous
correctness that Sylvie had teased her about. Marcel was the last person
to mind this. He found her prettier than ever, with a fresh, attractive
plumpness, a gentle languor, a dewy look in her eyes which were softened
with happiness. Annette talked quite without reserve; she was pleased to
see once more the discerning confidant of her old hesitations. She liked
his intelligence, his intellectual tact; he inspired confidence in her.
Franck revealed all his old cordiality and fine comprehension, but from
the beginning of the conversation she was struck by the suggestion of a
new familiarity in his manner.

They recalled their last meeting before Annette's unfortunate visit at
the Brissots' in Burgundy, and Annette agreed that Marcel had seen all
too clearly what was going to happen. She was anxious to speak of the
impossibility of her marriage to Roger, but a blush spread over her face
as it occurred to her that Marcel looked at the whole matter in quite a
different way and considered it a joke. Marcel remarked mischievously,
"You saw it as well as I." And he laughed at the turn the adventure had
taken.

He had the air of being a sort of accomplice. Annette was confused, and
she concealed her feeling with a touch of irony. Marcel went a step
further: "You saw it much better than I did. We men are absurd enough to
believe that we can teach women out of our own precious wisdom, and we
get caught instead when, with their insidious voices, their big,
beautiful eyes, they anxiously ask us what they ought to do. They know
very well. They flatter our folly. We love to teach, but they can give
us cards and spades. When I foretold that you would not be caught in the
Brissots' net, I never suspected that you would escape from its meshes
in such a masterly way. It was a wonderful stroke. Well done! What can't
you do when you set your mind on it! I compliment you on your courage."
Annette listened to this with a feeling of embarrassment. How strange it
was! She had undertaken to vindicate her right to behave as she had
done; the other day, at Lucile's, she had been ready to affirm it
against the whole universe. But it made her uncomfortable to hear
herself praised in this tone by Marcel. Her modesty and her dignity were
hurt. "Don't compliment me," she said. "I have less courage than you
think. I didn't desire in advance what has happened. I never thought of
it."

Then, seized with a scruple and too proud to lie, she continued, "I am
mistaken. Yes, I did think of it. But only to fear it, not to desire it.
And that is what remains incomprehensible to me. How could I have let it
happen, the thing I feared, that I didn't want?"

"Quite natural," said Marcel. "What we fear hypnotizes us. After all, it
doesn't follow that because we fear a thing we don't desire it. But
everyone does not dare to do what he is afraid to do. You did dare. You
dared to make a mistake. One has to make mistakes in life. We learn
through our mistakes, and we must learn. Only, while you were daring, I
do think, my friend, that you might have taken precautions. Your partner
seems to me very much to blame for having left you with this burden to
bear."

Annette, a little shocked, said, "It is not a burden to me."

Marcel supposed that Annette in her generosity wanted to excuse Roger.
"You still love him?" he asked.

"Whom?" Annette asked.

"Good!" said Marcel, laughing. "Evidently you don't still love him."

"I love my baby," said Annette. "The rest belongs to the past. And, as
for the past, one no longer feels sure that it ever existed. One doesn't
understand it any more. It's sad."

"That has its charm too," said Marcel.

"Not for me," said Annette. "I am not a dilettante. But my son is the
present, and it is a present that will last longer than I."

"The present that repulses us, the present to which we in turn shall be
the past some day."

"So much the worse for me!" said Annette. "Even so, it will be good to
be trampled on by his little feet."

Marcel laughed at this passionate outburst. "You can't understand me,"
said Annette. "You have not seen Marc, my little masterpiece. And even
if you saw him, you wouldn't know how to look at him. You are a good
judge of pictures, statues, useless knick-knacks. You couldn't judge
that unique marvel, the body of a little child. It would do no good for
me to describe him to you."

She did describe him, however, lovingly and at length. She laughed at
her own ardent, exaggerated expressions, but she could not keep them
back. She broke off as she saw Marcel's indulgent, bantering look. "I am
boring you. Excuse me! You don't understand, do you?"

"Of course." Marcel understood. Marcel understood everything. Everyone
to his own taste. He would not dispute that.

"In short," he said, "to sum it up, you have blossomed out into
maternity. You have flown in the face of public order and the family as
established by law. And, far from regretting it, you defy authority."

"What authority?" Annette asked. "I defy nothing."

"Well, then, public opinion, tradition, the Code Napoléon."

"I have nothing to do with all these things."

"That's the worst kind of defiance, the kind people will never pardon.
But so be it! You have broken with everything, you have rid yourself of
the whole clan. What are you going to do now?"

"Just what I did before."

Marcel looked sceptical.

"What, do you think I can't live as I used to do?"

"It would hardly be worth while. And besides . . ."

Marcel unhappily recalled the call at Lucile's: if she wished to resume
her old place in society Annette would meet with little success. She
knew this: it was unnecessary for anyone to tell her, and in her wounded
pride she had no desire to repeat the experience. But she was surprised
by Marcel's insistence in pointing this out to her; he was usually more
tactful.

"Well," she said, "it matters very little now that I have my child."

"But you can't reduce your existence merely to him."

"I don't think that would be reducing it. Enlarging it, I should say. I
see a world in him, a world that is going to grow. I shall grow with
it."

With much solicitude and no less irony, Marcel set to work to prove to
her that this world would not be enough for a nature as eager and
exacting as hers. With knitted brows and a pang at her heart Annette
listened to him. Mentally, in her irritation, she protested, "No, no!"

She could not help being anxious, however, when she remembered that once
before Marcel had had such clear foresight. But why was he so bent upon
convincing her of it? Why should he take so much trouble to prove to her
that she should profit by the liberty she had won, that she should not
be afraid of living on the fringe of society? (He called it "outside and
above the bourgeois conventions.")

There were in Annette two or three Annettes who always bore one another
company. As a general thing, only one spoke while the others listened.
Just now two of them were speaking at once: the passionate, sentimental
Annette who was the victim of her impressions and their willing dupe,
and another who observed and was amused at the hidden motives of the
heart. She had good eyes. She saw through Marcel. They had changed
places. Formerly it had been he who read her secret thoughts. To-day,
to-day there had come to Annette (just when?--exactly from the moment of
her 'metamorphosis') an insight into souls and their secret
movements--intermittent, to be sure--the novelty of which surprised and
amused her in the midst of her anxieties.

Stretched out in her chair, with her head thrown back, her arms behind
her neck and her mouth slightly open, she studied the ceiling; but out
of the corner of her half-closed eyes she watched Marcel as he talked.
She could have uttered in advance the words he was about to say; she
could have sworn what was going to happen. With an amused curiosity that
was a little sarcastic, for which she reproached herself, she let him go
on.

(One must see and know, as he said just now, one must learn . . .
learn. . . .)

She was learning to understand a friend.

(Yes, I understand you. . . . An Annette fallen from the tree would be
good to pick up again. He is gently shaking the tree to make her tumble
off. He is speculating on Annette's confusion. And yet he is in love
with her. Yes, he is certainly in love with her. Not very bright,
brother man! His voice begins to have a coaxing sound. See how tender he
is growing. And now, look out! I wager he is going to bend over me.)

Several seconds in advance she foresaw Marcel's blond beard leaning
towards her; she foresaw the caressing mouth that was about to alight on
hers. She wanted to spare him the humiliation. And just at the exact
moment she rose, and, with her outstretched hands, gently pushed
Marcel's shoulders away.

"Good-bye, my friend," she said.

Marcel looked into those penetrating eyes that were scrutinizing him
with a little malice in their depths. He smiled. He had been mistaken.
But it had been a good battle. He was perfectly aware that, with all the
calmness in the world, he had been given his dismissal. And yet, of this
he was sure, Annette's feeling towards him was not one of indifference.
Let whoever could understand it! The strange girl was escaping him.




VII


Marcel did not reappear, and Annette took no steps to bring him back.
They were still friends, but each was angry with the other. Just because
Annette's feeling towards Marcel was not one of indifference, she was
touched by what she had seen in him. She was not offended by this; it
was the old story . . . Too old a story! . . . No, Annette had no
grievance against Marcel. Only, only she could not forget what had
happened! That is the way it is with forgivenesses granted by the mind
which the heart does not ratify. Secretly bitter, she was forced to
recognize, even more through Marcel's too free attempt than through the
harsh welcome she had encountered in Lucile's drawing-room, that her
situation was changed. She realized that she was no longer protected by
the conventional consideration that society accords to those of its
members who appear to submit to its laws. She would have to defend
herself alone. She was exposed.

She closed her door to the world. She took care not to tell Sylvie of
the experiences she had had; Sylvie had predicted them and she would be
triumphant. She kept her secret and shut herself up with her child. She
had decided henceforth to live only for him.

When little Marc came back from his airing in the evening, after
Marcel's call, she welcomed him with transports. He laughed when he saw
her and stretched out to her his four wriggling paws. She fell on him as
a starved wolf falls on its prey; she devoured him with kisses; she
pretended to eat every morsel of his body; she thrust his little feet
into her mouth; and as she undressed him she tickled him from head to
foot with her lips. "Yum-yum! I'm going to eat you up! That fool!" she
exclaimed, calling him to witness. "That fool who had the impudence to
tell me that you would not be enough for me! What insolence! You not
enough for me, my king, my little god! Tell me that you are my little
god! And what am I then? The little god's mother! The world belongs to
us! All the things we are going to do together! See everything, have
everything, try everything, taste everything, create everything!"

And indeed they did create everything. To discover and to create, are
they not the same thing? To invent is to find. One finds what one
invents, one discovers what one creates, what one dreams of, what one
draws up from the fish-pond of one's musings. For the two of them,
mother and child, it was the hour of great discoveries. The first words
of the little boy, the game of exploration, when one measures the world
with one's arms and legs. Every morning Annette, with her child, set out
for conquest. She enjoyed it as much as he, perhaps more. It seemed to
her that she was reliving her own childhood, but with complete
consciousness and complete joy. He, the gay little soul, was full of joy
too. He was a beautiful child, healthy, chubby all over, a little pink
pig just ready for the spit. ("What else could you expect?" as Sylvie
said.) In his plump, elastic body there was too much compressed force;
he was like a rubber ball that insists upon bouncing. Every new contact
with life threw him into a clamorous delight. The enormous power of
dreaming that belongs to every baby amplified his discoveries and
prolonged the vibrations of happiness into veritable chimes of bells.
Annette was never behind him; it was as if they were having a contest as
to who should be the happiest and make the most noise. Sylvie said that
Annette was crazy, but she would have behaved the same way herself. And
after this tumult they would both have hours of absolute, delicious,
exhausted silence. The little one, tired out after so much movement,
slept obliviously. Annette was dropping with fatigue, but for a long
time she would refuse to go to sleep in order to enjoy the other's
slumber; and the fire of her love, driven back into her heart, hidden
like the light of a candle behind one's hand so as not to awaken the
little sleeper, burned with a long silent flame that rose upward to
heaven. She prayed . . . Mary beside the manger . . . She prayed to the
child.

These months were still beautiful and shining. But they were not as pure
as those of the previous year. Less limpid. They were full of an
exalted, excessive joy that was a little exaggerated.

A vigorous, healthy nature like Annette's must create, perpetually
create, create with its whole being, body and spirit. Create, or else
brood over the creation that is to be. It is a necessity, and happiness
comes only through satisfying it. Every creative period has its own
limited field, and its rising force follows a trajectory that descends
again sharply. Annette had passed the summit of the curve. Nevertheless,
the transport of creation persists in the mother for a very long time
after childbirth. Suckling prolongs the transfusion of the blood, and
invisible bonds keep the two bodies in communication. The creative
abundance of the spirit of the infant compensates for the impoverishment
of the spirit of the mother. The river that is running out tries to
replenish itself from the stream that is flowing over. It becomes a
torrent so as to merge with the little torrent. But strive as it may,
the little one outruns it. The child was already withdrawing into the
distance. Annette had difficulty in following him.

Before he was able to frame a complete sentence he already had his
little hidden thoughts, cupboards of which he kept the keys. Heaven knew
what he concealed there: his reflexions on people, his scraps of
reasoning, odds and ends of images, sensations, play-words the sound of
which amused him, though he did not know what they meant, a singing
monologue that had no sequence, no end, no beginning. He was perfectly
well aware, perhaps not of what he was hiding, but that he was hiding
something. For the more one tried to find out what he was thinking, the
more mischievously he refused to let one know. He even amused himself
sometimes putting one off the track; with his little tongue, which was
as clumsy as his hands, as it stumbled about among the syllables, he was
already trying to lie, to mystify people. It was a pleasure to prove his
own importance to others and to himself by making fun of those who tried
to penetrate into his private domain. This scrap of a being, scarcely
born, had the fundamental instinct of the _mine_ that is not yours--of
"You shan't have any of my peanuts." His whole wealth lay in fragments
of thoughts: he built walls to hide them from his mother's eyes. And
she, with that lack of foresight which is common to all mothers, was
proud that he knew so well how to say the No with which he so early
manifested his personality. She haughtily proclaimed, "He has a will of
iron."

She thought she had forged this iron herself. But against whom?

Against herself, to begin with; for, in the eyes of this little ego, she
was the not-I, the external world, a habitable external world, of
course, warm, soft and milky, that one could exploit, that one wanted to
dominate. External to the I . . . I am not it. I possess it. But it does
not possess me!

No, she did not possess him! She began to feel it; this Lilliputian
intended to belong to no one but himself. He needed her, but she needed
him: the child's instinct told him so. In all probability, this
instinct, guarded by his egocentricity, told him that she needed him
much more and that it was therefore quite fair for him to abuse it. And,
heaven knows, this was true: she did need him much more.

"Well, fair or not, abuse me, little monster! Just the same, it's no
use, you can't get along without me for a long time yet. I hold you.
There, I plunge you into your bath. Protest, young carp! . . . He looks
insulted; his mouth is open, as if this little personage were choking
with indignation at being treated like a bundle. . . . And I turn you
and turn you again! Heavens, what music! You are going to be a singer,
my son. Well, cry out your do-re-me. Bravo! You do the singing, but it's
I who make you dance. . . . Isn't it a shame for me to abuse your
weakness in this way? Oh, how mean this mother is! Poor midget! Well,
you'll avenge yourself on her when you are grown up. Meanwhile, protest!
In spite of your dignity, look, I'm going to kiss you on your little
behind."

He kicked. She laughed. But it was in vain she held him; she held only
the shell. The animal within escaped into his burrow. Every day he
became more difficult to grasp. It was a loving chase, a passionate
struggle. But it was a struggle, a chase. One had to keep one's wind.

The thousand little regular attentions that a baby demands fill the
days. Simple, monotonous as they are, they do not allow one to think of
anything else. Aside from _him_, always _him_, one's mind is in shivers.
The swiftest thought is interrupted ten times over. The child invades
everything; this little mass of flesh blocks one's horizon. Annette did
not complain. She did not even have time to regret it. She lived in a
plenitude of busy fatigue that was a blessing to her at first, but that
gradually became an obscure weariness. One's strength is used up, one's
soul wanders aimlessly: it does not stay where one has left it. It
follows its way like a sleep-walker, and when it awakens it does not
know where it is. Annette woke up one day conscious of a load of fatigue
that had been accumulating for months, and an indefinable shadow mingled
with the joy that dwelt in her.

She was unwilling to attribute this to anything but physical exhaustion;
and to prove to herself that her happiness was in no way altered she
manifested it in more clamorous effusions than were necessary.
Especially before others, as if she were afraid that they would discover
in her what she did not wish to be seen. This exaggerated gaiety was
followed later, when she was alone, by depression. Sadness? No. An
obscure uneasiness, a vague restlessness, the feeling, which she
repressed, of a partial dissatisfaction. Not that she expected anything
from outside (she could still get along without that), but she suffered
from the unemployment of a part of her nature. Certain forces of the
mind had been at a standstill for a long time; the economy of her being
had undergone a disturbance. Annette, deprived of society, driven back
upon herself alone and feeling the sting of a nostalgia that she tried
to stifle, tried to find a resource in the company of books. But the
volumes remained open at the same page; the brain had become
unaccustomed to the effort of following the unfolding chain of the
words; the continual breaks which the constant preoccupation with the
child made in her thought dislocated her attention and shook it,
somnolent and enervated as it was, as a moored ship dances on the
current without the power either to advance or to remain still. Instead
of reacting, Annette remained shut up in herself, musing drowsily over
the open book; or she tried to divert herself in a flood of passionate
nonsense with the child. Sylvie, who saw that she could not find
expression for her multiple energy with the little one, said to her,
"You should go out more, take exercise, walk as you used to do."

For the sake of peace, Annette said she would go out, but she did not
budge. She had a reason which she kept to herself: she was afraid of
meeting her old friends and exposing herself to some slight, some coldly
distant greeting. A superficial reason which she gave herself. In former
times she would have ignored these petty offences, but now she had a
neurasthenic tendency to avoid all contacts. Then why not leave Paris
and live in the country, as Sylvie advised? She did not say she would
not, but she did nothing; it involved making a decision, and she was not
willing to stir from her torpor.

So she allowed her motionless days to float along, without a wave, like
a becalmed sea that is preparing to ebb. An interlude, an apparent
arrest in the eternal rhythm of respiration: the breath is suspended.
Joy is tiptoeing away. Trouble is approaching on muffled feet. The
trouble has not yet come. But a _nescio quid_ warns one: "Do not move!"
It is waiting outside the door.




VIII


It entered. But it was not what she had expected. It is useless to
attempt to foresee happiness or trouble. When they arrive they are never
what we have looked for.

One night when, suspended between sky and sea, on the borders of
happiness and melancholy, Annette was skirting the cape of sleep,
without knowing whether she was on this side of it or that, she became
aware of a danger. Unaware whence it was coming or what it was, she
collected her strength to fly to the help of the child who was sleeping
near her. For already her consciousness, which never slept without one
ear open, had realized that he was threatened. She forced herself to
awaken and listened anxiously. She was not mistaken. Even when she was
sound asleep the slightest alteration in the breathing of the dear
little creature reached her. The respiration of the child was hurried;
by a mysterious osmosis, Annette felt the oppression in her own chest.
She turned on the light and leaned over the cradle. The little one was
not awake; he was sleeping uneasily; his face was not red, which seemed
to the mother a reassuring symptom; she touched his body, found the skin
dry, the extremities cold; she covered him more warmly. This seemed to
quiet him. She watched him for a few minutes, then turned out the light,
trying to persuade herself that the alarm would not be repeated. But
after a brief respite the hoarse breathing began again. Annette deceived
herself as long as she possibly could. "No, he is not breathing harder
or more quickly. It's only that I am agitated."

As if her will could impose itself upon the child, she forced herself to
remain motionless. But it was no longer possible to doubt. The
oppression was increasing, the breath came more quickly. And with a fit
of coughing the child woke up and began to cry. Annette leaped out of
bed. She took the child in her arms. He was burning, his face was pale,
his lips were blue. Annette was distracted. She called Aunt Victorine,
who only added her own agitation to the scene. That very day the
telephone had been disconnected for repairs, and there was no way of
communicating with the doctor. There was no druggist in the
neighborhood. The Boulogne house was isolated; the maid was unwilling to
run through the deserted streets at this hour of the night. They would
have to wait for morning. And the sickness was growing worse. It was
enough to make one lose one's head. Annette very nearly did so; but
knowing that she must not she did not. Her aunt, whimpering, fluttered
like a fly about the globe of a lamp. Annette said to her harshly, "It
does no good to groan. Help me! Or, if you can't do anything, go to
sleep and leave me alone. I will save him by myself."

Her aunt, petrified by this, recovered her composure; her long
experience as a watcher at sickbeds dispelled Annette's most terrible
apprehension, that of diphtheria. Annette retained an unspoken doubt; so
did her aunt. One may always be mistaken. And even if it was not
diphtheria, there were so many other mortal disorders. Not to know what
it was added still more to their fright. But whether or not Annette's
heart was frozen with terror, her movements were calm and just what they
should have been. Without knowing it, moved by the maternal instinct
alone, she did exactly the right thing for the child. (So the doctor
told her the next day.) She did not leave him lying on his back for
long, she changed his position, she struggled against his fits of
suffocation. What neither experience nor science could have taught her
the love within her dictated, for she suffered what he suffered. She
suffered more. She regarded herself as responsible for it.

Responsible! The tension of an ordeal, especially of an illness that
strikes a beloved being, often creates a superstitious state of mind in
which one needs to accuse oneself for the suffering of the innocent one.
Annette not only reproached herself for not having watched over the
child, for having been imprudent with him, but she discovered that she
had criminal thoughts in the back of her mind: a passing weariness of
the child, the shadow of an unconfessed regret that her life should have
been swamped in his. Was it quite certain that she had really felt and
repressed this regret, this weariness? No doubt, since they emerged at
this moment. But who could say whether she had not invented them through
this need she felt, when she was powerless to act in a practical way, to
act in thought, even if it meant turning her desperate energies against
herself?

She turned them also against the great Enemy, against the unknown God.
As she saw the little swollen face, as she breathed her breath into him,
softly raising him in her hands with careful movements, she passionately
asked his pardon for having brought him into the world, stolen him away
from peace, thrown him into this life a prey to suffering, to mischance,
to the evil hazards of heaven knew what blind master! And with her flesh
creeping, like an animal at the entrance of his burrow, she growled, she
sniffed the approach of the great murderous deities; she prepared to
fight with them for her child, she bared her teeth. Like every mother
whose child is threatened, she was the eternal Niobe who, in order to
turn the mortal shaft against herself, hurls her furious defiance at the
Murderer.

But no one in Annette's household divined this silent battle.

In the morning the doctor came; he complimented her on her presence of
mind and the first steps she had taken--so different from what sometimes
happens when an anxious affection spoils everything by its awkwardness.
But she only grasped from his words what he said about the epidemics of
grippe and measles that were raging in Paris and the possibility that
her child had caught the germs of bronchial pneumonia. In refusing to
leave Paris, as she had promised to do, she had thus been guilty towards
the child. She judged herself pitilessly. This sentence she passed on
herself had at least the advantage of limiting the field of her
responsibility, for it dispelled any other remorse.

At the first news, Sylvie had arrived hastily, and the little patient
had plenty of attention. But Annette, refusing to leave her place, took
hardly any rest and remained in the breach during the days, the nights,
the days. The perspiration on the little body and its burning
suffocation melted her own being. The illness kneaded them into one
mass. The child seemed to be aware of this, for in the moments when the
fear of an attack of coughing contracted his sides his eyes rested,
heavy with reproaches and an appeal for help, on the eyes of the mother.
He seemed to be saying, "It's going to hurt me again! There it is coming
back! Save me!"

And, pressing him to her, she would reply, "Yes, I shall save you! Don't
be afraid, it's not going to get you!"

The attack came, and the child strangled. But he was not alone. She
stiffened with him in order to break the noose. He felt that she was
struggling, that she, the great protectress, would not abandon him; and
the reassuring sound of her gentle voice and the pressure of her fingers
gave him confidence, said to him, "I am here."

As he cried and struck the air with his little arms, he knew she would
fight it.

And she did fight it, the nameless thing. The illness yielded. The noose
relaxed. And the little birdlike body of the child, still palpitating,
abandoned itself to the hands that had saved it. How good it was to
breathe, the two of them, after that plunge into the depths! The wave of
air that streamed through the mouth of the child bathed the throat of
the mother and swelled her breasts with an icy pleasure.

These respites were of short duration. The struggle continued,
alternating with periods of exhaustion. His condition was improving when
the child had a sudden relapse from some unknown cause. His faithful
watchers naturally tormented themselves all the more, accusing
themselves of some moment of forgetfulness that had threatened his
recovery. Annette said to herself, "If he dies, I shall kill myself."

For many nights she had been used to going without sleep; she kept it up
as long as the child needed her aid, but during the hours when he slept
and her own mind, reassured, might have made the most of this and
relaxed, her spirit was more uneasy than ever. It vibrated like a
telegraph-wire in the wind. Impossible to close her eyes. It was
dangerous for her to lie there facing her distracted brain. Annette
would turn on the light again and try to fix her mind upon some definite
line of thought in order to escape from this vertigo. But it was only to
turn over and over all sorts of superstitious, childish, extravagant
ideas--or so they appeared to a mind that was accustomed to rational
methods. She told herself that if calamity hung over her it was because
she had been too completely happy, and it seemed to her that if her son
was to recover she must suffer in some other direction. An obscure,
powerful belief in some painful compensation, mounting up from the
depths of time. Primitive peoples, in order to placate the ferocious
bargaining god, the god who never gives something for nothing and
demands cash payments, used to sacrifice their first-born: they
purchased with this ransom the safety of the rest of their fortunes. And
for her first-born Annette would gladly have given her life and all her
wealth.

"Take my all," she said, "but let him live!"

Then at once she thought, "This is absurd. Nobody is listening to me."

It was no use. The old atavistic instinct continued to scent, somewhere
about her, the presence of the jealous God. And, holding on, bargaining
bitterly, she said, "Let us make an agreement. I am willing to pay on
the spot. The child is mine. Take your choice of the rest!"

As if to justify her superstition, events took Annette at her word. One
morning, when Aunt Victorine had gone to the lawyer's to get some money
that he should have sent them some time before, she came back in tears.
That very morning Annette had had the joy of being finally reassured
about her child's health. The doctor had just left: this time he had
announced that the child was definitely convalescent. Annette, in a
transport of happiness, but still trembling, hardly dared to believe in
her newly recovered happiness. At this moment she saw the door opening
and at the first glance perceived her aunt's broken look. Her heart
throbbed as she thought, "What new misfortune has befallen us?"

The old lady could hardly speak. At last she said, "The office is
closed. M. Grenu has disappeared."

Annette's whole fortune was in his charge. For a moment she did not
understand. Then--explain it if you can--her face cleared. She was
relieved. She thought, "Is that all?"

So there it was, the saving calamity! The enemy had taken his portion.

A moment afterward she shrugged her shoulders at her silliness. But in
spite of her irony she continued to say to it, "Was that enough? Are you
satisfied? Now that I have paid, I owe you nothing more."

She smiled. Poor humanity, clutching at its morsel of happiness and
seeing it unceasingly, unceasingly escaping, tries to conclude a pact
with blind nature, which it creates in its own image.

"In my image? This envious, rapacious, cruel nature. Is it posable that
I resemble it? Who knows? Who can say, 'I am not that'?"




IX


Annette was ruined. She could not yet estimate the extent of her ruin.
But when the first moment of aberration had passed, when she coldly
examined the situation, she had to admit that she thoroughly deserved
it.

She was quite capable of attending to her affairs. Like her father, she
had a good hard head; figures had no terrors for her. When one comes of
a line of peasants and shrewd, energetic tradesfolk, one must make an
actual effort to lose one's assurance in practical matters. But she had
been spared all thought about material things as long as her father was
alive; and since then she had passed through a long crisis in which the
inner travail of her emotional life had held her captive. In this rather
abnormal state, maintained by the idleness made possible by her fortune,
she had felt a rather unhealthy disgust at paying any attention to her
property. It should be said boldly that the idealism of the inner life
which despises money as parasitical forgets that it has the right to do
so only when it gives up money. The idealism that grows out of a soil of
wealth and professes to have no interest in it is the worst form of
parasitism.

To escape from the boredom of managing her fortune, she had turned the
whole administration of it over to the excellent M. Grenu, her lawyer.
An old family friend, a respected man whose honor and professional
standing were well known, M. Grenu had for thirty years overseen all the
Rivières' affairs as they passed through his office. It was true that
Raoul had not allowed any one to manage them without consulting him.
However much confidence he may have placed in his lawyer, he never
allowed him to make out a deed without verifying every period and comma
himself. But after taking all precautions, he did have confidence in
him, and when a man of his shrewdness has confidence in another the
other must deserve it. M. Grenu did deserve it. As much as anybody in
the world (when the precautions were taken) . . .

The rôle of lay confessor, which the lawyer is called upon to play in a
family, had placed M. Grenu in possession of many of the Rivières'
household secrets. He had been unaware of very few of Raoul's escapades
or Mme. Rivière's sorrows. To the former he had lent a sympathetic ear,
to the latter an ear equally complacent. As an advisor of the wife he
appreciated her virtues; as the companion of Raoul, he appreciated the
latter's vices (they were virtues too, Gallic virtues); and it was said
that he was not above joining in some of Raoul's select parties. M.
Grenu was a little grizzled man in his sixties, delicate in appearance,
with a fresh complexion, excessively correct, malicious and
smooth-tongued, a good fellow, an amusing actor; he liked to tell
stories and would begin in a low, faint voice so that people would take
pains to listen to him, a voice so soft that it seemed to be dying;
then, when he had won from the audience a pitying silence, he would
gradually spread out into a sonorous volume of sound that a big clarinet
might have envied, and he would not abandon the stop till the final note
when he had finished his song. He was a lawyer of the old school, but a
weak man, attracted by the new ways, a good paterfamilias, an
old-fashioned bourgeois, proud of being able to count a number of
actresses, high livers and light women among his clientele, and it was
his hobby to speak of himself as old and even to act so, exaggeratedly;
but he was very much afraid of being taken at his word and in secret
applied himself ardently to showing that he was livelier than all these
young folks and could leave them far behind.

He had known Annette since her childhood, and he had taken her affairs
very sincerely to heart. It seemed to him natural that she should
confide in him after the death of her parents. With professional
correctness, at first, he had scrupulously kept her posted; he was
unwilling to do anything without her consent--which only bored Annette.
Then he induced her to give him a special power of attorney for this or
that transaction of which Annette heard (scarcely heard) a very vague
account. And finally it was taken for granted that, since Annette made
frequent trips away from Paris, often without leaving her address, M.
Grenu would look out for her interests as best he could without
consulting her. Thus everything went well: the lawyer took charge of
everything, collected Annette's income and provided her with money as
she needed it. At last, in order to regularize the situation, he caused
her to give him a general power of attorney. . . . Water flowed under
the bridges. . . . It was more than a year since Annette had seen M.
Grenu, who, punctually, at the beginning of each quarter, turned over to
her the amount that was due. Living alone, away from Parisian society,
no longer reading the newspapers, she did not hear of events until long
after they had happened. Old M. Grenu had tried to be too clever.
Without any personal spirit of greed, he had allowed himself to be
caught by his fondness for speculation; to increase the funds of his
clients, he involved them in risky enterprises in which they were
capsized. Then in his attempts to make up their losses he ruined them.
Without warning Annette, he had not only disposed of all her ready money
and the personal property of which he had charge, but, by certain
subterfuges that were permitted by the elastic form of the power of
attorney, he had mortgaged the Boulogne house and the house in Burgundy.
When all was lost he fled before the ridicule which he knew would follow
his downfall and which would perhaps have been more intolerable to him
than dishonor.

To crown the misfortune, Annette, entirely absorbed in the child's
illness, had not opened her correspondence for several weeks. She had
not replied to the letters of the mortgage-holders or the court summons
that followed. It was during the days of the child's relapse. Annette
had lost her head. Not realizing that they were addressed to her and not
to her agent, she sent the papers off without reading them to the
lawyer, who did not read them either--for a good reason. He was on the
run. When at last the recovery of her child left her mind free enough to
examine the situation, the judicial procedure had advanced so far that,
in Annette's failure to satisfy the demands of the creditors, the latter
had won the right to have the mortgaged property put up for sale.
Annette, awakened from her torpor, had to face this stunning blow; with
the energy that was restored in an instant and the practical
intelligence, inherited from her father, that made up for her
inexperience, she fought with a vigor and a clearness of mind which the
judge admired even while he decided against her: for her good excuses
did not alter the fact that before the law her case was bad. Annette
herself saw at once that she had lost in advance, but her fighting
instinct, which coolly admitted her defeat, unjust as it was, could not
admit it without resistance. Besides, she was concerned now for her
child's property. She defended it, step by step, with the tenacity of a
rude, shrewd peasant who, bracing her legs at the gate of her field,
bars the road to intruders, trying to gain time even though she knows
they are coming in. But what could she do? In her inability to pay the
sum that was demanded, and not wishing to ask aid from her relatives or
from the old friends who would probably have refused it in some
humiliating way, she could not stop the sale. Her ingenious, stubborn
energy only succeeded in obtaining the suspension, for a limited time,
of the proceedings of expropriation, without any hope of preventing
their execution after a brief delay.

Annette would have had some excuse if she had been overwhelmed by this
catastrophe. Sylvie, who had not been personally injured by it, now
burst into lamentations, now angrily talked of nothing but law-suits,
law-suits, law-suits. Annette, on the contrary, seemed to have recovered
her equilibrium through this very event. The ordeal had cleared the air.
The soft, sentimental atmosphere that for two or three years had been
cloying her heart was dissipated. When Annette was certain that the
situation could not be changed, she accepted it. Without useless
recriminations. Unlike Sylvie, who heaped the harshest maledictions on
the lawyer's head, she found no comfort in blaming M. Grenu. The old man
was in the water. So was she. But she had her youthful arms, and she
could swim. Perhaps this thought was not even entirely unpleasant to
her. Strange as it may seem, along with the distress of her ruin she had
at bottom an inquisitive desire for adventure and even a secret pleasure
in putting her unused energies to the test. Raoul would have understood
her, Raoul who, at the height of his success, had been seized at moments
with a fancy for destroying his life's work just to have the pleasure of
rebuilding it.

She prepared now to leave the Boulogne house. The property in Burgundy
had already been sold, hastily, on absurd terms. It was certain that the
total sale would scarcely cover the debt and the costs, and that, if
there remained an available surplus, it would not be enough for the
maintenance of Annette and her family; she would have to look for new
resources. For the moment, the main thing was to reduce expenses and
settle in some very modest establishment. Annette set out to look for an
apartment. Sylvie found one for her on the fourth floor of her own
house. (She lived on the _entresol_.) The rooms were small and opened on
the court, but they were clean and quiet. It was impossible to bring all
the furniture from the Boulogne house here. Annette wanted to keep only
what was absolutely necessary. But Aunt Victorine, weeping, begged her
to preserve everything. Annette remonstrated that it was not reasonable,
in their present situation, to assume the expense of a store-room. They
must make a choice, and the old lady begged for each object. Annette
firmly chose; aside from the furniture that was to follow them to the
new apartment, she kept a few pieces that were particularly dear to her
aunt, and the rest were sold.

Sylvie was struck by Annette's insensibility. But it was impossible to
suppose that the courageous girl did not feel a little sad. She loved
this house which she had to leave. . . . How many memories she had! How
many dreams! But she repressed them. She well knew that she could not
entertain them with impunity. They were too much, they would have taken
everything; she needed all her strength at this moment.

Just once, taken by surprise, she gave way before their assault. It was
one afternoon, shortly before the movers were to come. Her aunt was at
church and Marc was at Sylvie's. Annette, alone in the Boulogne house,
where everything spoke of their approaching departure, was kneeling on a
half-rolled rug, folding up a tapestry that had been taken down.
Occupied with her task, while her active hands came and went, her head
was busy calculating about the new arrangements. But she still had room
for dreams; for her eye, floating for an instant far from the present
vision, fastened in its mistiness upon a design in the tapestry which
her hands were rolling up: it recognized this design. A motif of pale
flowers, almost worn away; butterflies' wings, detached petals? It
mattered little; but Annette's eyes as a child had fallen there, and on
this canvas they had embroidered the tapestry of the days that had fled.
And this tapestry had suddenly emerged from the night. Annette's hands
ceased to wander; her mind, for one moment more, persisted in repeating
the figures of which it had lost the thread, then was still. And
Annette, letting herself slip down upon the floor, with her forehead on
the roll of the rug and her face in her hands, lay there with her knees
drawn up, abandoned herself to the wind and the flood, set sail. . . .
She did not voyage towards any particular country. . . . Such a mass of
memories--lived? dreamed?--how distinguish between them? Dizzy symphony
of a moment of silence! It contained much more than the substance of a
life. In active thought, the consciousness, when it believes it takes
possession of our inner world, only seizes the crest of the wave at the
moment when the sun-ray gilds it. Reverie alone perceives the moving
abyss and its torrential rhythm, those innumerable drops, scudding along
on the wind of the ages, seeds of thought of the beings from whom we
spring and who will spring from us, that formidable chorus of hopes and
regrets whose trembling hands stretch out towards the past or the
future. Indefinable harmony that forms the tissue of an illuminated
second, and that sometimes a shock is enough to awaken. A bouquet of
pale flowers had just evoked it in Annette.

When she pulled herself together, after a long silence, she rose
hastily, and with hands that were suddenly awkward, hasty, trembling,
she finished folding up the tapestry without looking at it. She did not
quite finish it, she threw it into a box, incompletely rolled, and fled
from the room. . . . No, she did not want to stay with these thoughts!
It was better to escape from them. Later she would have time enough to
regret the past, when she would herself belong to the past . . . later,
in the twilight of her life. For the moment, she was too full of the
future, she must see it through. Her dreams lay ahead of her. "I don't
want to know what is behind me; I must not turn around."

She walked down the street, hastening her steps, tense, looking neither
to right nor left . . . the years, the years, the life that was
coming . . . that of her child, her own, the new life, the Annette of
to-morrow.




X


She had this vision in her eyes on the evening when she established
herself in Sylvie's house. Sylvie, as soon as her shop was closed,
hastened to climb up to her sister's apartment to distract her from the
regrets she supposed the latter must be feeling. She found her walking
back and forth in her narrow room, not at all tired after the exhausting
day, trying to make her too diminutive cupboards hold her clothes and
her linen. Unsuccessful in this, perched on a stool, with her arms full
of sheets, looking at the filled shelves, she was meditating another
plan, whistling like a boy a Wagnerian fanfare that she absent-mindedly
travestied, giving it a burlesque turn. Sylvie looked at her and said,
"Annette, I admire you." (She did not mean quite as much as this.)

"Why?" asked Annette.

"If I were in your place, how I should rage!"

Annette began to laugh. Absorbed in her work, she made a sign to her
sister to be silent.

"I think I've got it," she said.

She buried her head and her arms in the cupboard, arranging,
disarranging, rummaging.

"I said so," she remarked, "and I have."

(She was addressing a cupboard that was full, arranged, conquered.)

She descended, victorious, from the stool.

"Rage, Sylvie?" she said. (She was holding her by the chin.) "When you
were a child you played at building houses with dominoes. When the house
fell, did you get angry?"

"I banged the dominoes on the floor," said Sylvie.

"And I said, Biff! I'll build another."

"You'll have to admit that you shook the table!"

"Well, I wouldn't swear I didn't," said Annette.

Sylvie called her an anarchist.

"What!" said Annette. "Isn't that just what you are?"

Sylvie was not. She could laugh at order and authority when she wanted
to do so, but she felt the need of order and authority. Even if it was
only to apply them to other people. For her, as for others, there was no
pleasure in revolting unless it was against some authority. And as for
order, Sylvie was well supplied with it. She did not cavil at the
established order except in so far as it was not her own. She did not
reproach it for being established. An order should be established. Since
she too was established, as an employer, directing her own business, she
was all for a stable order. Annette made this discovery with surprise.
Nor was this the only discovery she made. You do not know another human
being unless you see him in that everyday activity which brings his
energies to a head and reveals his natural movements and gestures.
Annette had never seen Sylvie except during her idle times, her times of
relaxation. Who can judge of a cat stretched out on a soft cushion? You
must see it on the warpath with its back arched and the green fire in
its eyes.

Annette was now seeing Sylvie in her own field, the portion of earth she
had cleared for herself in the Parisian jungle. The little business
woman had taken her trade seriously, and she was second to no one in the
art of managing her affairs. Annette could observe her at leisure and
close by; for, during the first weeks that followed her moving, she took
her meals with Sylvie; it had been agreed that they should keep house
together until the settling was entirely finished. Annette, to keep her
own end up, tried to make herself useful, sharing in some of the tasks
of the workshop. Thus she saw Sylvie at all hours of the day, now with
the customers, now with the workers, now alone for a private talk, and
she observed in her sister traits she had not known, or which had become
accentuated in the last two or three years.

The coaxing Sylvie, under her charming smile, no longer concealed from
the penetrating eyes of Annette a rather cold nature which, amid all its
entanglements, knew where it was going. She had a small personnel of
working-girls whom she managed with superlative skill. With her keen
observation and her winning ways, she had chosen and drawn to herself
hearts that had no other attachments. Such, for instance, was her chief
assistant, Olympe, who was much older than she, more expert in the
craft, an excellent worker, but entirely without ideas, and unable to
take care of herself. She had come from the country and was lost in
Paris, victimized and laughed at by men, women, her employers and her
fellow-workers. She was intelligent enough to see this, but she did not
have the strength to resist it, and she had been looking for some one
who, without taking advantage of her, would make use of her work and
free her from the responsibility of managing herself. It had needed no
effort on Sylvie's part to bring her into line. Sylvie was merely
obliged to take care that there should be a good understanding among the
rival devotions that she had aroused in her personnel, making skilful
use of their antagonisms in order to stimulate their zeal and, like a
wise government, uniting competitors in the patriotism of the common
work. The pride of the little establishment and the desire to
distinguish themselves in the eyes of the young mistress delivered them
over to her cunning domination, which often made them work till they
were exhausted. She set the example, and no one complained. Her
affectionate taunts, the droll mockery at which they would burst out
laughing, would reinvigorate the weary team and make them hold out to
the end. Proud of their employer, they loved her jealously; while she,
who stimulated their enthusiasm, remained indifferent to them herself.
In the evening, after they had left, she talked about them to her sister
in a tone of cold detachment that shocked Annette. For the rest, she was
ready to do them a good turn in case of need, and she never left them in
the lurch if she found them ill or in difficulties. But whether they
were ill or not, if she did not see them she forgot them. She had no
time to think of the absent. She had no time to love very long. A
perpetual activity occupied all her moments: the care of her person,
housekeeping, meals, business, trying on dresses, gossip, love affairs,
amusements. And everything--even to the (never very long) periods of
silence, when, between the bustle of the day and her sleep at night, she
found herself alone face to face with herself--everything about her was
precise. Not a cranny for dreams. When she observed herself, it was with
the clear and curious eye that watches others and looks upon oneself as
a passer-by. A minimum of inner life: everything projected into acts and
words. The need that Annette felt for moral confession found no
consideration here. Annette was embarrassed in this perpetual midday. No
shadow. Or, if it existed--and it exists in every soul--the door was
closed tight upon it. Sylvie was not interested in what might be behind
the door. Her only concern was to administer her little domain
punctiliously, enjoying everything, her work and her pleasures, but
everything at its own time so that nothing should be lost; consequently,
she was without passions or any great excesses, for this activity, this
perpetual going from one thing to another, not only did not lend itself
to anything of the kind, but even destroyed its possibility in advance.
No danger that her lovers would make her lose her head.

The truth was that she did not love anything very much. She loved
whole-heartedly only one soul, Annette. And how strange this was! Why in
the world did she love this big girl who had nothing, or virtually
nothing, in common with her?

Ah, that "virtually nothing" was a great deal; who knows but that it was
the most important thing of all?--the tie of blood. This does not always
count for much between people of the same family. But when it does
count, what a mysterious strength it has! It is a voice that whispers to
us, "That other person is a part of me. Moulded in another shape, the
substance is the same. I recognize myself in a different form and
possessed by an alien soul."

And one wants to capture oneself in this usurper double attraction, a
triple attraction: the attraction of resemblance, the attraction of
opposition, of the war of conquest, which is not the least of the three.

What forces there were binding Annette and Sylvie together! Pride,
independence, orderliness, will, the life of the senses! Of these two
spirits, the one turned inward, the other outward--the two hemispheres
of the soul. They were constituted of almost the same elements, but
each, for deep, obscure reasons that sprang from the essence of their
personality, repressed one half, wished only to see one half, that which
emerged or that which was submerged. The uniting of the two sisters in a
common life disturbed the habitual consciousness that each had of
herself. Their mutual affection was tinged with hostility. And the
warmer the affection was, the keener was the hidden hostility, for they
realized how hopelessly unlike they were. Annette was more expert in
reading her buried thoughts, and she was also more sincere: she was able
to judge them and repress them. The time had passed when she had wished
to absorb Sylvie in her imperious love. But Sylvie still had a secret
desire to dominate her elder sister, and she was not displeased that
circumstances had given her an opportunity to affirm her superiority. It
was a sort of revenge for the inequalities of their lot during the
girlhood of the two sisters. This unconfessed feeling, together with her
real affection, gave her a sense of satisfaction which she concealed as
she saw Annette working under her direction in the shop. She would have
liked to have her on her pay roll. She put her in charge of receiving
her customers and making charcoal designs for embroidered trimmings; she
tried to persuade her that she could look forward to some important
position and even to being her partner later on in the business.

Annette, who saw what Sylvie was driving at, had no intention of tying
herself down. She let the offer drop, and when Sylvie pressed her she
replied that she was not fitted for this work. Upon this Sylvie asked
her ironically for what work she was fitted. This was a tender point
with her. When one has never had to work for a living and necessity
drives one to do so, it is painful not to know what work one is fitted
for, not even to know whether, in spite of one's education, one is
fitted for any work. But she had to face the question. Annette did not
want to remain dependent on Sylvie. Of course Sylvie would never have
shown that she felt this dependence: she enjoyed helping her sister. But
if she was happy in spending for Annette, she knew what she was
spending; her right hand was never unaware of what her left hand gave.
Annette was still less unaware of it. She could not endure the thought
that Sylvie, as she made up her accounts, mentally wrote her down as her
debtor. . . . The devil take all money! Should it be considered between
two hearts that love each other? Annette and Sylvie did not consider it
in their hearts. But it was a consideration in their life. People do not
live by love alone. They live by money too.




XI


This was a truth which Annette had ignored a little too much. She was to
lose no time in learning it.

She started out in search of a position, saying nothing about it to
Sylvie. Her first idea was to go to see the principal of the school for
young girls where she had studied. As an intelligent student who was
rich and the daughter of an influential father, she had been a favorite
of Mme. Abraham, and she felt certain of her sympathy. This remarkable
woman--one of the first to organize the teaching of women in France--had
rare qualities of energy and judgment that were complemented--or
mitigated, according to the case--by a very cold political sense which
many men might have envied. She was disinterested personally, but she
was far from being so where her school was concerned. She was a
freethinker, and, although she did not parade the fact, she was not
without a certain contemptuous anti-clericalism that could do her no
harm with her clientele, the daughters of the radical bourgeoisie and
young Jewesses. But in place of the dogmas she rejected she had
established a civic morality which, although it lacked basis and
certitude, was no less strict and commanding. (It was even more so, for
the more arbitrary a rule is the more rigid it becomes.) Annette, thanks
to her position in society, was intimate with the principal and had her
confidence. It amused her to tease the latter about her famous official
morality, and Mme. Abraham, who was sceptical by nature, found no
difficulty in smiling at the whims of this saucy young thing. She smiled
at them, yes, indeed, when they talked together behind her closed door.
But as soon as the door was open and Mme. Abraham was reinstated in her
title and her official rank, she was as firm as iron in her belief in
the Tables of the laic Law, the product of the highly reasonable
morality of a few republican pedagogues. It was enough to say that, if
her naked conscience was indifferent to conventional morality, her
clothed conscience--her usual conscience--severely blamed Annette's
behavior. For she knew about it; the adventure had gone the rounds of
society.

But she did not yet know of her ruin. And when Annette called, she took
care not to reveal her thoughts: her first business was to find out the
reasons for this call and whether the school might reap any advantage
from it. She therefore gave her a pleasant though rather reserved
greeting. But scarcely had she learned that Annette had come to ask a
favor than she remembered the scandal and her smile froze. One can
easily accept money from a person of whom one doesn't approve, but one
cannot decently give it to such a person. It was easy for Mme. Abraham
to find compelling reasons for averting a candidacy that was so
impolitic. There was no position in the school; and, when Annette asked
for a recommendation to other institutions, Mme. Abraham did not even
take the trouble to make vague promises. She was very diplomatic when
she was negotiating with anyone who was on top of the wheel of fortune,
but she instantly ceased to be so when the wheel had flung them down. A
serious mistake in diplomacy! For sometimes those who are down to-day are
on top to-morrow, and good diplomacy looks out for the future. Mme.
Abraham considered nothing but the present. At present Annette was
drowning; it was a pity, but Mme. Abraham was not in the habit of
fishing out those who were in the water. She did not disguise her
coldness, and, when Annette failed to abandon her tone of calm
self-possession and henceforth misplaced equality, Mme. Abraham, in
order to bring her back to a more exact sense of her distance, declared
that she could not conscientiously recommend her. Annette, who was
burning with indignation, was on the point of expressing it. A flash of
anger passed over her, but it was extinguished in contempt. She was
seized by one of those rather diabolical whims of her younger days, an
itching desire to mock. She rose, saying, "Well, think of me if you
establish a course in the new morality."

Mme. Abraham looked at her, taken aback; the impertinence was all too
evident. She replied dryly, "The old one is good enough for us."

"But it might not be a bad thing to enlarge it a little."

"What would you like to add to it?"

"Nothing very much," said Annette, calmly. "Freedom and humanity."

Mme. Abraham, hurt, said: "The right to love, no doubt?"

"No," said Annette, "the right to have a child."

As she went out she shrugged her shoulders at her useless bravado. . . .
Stupid! . . . What was the use of making an enemy? . . . She laughed
just the same as she thought of the vexed expression of her antagonist.
A woman cannot resist the pleasure of slighting another. Bah! The
Abraham woman would remain her enemy only until Annette had reconquered
her position. And she would reconquer it!

Annette visited other institutions, but there were no positions. There
were none for women. The Latin democracies are only made for men; they
sometimes put feminism on their programmes, but they distrust it; they
are in no hurry to furnish arms to what still remains, at the dawn of
the twentieth century, the enslaved rival, a rival that will not long so
remain, thanks to the tenacity of the Nordic woman. Pressure will have
to be brought by the public opinion of the rest of the world to oblige
them to offer a crabbed welcome to the woman who works and wishes to
exercise her rights.

Annette might have been admitted, however, to two or three positions if
her susceptibility had not caused her to lose them. They would have been
ready to shut their eyes to her irregular situation if she herself had
been willing to give them some specious explanation--that she was a
widow or divorced by her own choice. But when she was questioned her
absurd pride drove her to tell the facts as they were. After two or
three rebuffs, she approached no more institutions, not even the
University, although in the latter she had left sympathetic friends
behind her and would have found minds large enough to help her without
censuring her. But she was afraid of being wounded. She was still
inexperienced in the country of the poor. The hands of her pride had not
had time to become callous.

She looked about for a chance to give private lessons. She did not wish
to seek them among the friends of her own class; she preferred to
conceal her steps. She turned to those clandestine employment--those
exploitative--agencies that still exist in Paris. She was not skilful
enough to appear well from their point of view. She had too much
disdain. They resented her fastidiousness. Instead of accepting whatever
offered, like so many unhappy souls who are fortified with very few
recommendations, who will teach anything that is asked of them at famine
prices and work from dawn till dark, she presumed to pick and choose.

At last, through the mediation of Sylvie's customers, she found a few
foreigners. She gave lessons in conversation to some Americans who
treated her kindly and occasionally invited her to drive in their
carriages, though they offered her an absurd remuneration, never even
thinking that they ought to have paid her more. They did not hesitate to
give a hundred francs for a pair of shoes, while for an hour of French
they would pay a franc. (It was not impossible in those days to find
people who would give lessons for fifty centimes!) Annette, who did not
have the right to be exacting as yet, refused to accept this shameful
treatment. But after having sought far and wide, she could find nothing
better. The well-to-do bourgeoisie who, under the eye of public opinion,
are willing to spend whatever is demanded for the education of their
children when the teaching is public, sordidly exploit instructors in
their own households. There no one sees you. You are dealing with people
who are too humble to resist: for one who refuses there are ten who beg
you to accept them!

Isolated, without experience, Annette was in a poor position to protect
herself. But she had the practical instinct of the Rivières and she had
her pride, and they would not accept the humiliating wages to which
others yielded. She was not of the whining sort who complain and give
in. She did not complain and she did not give in. And in the face of all
expectation this attitude was successful. The human species is cowardly;
Annette had a calm, rather haughty way of saying no that cut short all
bargaining; people did not dare to treat her as they would have treated
others, and she obtained conditions that were rather more favorable. Not
greatly so. She had to go through many weary hours to earn what she
spent every day. Her pupils were scattered in remote quarters, and this
was before the time of the autobusses and the metro in Paris. When she
came home in the evening, her feet ached and her shoes were worn out.
But she was robust, and it gave her a sense of satisfaction to
experience the life of toil for one's daily bread. To earn her bread was
a new adventure for Annette. When she was successful in one of those
little duels of the will with her exploiters, she was as well pleased
with her day as a gambler who, in the pleasure of what he has won,
forgets the insignificance of the stake. She learned to see men better.
It was not always a pleasant sight. But everything is worth learning.
She came into contact with the obscure world of toil. But her contacts
were inadequate and without depth. If wealth isolates, poverty isolates
no less. Every one is caught fast in his difficulties and his effort,
and he sees in others not so much brothers in misery as rivals whose
fortune is made at the expense of his own.

Annette divined this feeling in the women with whom she found herself
thrown, and she understood it; for she was a privileged being among
them. If she worked in order not to be a charge upon her sister, her
sister was none the less there; she was safe from the danger of
destitution. She did not know that feverish uncertainty about to-morrow.
She had her child to enjoy; no one was trying to take him away from her.
How compare her lot with that of this woman whose story she had
learned--a teacher who had been dismissed because she, like Annette, had
had the hardihood to be a mother. It was true that she had been
tolerated at first on condition that she kept her maternity secret.
Exiled in a post of disgrace, in the depths of the country, she had had
to separate from the child of her own flesh. But she could not keep
herself from running to him when he was ill. The secret was out, and the
virtuous countryside made ferocious sport of her. The authorities of the
university of course upheld the popular decree and threw into the street
the two rebels against the code. And it was with them that Annette was
disputing their meagre livelihood. She took care not to apply for the
position which the other woman was seeking. But she was chosen. Just
because she sought positions less eagerly, because she had less need of
them. People have little respect for those who are hungry. And then the
poor souls whom she supplanted treated her as an intruder who was
robbing them. They knew they were unjust; but it is comforting to be
unjust when you are a victim of injustice. Annette became familiar with
that greatest of all wars--the war of the workers, not against nature or
circumstances, nor against the rich for taking their bread away from
them--the war of the workers against the workers who are snatching the
bread from each other, the crumbs that have fallen from the table of the
rich or from that sordid Crœsus, the State. That is the misery of
miseries, most felt by women, and especially those of to-day. For they
are still incapable of organization. They remain in the state of
primitive warfare, the individual against the individual; instead of
pooling their difficulties, they multiply them.

Annette hardened herself, and although her heart bled her eyes were
aflame with joy. She strode on, sustained in her ungrateful work by its
novelty, the energy she had to spend--and the thought of her child,
which illumined the whole day.




XII


Marc spent the day in Sylvie's workshop. Aunt Victorine had flickered
out shortly after they were settled. She had not been able to survive
the ruin of the old home, the loss of the old furniture, the habits of a
peaceful half-century. Since Annette was out of the house till evening,
Sylvie took charge of the child. He was the darling of the workshop,
petted by the customers and the workers, rummaging about on all fours,
sitting under a table, collecting hooks and eyes and scraps of chiffon,
winding skeins of silk, rolling balls, stuffing himself with sweets and
smothered with kisses. He was a little boy of three or four, with golden
auburn hair like Annette's, and he had been rather pale ever since his
illness. Life for him was a perpetual spectacle. Sylvie could remember
her own first experiences when, sitting under her mother's counter, she
had listened to the customers. But the great personages, from the tops
of their stilts, have too utterly different a field of vision to know
what catches the eyes of a child. And its rosy ears. . . . There was
quite enough to keep them busy in the workshop! Every tongue was
loosened, laughing, bold, brazen. Prudery was no weakness of Sylvie and
her flock. Plenty of laughing, plenty of gossip, makes the needle fly.
No one thought of the child. Was it possible that he understood? He did
not understand (in all probability), but he grasped things, he let
nothing escape him. The child collected everything, touched everything,
tasted everything. Woe to whatever lay in his way! Sprawling under a
chair, he put in his mouth whatever fell from above, scraps of biscuit,
buttons, fruit-stones; and he also put words there. Without knowing what
they meant. Exactly, in order to find out! And he munched away and sang.

"Little pig!"

An apprentice would snatch from his fingers a ribbon he was sucking, or
perhaps experimentally burying in his nose. But no one took from him the
words he had swallowed. He was doing nothing with them for the present;
there was nothing he could do with them. But they were not lost.

Routed out from under the furniture and the petticoats, where he was
absorbed in curious studies of the fidgeting feet and the imprisoned
toes curled up in their shoes, dragged back to the conventions, to his
normal position in the world of grown-ups, he would remain motionless,
soberly seated on a low stool between Sylvie's legs. Or, since his aunt
rarely kept still, between some other pair of knees. He would lean his
cheek against the warm cloth and watch, with his nose in the air and his
head thrown back, those bending faces with their puckered eyes, their
quick, shining, moving pupils, those mouths, biting the thread; he saw
the saliva and the lower lips--they seemed to be the upper ones--gnawed
by the teeth, the undersides of the nostrils, covered with little red
streaks and trembling as the words came, and the fingers that flew with
their needles. Suddenly a hand would tickle his chin: there was a
thimble at the end of it that gave him a cold feeling in his neck. Here,
as ever, nothing was lost on him; these warm and cold contacts, this
downy glow, these lights that reddened and these shadows that turned to
amber the bits of living flesh, yes, and this feminine odor. . . . He
was certainly not aware of it himself, but that multiple consciousness,
that many-faceted consciousness which is spread about the whole
periphery of a child, registered everything that passed over its little
printer's-roller. . . . These women never suspected that their images,
complete from head to foot, were being imprinted on this little
sensitive plate. But he saw them only fragmentarily: pieces were
missing, as in a puzzle in which the parts are mixed up. From this
resulted his strange, fleeting preferences, as lively as they were
varied, which seemed capricious but were really due to his deep-seated
predisposition. A clever person might have said what it was in each of
these women that attracted him. He was like a regular household pet: it
was the gentleness of the hands rather than the whole person that he
liked. And it was the totality of these sweetnesses, the home, the
workshop. He was frankly an egoist. (And rightfully: the little builder
has to assemble his ego first of all.) A sincere egoist, even in his
blandishments. For he was blandishing: he wanted to please and he
enjoyed giving pleasure, but only to those whom he had chosen.

From the very beginning his great favorite had been Sylvie. The instinct
of the domestic animal in him had at once perceived that she was the god
of the household, the master who dispensed food and kisses and was
responsible for the tone of the day, and whom it was a good thing to
propitiate. But it was better still to be propitiated by her. And the
child had observed that this privilege had been accorded to him. It
never occurred to him that it might not be deserved. Thus he received
without surprise but with satisfaction the agreeable and flattering
homage that was rendered to him by the sovereign of the workshop. Sylvie
spoiled him, adored him, went into ecstasies over his gestures, his
steps, his words, his intelligence, his beauty, his mouth, his eyes, his
nose; she held him up to the admiration of her customers and preened
herself on his account as if he had been her own chick.

To tell the truth, she also called him, "Little blackguard! Silly little
fool!" And sometimes she tweaked his nose, slapped him, gave him a
spanking. But from her he did not take this as an offence; although he
protested loudly, he did not even find it too disagreeable. May not any
one be struck by the hand of the queen? From any one else, from one of
the girls in the workroom, heavens above, he would never have permitted
it! Even without her sceptre, Sylvie had a charm for him. In his
feminine puzzle, made up of this group and that, she had provided him
with the greatest number of parts; he loved to press against her dress,
with his head against her stomach, to listen to her voice (he could hear
her laughing all through her body), or clamber up her hips till he had
reached the summit; and then, with his two arms knotted about her neck,
he would rub his nose, his lips and his eyes against her soft cheek,
close to her ears, among the little blonde curls that had such a nice
smell. What the eye is for the mind of grown-ups, the sense of touch is
for that of children. It is the talisman that permits one to see over
the wall and weave within oneself the dream of things one believes one
sees, the illusion of life. The child spun his web. And without knowing
what these blonde curls were, or what this cheek was, this voice, this
laugh, this Sylvie or this "I," he thought, "This is mine."




XIII


Annette would come home in the evening. She would be famished. All day
she had walked in a waterless desert, a world without love. All day she
had walked with her eyes turned towards the spring which, in the
evening, she would find again. She heard it rippling; in anticipation
she would dip her lips in it; a passer-by in the street might have taken
as intended for him the smile which this beautiful woman who was
hastening along addressed to the image of her child. As she approached
Sylvie's house, her steps quickened like those of a horse that scents
the oats; and when at last she entered, laughing with greedy love, no
matter how tired she was she went upstairs at a run. The door opened;
she dashed in and threw herself on the child; she caught him up in her
hands, squeezed him, devoured him furiously, his eye, his nose, under
his nose, wherever she happened to alight, whatever part she could
reach, and her mad joy expressed itself noisily. As for him, as he
played about or amused himself soberly, comfortably settled on the
padded sofa, drawing lines with a piece of chalk or mixing up threads of
various colors, he was none too pleased by this invasion. This great
rough woman who came in without any warning, seized him, pulled him
about, shouted in his ear, stifled him with kisses . . . he didn't like
it at all! To be disposed of without his permission made him indignant.
He wouldn't allow it. He was cross and he struggled; but this only made
her shake him, fondle him, laugh and cry all the more furiously. . . .
Everything about her displeased him: this lack of consideration, this
noise, this violence. . . . He quite understood that she ought to love
him, admire him and even kiss him. But she should have had better
manners! Where had she come from? Sylvie and her girls were more
ladylike. When they played with him, even when they laughed or
exclaimed, they didn't make such a racket and seize you and hug you in
this brutal way. He was astonished that Sylvie, who knew so well how to
give her subjects a dressing down, should never give this ill-bred
person a lesson in deportment, that she did not protect him from such
familiarities. On the contrary, Sylvia assumed with Annette a tone of
affectionate equality which she did not have for any one else, and she
said to Marc, "Come, be good! Kiss your mother!"

His mother! Of course, he knew it. But that was no excuse. Yes, she too
was a domestic power. He was still too close to the warmth of the breast
not to have kept on his epicurean mouth the sugary taste of milk, not to
have kept in his birdlike body the golden shadow of the wing that
sheltered him. Even more recent were the nights of illness when the
invisible enemy had seized the throat of the fledgling and the head of
the great protectress had bent over him. Of course, of course! But now
he no longer needed this. If he preserved these memories and a hundred
others that were stored away in his granary, he had no use for them at
present. Later, perhaps, he would see. . . . Every moment now brought
him a new gift; he had enough to do to gather them all in. A child is
ungrateful by nature. _Mens momentanea_. Do you imagine he has time to
remember what was good yesterday? What is good for him is what is good
to-day. To-day Annette had made the great mistake of allowing herself to
be eclipsed by others who were more agreeable and even more serviceable
in Marc's eyes. Instead of going off, heaven knew where, and making her
unseemly appearances in the evening, why didn't she stay here like
Sylvia and the others, busy all day with Marc and paying court to him?
It was her loss. So he barely condescended to accept Annette's
effusions, responding to the rain of silly, loving questions with a
bored and distant Yes, No, Good Morning, Good Evening; and then, flying
from the downpour and wiping his cheek, he would return to his play or
to Sylvie's knees.

Annette could not help seeing that Marc preferred Sylvie to herself.
Sylvie saw it even more clearly. They laughed about it together, and
both pretended not to attach a shadow of importance to it. But deep in
their hearts Sylvie was flattered and Annette was jealous. They took
good care not to confess this to each other. Like a good girl, Sylvie
forced the ungracious child to kiss Annette. Annette found little joy in
these forced embraces; Sylvie found more. She did not tell herself that
she was stealing from the garden of the poor, and that later she would
royally return some of the fruit. But what one keeps to oneself in order
not to load oneself with troublesome scruples, one only tastes the
better with one's closed mouth. And although she had no unkind feeling,
Sylvie found more pleasure in making the child fondle her and in
displaying her power over him in Annette's presence. Annette, pretending
to joke, would say, in a careless tone, "Out of sight, out of mind." But
her heart did not take it as a joke. There was no joke about it. Annette
had no humor save that of the intellect. Her love was as foolish as that
of a dumb creature. It was painful to be a woman among women and to be
obliged to hide one's feelings. People would only laugh at you if you
showed your poor famished heart. Annette, when she was with other
people, acted as if her love were an old story; she talked about her
day, the people she had seen, what she had learned, said and done--in
short, everything that was indifferent to her. (Oh, how indifferent!)

But at night, by herself, in her apartment, alone with her child, she
could give free rein to the torment she felt. To her joy, too, her
torrential passion. No need to take precautions any longer. There was no
one from whom to hide herself. She had her son entirely at her mercy.
She abused her power a little; she wearied him with her wild affection.
Since here, away from Sylvie, he no longer had the upper hand, the
little politician did not show his annoyance: till morning came he would
have to humor this extravagant mother. He used strategy; he pretended to
fall asleep. He did not have to pretend very much; sleep came quickly
after his full days. All the same, it had not quite come when, like a
lamb in his mother's arms, with his eyes closed, Marc would seem to be
overwhelmed by it. Annette, interrupting her prattle, was obliged to
carry him to bed; and the little comedian, in the half-sleep down which
he let himself slip, step by step, down which he slid on the banisters
to the foot, laughed in his sleeve as he watched through his eyelashes
the credulous Mamma who was mutely adoring him. He had a sense of his
superiority, he was grateful to her for it; and sometimes in a transport
he would even throw his little arms about her neck as she knelt beside
him. By a surprise like that Annette was repaid for her troubles. But
the stingy child did not repeat it often, and Annette had to fall asleep
hungry. It was not before she had turned over in bed many times to
listen to the child's breathing as her thoughts revolved feverishly. He
had not kissed her nicely, and she said to herself, "He doesn't love
me."

Her heart would shrink. But she would at once correct herself. "What
nonsense I'm inventing!" The idea had to be repressed at once. How could
one live with it? No, it wasn't true. . . . The good little creature she
was accusing! She hastily sought among her memories for the best she
had, for the pretty tricks of the child, for his lovable ways. At the
images she called up she would have liked to snatch him out of his bed
and kiss him. . . . But hush! She mustn't wake him up. That delicious
little breath. . . . My treasure! . . . How good it will all be later!

For as the present was decidedly meagre, Annette made up for it by
inventing a future of motherly intimacy with her son that conformed with
her desires. She needed an idol to absorb the energies of her nature.
For some time now they had been troubling her again.




XIV


It was no longer a restless melancholy, that neurasthenic depression
which had preceded her child's illness and which the illness had
dissipated--those days of a life that was at a standstill, in which she
felt emptied of energy and interest: the becalmed sea before the flow of
the tide.

This was the return of the oceanic flood. It announced itself by a
roaring of the waves, a nocturnal resurgence. For a time maternity had
satisfied the passionate elements of her nature. The material fatigue of
a working life had set up a dam against them. But, gathering in the
shadow, they beat against the rock. The soul, which as it grows climbs
up the spiral of life, found itself returning to a state bordering on
that from which it had passed, four or five years before, between the
burning summer of the hotel in the Grisons and the spring of love with
Roger Brissot. Bordering on it, but not the same. One returns on the
spiral above the past; one does not descend to it again. Annette's
nature had ripened. There was no longer in her agitation any of the
blind ingenuousness of the young girl. She was a woman; her desires were
keen and definite. She knew whither they led. And if she did not wish to
know, it was precisely because she did know. Her will had matured no
less than her flesh. Everything about her had become richer, and
everything had assumed an accent of passion.

The reappearance of these familiar demons, these dreaded demons, was
like a midday when a storm is gathering. A heavy silence, a silence big
with the tempest to come. It followed the careless joys and the careless
sorrows of the young morning. The shadows slipped unceasingly over
Annette's face. She had become tense. When she was in company or off her
guard, when she was not distracted by the child's presence, she would
fall into a dumb silence, with a line between her brows. When she became
aware of this, she would slip noiselessly away. Any one who had been
disturbed about her would have found her in her room, setting it in
order, making her bed, turning the mattress, polishing the furniture or
the floor, using more movements than were necessary, but not succeeding
in stifling the spirit that resounded within her. She would stop in the
midst of something she was doing, upright on a chair, a bit of chiffon
in her hand, or leaning on the window-sill. Then she would forget
everything, not only the past but the present as well, the dead and the
living, even her child. She saw without seeing, she heard without
hearing, she thought without thinking. A flame that burned in empty
space. A sail in the wind of the open sea. She felt the great breath
that passed through her limbs, and the ship vibrated with all its masts.
And then from the boundless void emerged the face of the things that
surrounded her. From the court of the house over which Annette was
leaning mounted the familiar sounds; she recognized the voice of the
child talking and singing. But her reverie was not interrupted; it took
another course. It was the song of a bird on a summer afternoon. O sunny
heart, what an amount of life you still have to give! Take the world
into your open arms! Too much plunder! . . . Her consciousness relaxed
its grip; she fell back into the incandescent gulf where there was no
longer any song, any child's voice, any Annette . . . nothing but a
powerful vibration of sunlight. . . .

Annette awakened, leaning on her elbow on the window-sill.

But at night the tormenting dreams that had disappeared since Marc's
birth took up their abode in her. They came in groups of three or four,
ceaselessly succeeding one another. Annette rolled from one to another,
layer after layer of them. She would get up in the morning fatigued,
feverish; she had lived ten nights in one. And she did not want to
recall what she had dreamed.

Those who saw Annette frequently had observed her anxious brow and her
absorbed eyes; they did not understand this sudden change, but they were
not disturbed by it; they attributed it to external causes, material
difficulties. For Annette these periods of anxiety were a season of deep
renewal. She could not do justice to them, for they brought with them
the weight of gestation, which was more agonizing than that of
maternity. It was a maternity indeed, that of the buried soul. The human
being is wrapped up like a seed in the depths of matter, in the amalgam
of humus and human loam where the generations have left their debris.
The labor of a great life consists in disengaging it. For this
childbirth a whole lifetime is necessary, and often the midwife is
death.

Annette had the secret anguish of the unknown being who was to emerge
from her some day and rend her. Overcome by fits of shame, she would
shut herself up in a tumultuous retreat, face to face with the immanent
Being; and their relations were hostile. The air was charged with
electricity; its gusts rose and fell in the immobility. She realized her
danger. In vain had her consciousness left in the shadow the thing that
disturbed her. "In the shadow" meant in herself, in her own home. And to
feel her home peopled from top to bottom with beings whom she did not
know was far from reassuring.

"All that. . . . I am all that. . . . But what does it want of me? . . .
What do I myself desire?"

In reply, she said to herself, "You have nothing more to desire. You
possess."

Her stiffened will turned all the violence of her love upon the child.
These continual recurrences of maternal passion were not very fortunate.
Abnormal, excessive, unhealthy--(for this passion sprang from an
impossible attempt to turn into a path that was not theirs alien and
insistent instincts)--they could only end in disappointment. She
repelled the child. Marc would not submit to being monopolized in this
way. He no longer concealed his ill-will from his mother. He thought her
a bore and he told her so in cross little monologues which happily
Annette did not hear, but which Sylvie overheard one day. She scolded
him for it, bursting out laughing at the same time. Marc, in a corner by
the door, was talking to the wall, saying, as he made little impatient
gestures, "That woman makes me tired!"




XV


People are always writing the history of the events of a life. They
imagine they see the life itself in them, but in reality these events
are only its outer covering. The life itself is within. The events act
upon it only in so far as it has chosen them; one might be tempted to
say it has produced them, and in many cases this is the exact truth.
Twenty events take place each month under our eyes; they do not count
for us because we have nothing to do with them. But when one of them
touches us, it is a safe wager that we have gone halfway to meet it; and
if the shock loosens a spring in us, it is because the spring is wound
up and awaiting the shock.

Towards the end of 1904, Annette's moral tension gave way, and the
transformations it brought about in her seemed to coincide with certain
changes which, at the same moment, took place in her.

Sylvie married. She was twenty-six years old; she had had enough of the
joys of liberty; she decided that the moment had come to enjoy those of
a home. She took her time making her choice. The stuff of which a lover
is made does not need to be lasting; it only needs to be pleasing. But a
good husband must be made of sound, durable material. Of course it was
important for Sylvie that he should be attractive too. But there are
ways and ways of being attractive. In choosing a husband one doesn't
have to lose one's head. Sylvie consulted her common sense and even her
social sense. Her business was going well. Her establishment, _Sylvie:
Robes et manteaux_, had acquired, along with a select clientele of the
fairly well-to-do bourgeoisie, a justified reputation for elegance and
style at moderate prices. She had reached a point in her business where
she could go no further alone. To advance she would be obliged to
associate other forces with her own and add to her seamstress's workshop
a tailor's shop that would enable her to enlarge the circle of her
operations.

Without taking any one into her confidence she looked about for some one
who would fall in with her plans. She made her choice soberly; and once
it was made she decided to marry. Love would come later. It should have
its proper place: Sylvie would not marry a man whom she could not love.
But love must await its turn. Business came first.

The name of the object of her choice was Selve (Leopold); and no sooner
had she cast her eye upon him than the little business woman decided on
the name, the beacon-light of the new establishment, _Selve et Sylvie_.
But although, for a woman, a name is never unimportant, Sylvie was not
so foolish as to be satisfied with a name alone; and Selve (Leopold) was
a good match. No longer very young, looking all of his thirty-five
years, a rather handsome man in the popular style, rather ugly, in fact,
but solidly built, with reddish blond hair and a florid complexion, he
was the head cutter at a great tailoring establishment, skilful in his
craft, earning a good income, steady, anything but dissipated. Sylvie
had taken his measure; the question was settled--in Sylvie's mind. She
had not consulted Selve about it. But the assent of the man she had
chosen was the last thing to trouble her. She took it upon herself to
win this.

Selve himself would never have sought anything of the kind. He was
devoted to his own welfare and his own habits, a good soul, not at all
ambitious and rather egoistical, and he had made up his mind to remain
unmarried. It would not have occurred to him to quit his lucrative
position as second fiddle, which entailed no responsibility, with an
employer who knew his value. Sylvie upset his plans and his peace of
mind in the twinkling of an eye. She met him--she took pains to meet
him--at an exhibition whither she had gone, as he had, to study the
modes they were both going to contribute to launch. She was surrounded
by admirers, and without paying any attention to Selve she began to
distribute her smiles and clever repartees to three or four young men
who were very much taken with her. Suddenly, Selve, observing with some
annoyance this grace and wit that were not for him, perceived that he
had become the object of her attentions. She was speaking now only for
him; the others had ceased to count. He was all the more affected by
this instantaneous change because he attributed it to his own personal
merit. With this stroke he was caught. Farewell to his resolutions!

A little while after this, Sylvie begged Annette to join her in the
evening after dinner at a time when there would be no one in the
workroom.

"I've asked you to come," she said, "because I'm expecting some one."

Annette was surprised. "What! You need me? Can't you receive him alone?"
Sylvie said soberly, "I think it would look better."

"This attack of propriety has come rather late."

"Better late than never," said Sylvie, diplomatically.

"Nonsense! Try that on somebody else."

"Just what I'm doing," said Sylvie.

Annette shook her finger at her. "You have some one up your sleeve.
Well, who is this someone?"

"Here he is now."

Selve (Leopold) was ringing the bell. He seemed to be annoyed at not
finding Sylvie alone, but as a well-bred man he put a good face on the
situation. It was not easy for him to appear to advantage alone in the
presence of two young gossips who were alarming enough anyway and were
evidently in each other's confidence. He felt that these two pairs of
eyes were watching him. After a few rather heavy gallantries, of which,
as a matter of politeness, Annette had her share, he began to talk about
business, the trade, the strenuous life he led. Annette, with an air of
being interested, charitably asked him a few questions. He became more
confident and told about the difficulties of his career, his
disappointments, his success, missing no opportunity to place himself in
a good light. He seemed simple, cordial, self-sufficient; he played with
all his cards on the table. Sylvie, who was more cautious, watched his
play before playing herself. Annette, who was soon relegated to the
background, where she followed the game, was less surprised at the
competence of her sister than at the humbleness of her choice. It would
have been easy for Sylvie to make a more brilliant match; she had simply
not wished to do so. She distrusted men who were too handsome and too
clever. It goes without saying that she would not have chosen a goose or
a fool. _In medio_. . . . What she wanted was a prudent second in
command, not someone who would command her. She knew that in marriage
everybody has to give something and wants to get something: it is a
question of supply and demand. For herself she demanded the right to
remain the mistress in her own household. And what did he demand? Ah,
poor fellow, to be loved for himself, just for himself. He was not
conceited; he knew well enough that he was neither handsome nor
attractive. But it was his weakness to wish to be married for love.
Ridiculous, wasn't it? He shrugged his shoulders at the idea, for he was
no fool, this big, ingenuous creature who was familiar enough with life
and sceptical, as three out of every four Frenchmen are, where women
were concerned. But the need of the heart is so strong! That stupid
need! "Why shouldn't I be loved? I'm as good as others who are." So, by
turns, he was almost humble and almost fatuous. And always begging. This
was not very clever of him, and it was even worse that he allowed it to
be seen. For she had seen him very clearly, the sharp-eyed minx. And to
those big, blue, round, rather prominent eyes that were always asking,
"Do you love me?"--her soft eyes responded neither with a Yes nor with a
No. For uncertainty is like fuel to love.

When the sisters found themselves alone again, Annette said to Sylvie,
"Don't play with him too much!"

"Why not?" said Sylvie, wondering. "The stakes are worth the trouble."

"Then it's serious?"

"Very serious."

"I can't imagine you married."

"Really? I dare say you will see me so two or three times."

"I don't like you to laugh at these things."

"What would one laugh at, my dear Salvation Army lassie? Come, Mrs.
General Booth"--she pronounced it "Botte"--"don't knit your beautiful
brows. I'm not thinking of changing before I've even tried it. I am
marrying in the hope that it's for good. But if it doesn't last, one
must be able to resign oneself."

"I am not anxious about you," said Annette.

"Really? I thank you for his sake. Has he made a conquest of you?"

"He isn't good enough for you, Sylvie. But I shouldn't want you to make
this good man suffer some day."

Sylvie smiled and looked at her teeth in the mirror.

"Suffer! Everybody makes the other person suffer. That's nothing. Of
course he will suffer, poor man! I shouldn't mind being in his place.
Come, don't disturb yourself about him. Do you think I don't know the
value of my Adonis? It isn't dazzling, but it amounts to a good deal. I
know what I'm about. I shan't tell him, for it doesn't do to spoil men.
It allows them to think they have rights over us. But privately I shall
not forget it. I shan't do myself the wrong of doing him a wrong. And if
I don't promise never to make him angry--which might be an excellent way
of making him a little thinner--I shan't put him on the grill unless it
is necessary. Of course, assuming that I have no reason to complain of
him. Otherwise it would serve him right to give him his due. And I pay
in cash. I am an honest business woman; I don't deceive my customers any
more than is necessary for me to live. Unless they try to get the best
of me. Then I get the best of them. Don't I!"

"To think," Annette exclaimed, "that you never can get her to talk
seriously!"

"Life would not be endurable," said Sylvie, "if one had to say serious
things seriously!"

Leopold was not long in coming back again, and Sylvie did not leave him
languishing. She had quickly made the tour of the enemy's positions,
reconnoitered behind his defensive works and discovered his arms, his
baggage and his supplies before giving herself in good earnest. She had
no difficulty in leading him to adopt her own plans. Till his last day
Leopold was to preserve the illusion that it was he who had conceived
the idea of establishing the great dressmaking establishment of _Selve
et Sylvie_.

The marriage was arranged for the middle of January, a time when work
would be rather slack. The preceding weeks were a joyous time in the
workroom. The radiant Leopold regaled the whole band, took them to the
theatre and the movies. They all had such a need for laughter! When one
of them was married, it was as if she brought marriage into the house.
And each of the others greeted the visitor with a whispered "Don't
forget! The next time it will be my turn. . . ."

Annette was caught up in the general joy. Instead of feeling the
deprivation of her own life, she asked herself what had become of her
troubles. They slipped away as a chemise slips down one's thighs. O
youthful body, sorrow cannot cling to you! Not that this marriage gave
her any satisfaction. She had loved her sister too tenderly not to feel
rather sad to see her going still further away from her. And it was not
pleasant to see such a pretty girl giving herself to this rather vulgar
man. Annette had had other dreams for Sylvie. But with our dreams other
people have nothing to do. Their way of being happy is their own, not
ours. And they are right.

Sylvie was satisfied. Leopold's affection, the admiration which he
showed for her, touched her vanity and gradually her heart. As she had
said to her sister, she appreciated the serious character of the man she
had chosen. He would be a steadfast companion who would not interfere
with her. She had no intention of abusing him--though one never
knew!--but she was certain that she would never have to give him any
minute account of her behavior. Leopold made no attempt to learn about
Sylvie's past; he trusted her, and this pleased her. His experience of
life had left Leopold with few illusions; above all, it had left him not
unwilling to compromise; it inclined him to assume for his own use and
accept for that of others, as a rule of conduct, the cordial egoism of
an honest, sceptical, affectionate man who was not exacting and did not
ask of others more than he himself could give.

Sylvie, indeed, found herself much closer to him than to Annette. She
loved Annette more; but, as she said to herself, laughing, she would
never have married a masculine Annette. No, that would have turned out
badly.

Selve inspired her with a feeling of complete security. This restful
impression dispensed her from thinking about him: she thought of the
wedding, of the dress she was making, of her future household, and she
made great plans for the business. It was perfectly satisfying.




XVI


The wedding took place one radiant winter day. Selve carried off all his
friends to the woods of Vincennes. They separated into jolly groups.
Annette gaily mingled with them. In former times she would have been
sensitive to the noisy and rather vulgar side of these rejoicings, but
she was not so now. She laughed with these bold young men, these hearty
girls who were giving themselves a day of merriment between their days
of toil. She took part in their sports, and she enchanted everybody with
her enthusiasm. Sylvie, who had known her as cold and contemptuous,
watched her running and amusing herself in this frank way. There she was
playing blindman's buff, with her eyes under the bandage, red with
excitement, her mouth open and laughing, her chin in the air, as if to
seize the light as it flew past, her arms stretched out before her and
her hands like wings, striding along with great steps, stumbling,
laughing her prettiest. . . . What was the beautiful, vigorous body of
this passionate blind girl going to seize? Who was going to seize her?
More than one person who was watching her might have had this thought.
But Annette seemed to be thinking only of her game. What had become of
the cares that had weighed upon her yesterday? Of her anxious, tense,
absorbed air? . . . What elasticity she had! . . . Sylvie congratulated
herself on having succeeded in distracting Annette from her troubles,
and she was overjoyed at this. But Annette knew very well that the cause
lay much further back. She was not disburdened of her cares because she
was laughing at the wedding. She was laughing at the wedding because she
was disburdened.

What had happened? It was a strange thing and one that was not the work
of a day, although on this day it appeared so.

One Sunday morning, a few weeks before this, she had been sitting
half-clad before her dressing-table. She took a long time over her
toilet on Sunday, for on other days she was obliged to go out so early.
She was weary with the accumulated fatigue of the week. The child, who
had just got up, had slipped out of the room to find his aunt. He was
very much interested in the wedding, and he amused Sylvie by the
reflexions which, as a man of experience, he expressed on this subject.
Leopold petted him; as a way of courting Sylvie, he courted her little
lap-dog. And Marc, flattered and proud of his importance, passed all his
time in the apartment below, remaining with his mother very reluctantly.
Annette was bitterly disheartened by this. But this morning her
weariness swept away her sadness and even mingled with it a secret
feeling that lightened it. She sighed, however, from habit. She was
feeling that mingled fatigue and enjoyment which came from knowing that
she could, thank heaven, stretch out at full length on this Sunday
without having to stir. . . . Sunday! In former days Annette had never
dreamed how precious it was.

"How weary I am, how weary I am! How good it is not to budge! If I were
sitting in the most uncomfortable position, leaning on my elbow in some
tiresome way, I shouldn't move. I could sleep for a thousand years.
There is a charm in this that holds you. One's afraid of breaking it.
Let's not stir. How good it is!"

She saw through the window, on the roof opposite, a stream of smoke
coming from the baker's chimney. It was carried off by the wind, in
spirals, bright and gay, stretching out, rolling, running and dancing
against the blue sky. Annette's eyes laughed and her spirit danced in
the meadows of the air--borne along in the wake of the mad arabesques.
All the weight of the earth had slipped away from her. Her spirit felt
naked in the wind and the sun. Annette sang in a low voice. . . . And
suddenly there appeared before her the enraptured eyes of a young man
who had looked at her the day before in an omnibus. She did not know
him, and in all probability she would never see him again. But this
look, which she had surprised as she suddenly turned her head--he did
not think he was being seen--confessed so naïvely how charmed he was
that ever since a fresh joy had remained in her heart. She pretended to
herself that she did not know the cause of this; but as her mirror
returned to her the image of her smile, she saw herself with the eyes of
the one who would love her some day. . . . What has become of you, my
worries? I can still hear them murmuring fitfully, far, far away.

"Enough, enough! No more of this. One must be reasonable."

There was nothing new in what Annette said to herself. Twenty times she
had said it. But although she did as she said, she expected nothing from
it. Success does not always depend on being reasonable. Reason is a good
counsellor, but counsellors do not guarantee payment. And the heart is
only convinced by the reasons of the heart.

She had no lack of these now. Annette was willing to see how absurd were
the demands made by her maternal love. But if she was ready to do this,
it was because other stifled aspirations had risen to the surface. She
could no longer deny them; she no longer wished to do so. And once she
had given them this tacit acquiescence, Annette felt liberated. The
voice of her reawakened youth said to her, "Nothing is lost. You still
have the right to be happy. Your life is just beginning."

The world revived. Everything had a savor again. Even on dull days she
had her luminous moments of escape. Annette formed no plans for the
future. She abandoned herself to the happiness, whatever it might be, of
a future that she had recaptured. Yes, yes, she was young, young as the
young year. . . . A whole life before her, . . . There would never be
enough of it.




XVII


One of those gay, precocious months of February that have so much charm
in Paris. Spring is not yet in the sky or in the heart, but everything
is pure, pure light, the limpid joy of a child that has awakened. The
beautiful dawn of the year is beginning, and before the birds have
reappeared one hears them coming. As from the summit of a tower lost in
the clear sky, one sees them, clouds of wings, swarms of swallows. They
are coming, they are crossing the seas. And already some of them are
singing in my heart.

Like every healthy being, Annette loved all the seasons. In adapting
herself to them, she shared in their secret energies. Those of the
springtime exalted her.

She went along, happy to be walking, happy to be working, carrying home
with her a wholesome fatigue and a hearty appetite. She was interested
in everything, filled with a new curiosity about the things of the mind
which for four years she had abandoned, about books, music; and
sometimes in the evening, although she was half dead, she would go out
and run to the other end of Paris to use a ticket to some concert.
Sylvie envied her; she herself was in the early stages of pregnancy, and
it was far from pleasant.

In her evening walks, Annette was followed more than once. She did not
notice this: absent-minded, dreaming, amused, she would suddenly stop in
the midst of her soliloquy with the feeling that she was dragging
something along at her heels. She would wake up and look curiously at
the thing that was whispering to her, shrug her shoulders or make a face
and start off briskly saying, "What an old idiot!"

The idiot was often young, and Annette thought, "In a dozen years Marc
may be like this."

She stopped indignantly. The false Marc received the wrath of the eyes
which she turned upon the other, and he did not persist. The eyes began
to laugh. The idea of seeing Marc in such a situation, a big handsome
boy, amused her in spite of everything. But her maternal pride was hurt.
She scolded herself for the observation she had made. Or rather she
scolded Marc.

"Young scamp!" she muttered. "When I get home I'll pull his ears." (She
did pull them.)

These little adventures entertained her. At first, that is. But when
they kept on. . . .

"Oh, what a pest! This is tiresome. Am I never to be allowed to walk in
peace any more? Because you look to the right, to the left, in the
simplest, most harmless way, because you laugh as you walk along, people
have to suspect you are thinking of love! I know love, I have seen
enough of it. The fools who imagine one can't get along without them! It
never occurs to them that one can be happy without them, just because
it's a fine day and one is young and has the little one needs. Let them
think what they like! Am I thinking of them? Of them! Haven't they ever
looked at themselves?"

She herself looked at them; and as she was in a state of grace (that is,
of gay freedom) she certainly did not idealize them. Far from it. She
asked herself how one could possibly fall in love with a man. Man was
certainly not a beautiful animal. One would have to have lost one's head
to find him attractive. And the daughter of Rivière, who was a good
Frenchwoman, of the strong classical type, a reader of Rabelais and
Molière, repeated to herself Dorine's remark to Tartuffe.

She made fun of love. (Ah, how she deceived herself!) She defied it, and
she carried it in her heart. Sly and apparently asleep, it was awaiting
its hour. These little skirmishes were preparations for the real attack.
The enemy was approaching. The friend. . . .


Who could have suspected him? Anyone else, perhaps. But this man--what
an idea!

Julien Dumont was just about the age of Annette, between twenty-nine and
thirty years old. Of middling height, with a slight stoop, a rather sad
face and one that would have been unattractive without the fine, brown,
gentle, serious eyes that were humbly caressing when one overcame their
shyness, a bony forehead, with a depression in the middle, a big nose,
pronounced cheek-bones, a short black beard, an affectionate mouth that
was concealed under a very long moustache--it was Julien's almost
invariable habit to conceal whatever was least ugly about him--the dull,
old-ivory complexion of a man who has been nourished more by books than
by sunlight. A face that lacked neither intelligence nor goodness, but
was rather depressed and languid, a face that life and the passions had
not yet marked. In his whole appearance there was something walled-in,
something despondent.

He was more ingenuous and inexperienced than Annette, who was still a
good deal so herself. For, in spite of her brief experience, an
experience that had been more violent than extensive, she did not know
very much about the world of love. It is true that the intuition she
owed to her father and her talks with Sylvie, which sometimes quite
equalled those of the Queen of Navarre, had not left her ignorant of
anything. But the lesson is badly learned which the heart has not
studied at its own expense. Words are not of the same stuff as reality.
And one sometimes fails to recognize what one has read about when one
meets it in life. Annette, who had been well taught, had almost
everything to learn. Julien had to learn everything.

He had lived without love. We hesitate in France to speak of "innocents"
of this kind: they provoke the easy pleasantries of an intelligent race
that does not vary to any great extent in the forms of its wit. There
are many of these innocents. Whether it is the result of religious
scruples, or moral puritanism, or a deep-seated and sometimes
unwholesome timidity, or (and this is most frequently the case) an
overwhelming burden of work that absorbs their years of youth, a life of
poverty, toil, a repugnance for vulgar love affairs, a respect for the
future, for the one who is coming (who is not coming)--in every case, no
doubt, a certain cold-bloodedness lies at the bottom of their attitude.
The Nordic heart is slow to awaken, though this may mean, not that the
passions are going to lack force in the future, but merely that they are
gathering and being held in reserve. There are many of these innocents,
and the happy young people about them pay no attention to them.
Innocents are left empty-handed; they are left out of everything. Julien
knew scarcely anything about life except through his intelligence.

The child of a bourgeois family, poor, laborious, which included only
his two parents, the father an obscure professor who had worked himself
to death, the mother devoted to her son, who returned the devotion,
deeply religious, a practising Catholic, a believer, with liberal ideas,
an unbroken, monotonous life of labor, coldly illumined by the severe
joy of conscience and habit, with no interest in politics, a distaste
for every sort of public activity, a profound love of the hidden, inner,
domestic life, he was a truly honest, modest soul, with a sense of the
value of the strong, humble virtues. And deep down in his heart was a
flower of poetry.

He was an assistant teacher of science at a lycée. He had known Annette
years before at the University, when they were twenty. From the very
first he had been attracted by her. But Annette, who was rich at that
time, popular, radiant with youth and happy egoism, carelessly distant,
intimidated Julien. Her bolder companions assumed with her the place
that he would have liked to take. He envied them, but he did not try to
rival them; he considered himself inferior, ugly, awkward, ill-dressed;
he was unable to express himself and gave a false idea of his
intelligence and his sincerity. The sense of his physical uncouthness
paralysed him all the more because he was susceptible to beauty, and
Annette inspired in him an unexpressed emotion. For he thought her
beautiful; unlike his companions who paid court to her, he did not have
a sufficiently free mind to observe cavalierly the imperfections that
accompanied her attractions, the strongly marked eyebrows, the prominent
eyes, the short nose. He did not see these details. But he alone of all
these young men grasped the harmony of this living form, he alone
understood it; for, although most people stop at the mere external
pattern, every form expresses an inner meaning. Julien did not separate
in his own mind Annette's eyes, her forehead, her heavy eyebrows from
her energy of character and vigorous mentality. He saw her from a
distance, simply, summarily; but he saw her truly, more truly, at this
first glance, than when he came nearer and tried to know her better. He
was one of those far-sighted spirits that are embarrassed at close
range. Sometimes they have genius and stumble at every step.

Julien and Annette happened to meet again one morning in the great
windowed hall on the first floor of the Library of Sainte-Geneviève. It
was nearly ten years since they had seen each other, and Julien had
prudently avoided thinking of the image that rose before him to-day. He
lifted his eyes from his book. On the other side of the table, a few
steps away, he caught sight of her reading. Over her beautiful auburn
hair was a fur toque; her cloak was thrown back from her shoulders. (It
was still winter, though Easter was approaching; and the hall, into
which the icy air of the square filtered through the great windows, was
never warm enough. Julien had kept his own coat-collar turned up, but
she, with her neck exposed, did not feel the cold.) With one elbow on
the table and her chin resting on the back of her hand, she had the
familiar attitude which he had seen so long ago, her brow bending
forward, her blond eyebrows knit, and the eyes running down the page,
while she nibbled the end of her pencil. He felt again as he had felt at
twenty. But it did not occur to him to get up and speak to her.

In spite of the ardor with which she had applied herself to reading, as
she applied herself to everything, Annette's mind was still pursuing
more than one single thought. The ideas she had come to find in a book,
and that really attracted her, rarely presented themselves without a
procession of images which had very little in common among themselves.
She drove them away; but, as moment followed moment, the indiscreet
images came back and knocked at the door. The most intellectual woman
never completely forgets herself in what she is reading; the current
within her is too strong. Annette interrupted her reading to open the
flood-gate for a moment.

As she thus stopped, casting about her a rather troubled glance, her eye
encountered that of Julien: it was fixed upon her. The image of Julien
seemed to her a part of what was passing through her mind. Then,
suddenly awakening--as when, in the morning, on her pillow, she found
herself all at once in the midst of life--she rose gaily and stretched
out her hand to him across the table.

Julien, who was embarrassed, awkwardly went over and sat down beside
her. They began to talk. Julien said little. He was stunned by this
unexpected pleasure. Annette took everything into her own hands. She was
delighted; a happy past reappeared before her. Julien played a very
minor part in this: he was a mere link in the chain, and as the figures
of the dance unfolded Julien was soon far away. But he thought he still
saw himself in Annette's laughing eyes, and in his confusion he scarcely
knew what he was saying to her in reply. He did his best (the clumsy
soul!) to conceal the admiration she aroused in him. She still seemed
beautiful to him, more beautiful than ever, but closer, more human,
somehow new. . . . In what way? He knew nothing about her; the last
thing he had heard was the death of her father six years before. He
lived a solitary life; the gossip of Paris never reached him. . . . He
asked if Annette was still living in the Boulogne house.

"What, don't you know? It's a long time since I moved away from there.
Yes, they put me out of it."

He did not understand. She hastily explained, with an air of gaiety,
that she had been ruined by her own fault, her indifference to business.

"It was a very good thing!" she added.

And she spoke of other matters. Not a word about her life. She had no
desire to conceal it, but it was no concern of others. If Julien had
insisted, asked some question, she would have replied with the exact
truth. But he asked nothing, he would not have dared. His mind was lost
in this one thought: she was poor, poor like himself. Already the fiery
wind of hope had entered him.

To disguise his feeling he leaned, with a gruff camaraderie, over the
pamphlet she had just laid down.

"What are you reading here?"

He turned the leaves. A scientific review. There was a file of them.

"Yes," said Annette, "I am trying to catch up with things. It's not
easy. I have lost ground during these five years; I have to earn my
living, giving lessons, and I haven't the time. I am taking advantage of
Easter. No more lessons. I'm resting. I am trying to make up for lost
time. I am taking double doses, you see. [She pointed to the open
reviews that surrounded her.] I should like to swallow them all. But
it's too much. I can't manage it; I have to learn everything all over
again. Such an immense number of things have happened since I have been
out of the running; they allude to works that I don't know. . . .
Heavens, how quickly things move! But I shall catch up with them again!
I swear I shan't be left behind on the road like a cripple. There are
fine things to be seen out there. I want to see them."

Julien drank in her words. Of all she was saying what remained in his
mind was this: she was earning her living under difficulties, and she
was laughing. She rose in his admiration to a height which the old
Annette had never attained. And she dragged him along with her. For this
joy, which he did not possess, she brought to him.

They went out together. Julien was proud to find himself in the company
of this beautiful woman; he could not get over his surprise that she
should have remembered him so well. In the old days she had hardly
seemed to notice that he existed. And here she was recalling to him
little forgotten events in which he was concerned. She asked about
Julien's mother. He was so touched that his embarrassment vanished;
haltingly, he began to tell her about himself; he was tongue-tied.
Annette listened to him with gentle irony; she would have liked to
prompt him. He was still at the beginning and his assurance was coming
back when she held out her hand to bid him goodbye. He had just time to
ask her if she was going to be at the library again, and he was
overjoyed to hear her say, "to-morrow."

Julien went home in utter confusion. He was ashamed of himself, but
to-morrow he would make up for it. To-day he only wanted to think of the
miracle of this friendship. On her side, Annette, who was submerged in
Sylvie's environment, was pleased to have found again a comrade of her
intellectual years. Not that he was very enlivening--hardly that--but he
was a serious, sympathetic, honest boy. . . . What an icicle!

She had no reason the next day to change her opinion. Julien only thawed
out when he was alone at home. The moment he saw Annette again, the ice
at once returned. He was filled with consternation. He had prepared many
things to say, prepared a conversation as he would have prepared a
lecture, but under Annette's eyes nothing remained of it all. There was
only a tasteless extract left of the recitation that he had warmed up in
himself so many times. Even he was bored as he heard himself reeling it
off. He only recovered his equilibrium when they began to discuss
science and he himself was not in question. On that ground he was
precise and clear and even became quite lively. Annette could have asked
nothing more. Eager to learn, she pressed him with questions that
interested Julien by their intelligence; she was so quick in imagining,
though she often guessed wrong, and at a word she would turn up at the
exact point whither he wished to lead her. He liked this attentive face,
these eyes that plunged into his to reach his thought more quickly, and
then suddenly lighted up. She had understood! The joy of thought shared
in common, and this invisible sun and the immense perspective illumined
by its light, the joy of travelling together towards discovery by new
roads where he was her guide! It was delicious to talk in this way, in
the peaceful seclusion of this hall of books, this church of the mind.

Delicious for him, but not for those who were near them. For he talked
too loud: he had forgotten that other people existed. Annette smilingly
told him that he must be silent and rose to go out. He followed her. But
once in the street again, with the table and the books no longer before
them, he became the same impotent soul whom Annette had seen the day
before. She tried to make him talk of himself, but her labor was lost.
And he could not make up his mind to leave her; he wanted to take her
back to the door of her house. He was stiff, nervous, abrupt from
embarrassment--at moments, unintentionally, even rather impolite. . . .
He was a fearful bore! Annette, slightly irritated, thought, "How the
devil can I get rid of him?"

Julien perceived the mocking curve in this mouth that said nothing. He
stopped suddenly and remarked, in a tone of distress, "O forgive me, I'm
boring you. . . . Yes, I know it, I know it! I am such a bore! I don't
know how to talk. I am not used to it. I live alone. My mother is good,
very good, but I can't tell her about my thoughts. Many of them would
upset her; she wouldn't understand them. And I have never known anybody
who was interested in them. I don't expect it. You have been good to
listen to me so indulgently. I have let myself go on because I wanted to
tell you. . . . But it isn't possible. One can't tell things, one should
keep them to oneself. It isn't interesting, it isn't manly. Live and be
silent. I ask your pardon for having bored you."

Annette was touched. There was real feeling in these words. This mixture
of modesty and sad pride struck her; she felt the disappointment and the
wounded affection under the shell of coldness. In one of those bursts of
emotion which she could not resist, she was seized with a kindly pity
for Julien. She said warmly, "No, no, don't regret anything. I thank
you. It was quite right of you to talk"--she corrected herself with a
touch of mockery that had no sharpness in it this time--"to try to talk.
Yes, it isn't easy. You are not used to it. . . . Well, I'm glad you are
not used to it. There are plenty of others who are! But there is nothing
to prevent me from hoping that I shall make you get used to it. Are you
willing? Since you have no one with whom you can talk?"

Julien was too much moved to reply, but his look expressed a gratitude
that was still shy. Although it was past the hour when she should have
been at home, Annette retraced her steps so that they might still have a
few minutes together; and she talked to him with a kind, motherly
camaraderie, in a simple, cordial tone that was like a cool hand laid on
his aching forehead. Yes, he had been hurt, this big boy; with his moody
air he needed to be handled very gently. He was coming back to life now.
But she had to go in. . . . Annette suggested seeing him again from time
to time. And they confessed that, as for the work they had done in the
library, they might have done it just as well in the Luxembourg Gardens,
or . . .

"Or . . . why not at my house?"

And Annette, inviting him for some Sunday soon, vanished without waiting
for a reply.

Ah, how well he might have talked, now that she was no longer there! He
went over the whole scene; he felt how kind Annette was. And since this
man, who was so well balanced in his intellectual life, was unable to
preserve any measure in the things of the heart, he slipped without
transition from the thought that his feeling was destined to remain
unreturned to the thought that perhaps . . .




XVIII


Annette had not the least suspicion of what was taking place in Julien.
The unengaging appearance of her new companion seemed a guarantee
against love, and she thought that in some comic fashion it would also
guarantee Julien. She respected him. She pitied him. Pitied, he became
sympathetic. It was pleasant to tell herself that she could do him good;
and he became more sympathetic to her. But it would never have occurred
to her to be on her guard against him, still less against herself.

She had forgotten her invitation when, on the following Sunday, he came
to recall it to her; and the joyous surprise with which she greeted him
was not assumed. But Julien who, for a week, had been thinking of
nothing but this moment, did not see the surprise and saw only the joy.
And his own increased. The weather was very bad. Annette had not thought
of going out this afternoon. As she was not expecting anybody; she was
in négligé, and so was the apartment. The baby had been playing there.
It is useless to have, as Annette had, a love of order; children oblige
one to give it up, along with so many fine plans that one has formed
without considering them. But Julien, referring everything to himself,
saw in this disorder no artistic effect, but a sign of some intimacy
that Annette wished to accord him. He came in with a beating heart, but
with his mind made up to appear this time in an advantageous light; he
assumed an air of assurance. It was not becoming to him, and Annette,
who was annoyed at being surprised in this confusion, was angry because
the intruder was so unceremonious. She at once became cold, and in an
instant Julien's pride was broken. So they remained, each as stiff as
the other, the one not daring to utter another word, the other waiting
with an air of malicious _hauteur_.

"If you imagine, my dear boy, that I am going to help you to-day!"

And then she saw the ridiculous side of the situation. She saw with the
corner of her eye the piteous look of the conqueror, and she laughed out
loud. Suddenly relaxed, she resumed the comradely tone. Julien did not
understand it at all: disconcerted but relieved, he too became natural
again, and at last a friendly conversation sprang up between them.

Annette told him about her working life, and they confessed to one
another that they were not made for their occupations. Julien was
passionately interested in the science which he taught, but . . .

"They can't follow me! They look at me with their dull eyes blinking
with sleep; there are hardly two or three who have a glimmer of
understanding; the rest are a heavy mass of boredom. If you sweat blood
and water, you can sometimes (not always) stir it for a moment, but it
always falls back into the pond. Try to fish it out again! It's work for
a well-digger. But it isn't their fault, the unhappy brats. They are
just like ourselves; they are victims of the democratic mania according
to which all minds absorb equally the same sum of knowledge--before the
normal age when they might begin to understand! Then come the
examinations, the agricultural matches, when they weigh these products
of ours who are crammed with a mixture of lame words and formless
notions. Most of these they hastily disgorge immediately afterwards, and
they are disgusted with learning for the rest of their lives."

"Now I," said Annette, laughing, "like children very much, yes, even the
most unattractive ones. I am not indifferent to any of them. I should
like to have them all, I should like to hug them all. But one has to
limit oneself. Isn't that so? It's enough to have one. . . ."

(She pointed to the disorderly room, but he did not understand and
smiled stupidly.)

"It's a pity! When I see one who pleases me, I would like to steal him.
And they all give me pleasure. There is something fresh, an infinite
hope, even in the ugliest. . . . But what can I do with them? And what
can they do with me? I see so little of them. They are only in my hands
for an hour. And then I run to the others. And my little ones also run
from hand to hand. What one hand has done the other undoes. Nothing
sticks. These little formless souls, these little soulless forms, who
dance the Boston and the two-step. We run about. Everyone runs about.
This life is a race-course. No one ever stops. People die, they join the
dead. Ah, what unhappy souls, never granting themselves a day to collect
their thoughts! And they don't grant us one either, we who would so like
to have it!"

Julien understood her. He had no need to learn the value of a retreat,
the horror of the tumultuous world. And their understanding increased
when Annette said that fortunately, in the midst of the flood, there
were still a few islets where one could take refuge, the beautiful books
of the poets and especially music. The poets had little attraction for
Julien; their language was beyond him. He had the strange distrust of it
which is common in minds that love thought and often have their own
poetry, but do not perceive the deep vibrations of the music of words.
The other music, the language of sounds, is more accessible to them.
Julien loved it. Unfortunately, he lacked the time and the means to go
and hear it.

"I lack them too," said Annette. "But I go just the same."

Julien did not have this vitality. After his working day he stayed
quietly at home. He did not know how to amuse himself. He saw a piano in
the room.

"Do you play?"

"Ah, it isn't easy!" said Annette, laughing. "_He_ doesn't allow it."

Julien, vaguely troubled, asked in surprise who could prevent her in
this way. Annette, with her ear alert, listened to the little steps that
were tapping along as they climbed the stairs. She ran and opened the
door. "See, there's the monster!"

She brought Marc in. He had returned from his aunt's.

Julien did not yet understand.

"My little boy . . . Marc, will you say good-afternoon?"

Julien was astounded. It had not even occurred to Annette that he would
be surprised. She went on gaily, holding Marc, who tried to escape from
her, "You see, I haven't lost my time in spite of all."

Julien did not have the wit to reply. His attention was occupied in
concealing his confusion. He attempted a rather foolish smile. Marc had
succeeded in slipping from his mother's hands, without having said
good-afternoon. (He thought this ceremony ridiculous, and he made off,
leaving his mother talking, "talking and saying nothing," well knowing
that the instant after she would have forgotten it in something else.
There was no continuity in women.) Four steps away from Julien, in the
folds of a curtain which he twisted in his embrace, Marc looked the
stranger up and down with severe eyes; and in his childish way (which
was fairly accurate) he had quickly sized up the situation. Decision
without appeal: he did not like Julien. The question was settled.

Julien, whose embarrassment was increased by this look from the child,
tried to resume the thread of the conversation while following the
thread of his own thoughts. But he only succeeded in becoming more
confused. He reassured himself, however. Feebly. Annette's confident
manner made it impossible for him to suspect that she was unmarried:
that was out of the question. But where was the husband? Alive or dead?
Annette was not in mourning. No, he was not reassured. What had become
of this man? Julien did not dare to ask directly. After many detours, he
finally took a chance, imagining he was very clever, and carelessly
remarked, "Have you been alone very long?"

"I am not alone," said Annette. And she pointed to her child.

He learned nothing more. But since she thus admitted by implication that
she was alone (with the child) and that she took it gaily, it must be
because her mourning was far, very far, behind her, and she no longer
thought of it. Julien's interested logic ended victoriously, "Monsieur
Malbrough is dead."

Farewell to the husband! He was no longer disturbing. Julien threw one
more shovelful of earth on him, and then, turning to Marc, gave the
child a crooked smile. Marc was becoming sympathetic to him.

But he had not become so to Marc. He was more familiar with the
constitution of the atomic bodies than with that of a child's mind. Marc
fully realized that this demonstration of good nature was not natural,
and the result was that he turned his back, grumbling, "I forbid him to
laugh at me."

Annette, amused by Julien's useless efforts to win over the child,
thought she ought to make up for Marc's ungracious greeting. She
questioned Julien about his solitary life with an interest that wandered
a little at first, but soon ceased to do so. Julien, who was always more
sure of himself when he was sitting in the half-light of a room, talked
about himself this time quite frankly. He was simple; he never, or
hardly ever, posed, in spite of his desire to please. In his sincerity
he revealed a candour that one seldom meets in Paris in a man of his
age. When he touched upon subjects that were dear to him, he had a
delicacy that veiled a restrained emotion. In these moments of abandon
when, in the kindly silence of the encouraging Annette, his true inner
nature seemed to blossom, a gleam of moral beauty lighted up his face.
Annette looked at him attentively, and what she felt for him was no
longer merely a friendly indifference.

After this they saw each other regularly on Sundays and a little oftener
during the week, when they had a free moment. Julien used as a pretext
the books which he lent her; it was quite necessary to accompany them
with explanations so that Annette should have less difficulty in
understanding them. He brought Marc some rather expensive but badly
chosen presents for which the little enemy was by no means grateful to
him: he thought them childish and beneath his dignity. But nothing could
shake Julien's good will, firmly resolved as he was not to see anything
that would disturb him. Solitary spirits who distrust the world lose all
discernment, all desire to be discerning, the moment they abandon their
distrust in favor of some chosen soul: they are liberated. Julien's
mind, ingenious in deceiving itself, arranged to its satisfaction the
memories it brought back from each of its visits: everything that
Annette had said and everything that surrounded her. (Without being
conscious of it, he indirectly glorified himself.) Annette's
inattentiveness, her wandering replies, even the bored silences which he
sometimes caused her, all rendered her more beautiful and more touching
to him. And as, each time, he still discovered some new little trait,
which did not accord with the portrait he had made, he kept remaking the
portrait, he made it over ten times; and although the portrait no longer
resembled what it had been at the beginning, Julien never admitted that
there had been a change in its essential constancy. He was ready to
alter his ideal of love as many times as the beloved object altered.

Annette had become aware of his love for her. She was amused by it at
first, then touched, then grateful, a little, a good deal, in spite of
everything. ("The least handsome boy in the world can only give what he
has. Thank you, my good Julien.") Then she was a little troubled. She
told herself frankly that she should not allow him to start down that
slope. But it gave the boy so much happiness, and certainly it was not
displeasing to her. Annette was susceptible to affection; susceptible
also to gentle attentions, the flattery of tenderness. Too much so,
perhaps. She confessed it. Love, the admiration she read in his eyes were
for her a caress that she could not but wish to have repeated. . . . Yes,
she admitted it: perhaps it was not quite right, but it was so
natural! She would have to make some little effort to deprive herself of
it. She did so, but she had no luck; everything she said to push Julien
away from her (did she really say everything?) attracted him all the
more. It was a fatality! One has to resign oneself to a fatality. She
laughed at herself, while Julien, troubled, wondered if she was not
laughing at him.

"Hypocrite, hypocrite! Haven't you any shame?"

She had no shame. Can one resist pleasing a heart that has surrendered
itself into one's hands? It brightens one's days. And what harm does it
do? What is the danger? As long as one is calm and master of oneself and
desires only what is good, the good of the other person!

She did not know that one of the insidious paths through which love
finds its way is the fond vanity of believing that one is
necessary--that feeling which is so strong in the heart of a true woman:
it satisfies her double need of doing good, which she confesses, and of
pride, which she does not confess. It is so strong that when she has a
well-developed soul she often prefers the man for whom she cares less,
but whom she can protect, to the man for whom she cares more, but who
can get along without her. Is not this the essence of maternity? Suppose
the big boy were to remain the little chick as long as he lived! The
woman with a mother's heart, like Annette, finds it easy to attribute to
a man whose love appeals to her a charm he does not possess. Her
instinct disposes her to observe only his good qualities. Julien had
plenty of these. Annette rejoiced to see his timidity vanishing and his
real nature, which had been repressed, expanding in the daylight with
the soft happiness of the convalescent. She said to herself that
hitherto no one had understood this man, not even the mother of whom he
was always talking and of whom she was beginning to be jealous. As for
poor Julien, he did not know himself. . . . Who would have suspected
that under this rough shell there was a tender, delicate soul? . . .
(She was exaggerating.) . . . He needed confidence and he had lacked it:
confidence in others, confidence in himself. To believe in himself he
needed another believer. Well, she believed! She believed in Julien, for
Julien's sake, so much that she ended by believing in him also for her
own. . . . He blossomed under her eye as a plant in the sunlight. And it
is good to be the sun for somebody else. "Open, my heart!" Was it to
Julien's heart or her own that she was speaking? Already she had ceased
to know. For she too was blossoming as a result of the good she was
doing. An abundant nature dies if it cannot nourish others from itself.
"To give myself!"

Annette gave too much. She was irresistible. Julien no longer concealed
his passion. And Annette--a little late--recognized that she was in
danger.

When she saw love rising within her, she threw up a feeble defence; she
tried not to take Julien's feelings seriously. But she did not believe
herself, and all she did was to make Julien more importunate. He became
pathetic.

Then she was seized with fear. She besought him not to love her, to let
them remain good friends.

"Why?" he asked. "Why?"

She did not want to say. She had an instinctive fear of love; she
remembered what she had suffered through it, and an intuition warned her
of what she would have to suffer again. She summoned it and she drove it
away from her; she desired it and she fled from it. Julien's entreaties
she resisted sincerely, and in the bottom of her heart she prayed that
her adversary might conquer her; resistance.

The combat would have dragged on if a certain event had not hastened the
issue.




XIX


With her sister's husband Annette was on terms of the frankest
friendship. This good soul, for all his slight vulgarity, lacked neither
heart nor integrity. Annette respected him, and Leopold treated her with
a rather ceremonious consideration. Ever since their first meetings he
had gathered that she belonged to a different species from his and
Sylvie's; she intimidated him. He was all the more grateful for the
kindness she showed him. At the time when he was paying court to Sylvie,
she had been his ally; more than once she had come to his aid when he
was exposed to the ridicule of his fiancée, who was too sure of her
power not to abuse it. Later she had even discreetly interposed in
misunderstandings in the household, or when Sylvie yielded to sudden
whims, crotchets and deviltries, now and then, escaping from her own
vexations by vexing her husband. Leopold, who did not understand such
things, would come and tell his troubles to Annette, who undertook to
bring Sylvie back to reason. He had even gone so far as to confide to
his sister-in-law more than one matter which he had not mentioned to his
wife. Sylvie was not unaware of this, and she teased Annette, who took
it gaily. Everything was natural and frank among the three. Leopold had
never complained of the place held in his home by his wife's sister and
the little boy, though they were often rather in the way; he thought, in
fact, that Sylvie did not do enough to help Annette, whose courage he
admired; and he spoiled the child. Annette, who knew through Sylvie what
Leopold thought, was grateful to him.

The period of Sylvie's pregnancy was not, for those about her,
especially the husband, a happy time. Frequent discords drove Leopold
and his consort apart. Not that Sylvie meant to get along without him.
She thought very little about her maternity and was unwilling to make
any change in her manner of living. But he did think about it. Those
long months of gestation were far from being for her what they had been
for Annette, an endless dream of languid happiness that was finished too
soon. Sylvie was not made to brood on dreams. She was impatient and had
no intention of giving up one of her duties, one of her rights or one of
her pleasures: she overtaxed herself. Her health was affected by her
nervous state, and her character did not gain by it. When one is
tormented, one is glad to torment others. Sylvie, who was uncomfortable,
was indignant because her husband was not; and she undertook to make him
so. She harassed him with her teasing, malicious, perpetually changing
moods. She was even (unexpectedly enough) jealously amorous, though this
did not prevent her from abusing him. There were days when he did not
know which way to turn.

Annette was at hand to receive his lamentations. He would climb up to
her floor, complaining; she would listen to him patiently, and she found
a way to make him laugh at his little misfortunes. These meetings, as
they went on, established between them a sort of complicity, for they
had so many feelings in common. And sometimes, in Sylvie's presence,
they would exchange a malicious glance. Perfectly honest, both of them,
they took no precautions and abandoned themselves to a familiarity
which, if it was innocent, was not entirely harmless. Annette did not
dream that there was any risk, and these friendly coquetries amused her.
Leopold was captivated by them; he asked for nothing better. He had been
attracted for a long time by the radiant force of joy that issued from
her. Just at that moment Annette was discovering Julien's love, and it
troubled her deliciously. The rest of the world was all a haze. When she
had just seen Julien, and Leopold was talking to her, she listened to
Leopold and replied to him, but it was to Julien that she was smiling.
Leopold had no means of guessing this.

He knew what he wanted. He resisted like a decent fellow. But a decent
fellow is a man. He should not play with fire.

One Sunday in May the four of them, Sylvie, Annette, Leopold and little
Marc, went for a walk in the direction of Sceaux. After an hour of
strolling, Sylvie, who was a little tired, sat down at the foot of a
slope and said, "Well, young people, climb it if you want to! You will
find us still here."

She remained behind with the child. Annette and Leopold went gaily on.
Annette was animated, joyous, the best of company. Leopold, with his
jolly talk, eased the moral tension in which Julien's love and his
intellectual conversation held her. The path wound between the long wall
of a great estate and a rise of ground covered with flowering bushes.
Through the holes in the hedges they saw, as they climbed, the sloping
orchards with their white and pink tufts.

A fantastic sky, with the busy clouds racing over its delicate blue. The
laughing wind, like a young dog, bit them by fits and starts. Annette
was walking ahead, picking flowers, singing. Leopold was following her;
he watched her bending over, watched her robust frame under the tightly
fitting dress, her bare hands, her bare neck, reddened by the lash of
the wind, and amid the foaming hair the red shell of her ear, the tip of
which looked like a drop of blood. The slope rose again to the right,
and the road formed a passage in which the rushing wind streamed down
upon them. Annette, without turning, asked her companion a question. He
did not reply. She went on, bending over, picking flowers and talking.
And as she joked with Leopold, who was silent, it suddenly occurred to
her that there was something dangerous in this silence. She let her
flowers fall. She straightened herself, but she did not have time to
turn when . . . she almost fell. He had clasped her in his arms. She had
been brutally seized, and she felt on her neck a panting breath. An
eager mouth was kissing her throat, her cheeks. Instantly stiffening,
bracing herself, with all her unconscious fighting forces collected,
with her chest and her spine she furiously shook the man who had seized
her: she broke his hold and found herself face to face with the
aggressor. Her eyes flamed with anger, but he did not relax his grip. A
rough struggle followed, like that of animals that hate each other.
Rough and brief. Annette, whose outraged instincts gave her an added
strength, violently repulsed the man, and he tripped and stumbled. He
remained there before her, doubly humiliated, panting, scarlet, and they
looked at each other with rage in their eyes. Not a word was said.
Suddenly Annette clambered up the bank, crept through a hole in the
hedge to the other side, and fled. Leopold, who had come to his senses,
called after her. She stopped twenty paces away and would not let him
approach. They redescended the hill on different sides of the hedge,
keeping their distances, on their guard, hostile and ashamed. Leopold,
in a changed voice, implored Annette to come back, begged her pardon.
Annette turned a deaf ear towards him, but she heard him: the confusion
of this voice reached her through the barrier of her bitterness. She
slackened her pace.

"Annette!" he besought her. "Annette! Don't run away! I don't want to
pursue you. See, I'm staying here, I shan't come near you. I've behaved
like a brute. I'm ashamed, ashamed. Call me any names you like, but
don't run away. I shall never touch you again, not even with the tip of
my finger. I'm disgusted with myself. I ask your pardon on my knees!"

He knelt down awkwardly on the pebbles. He looked utterly wretched. He
was ridiculous.

Annette, who was listening to him in cold silence, motionless, with her
face turned away, threw him a side-glance without looking at him. She
saw this humiliated man. She was touched by his humiliation; her warm
heart had the faculty of opening to the emotions of others as if they
were her own, and she blushed at Leopold's shame. She made a movement
towards him and said, "Get up!"

He rose, and she instinctively recoiled a few steps. "You are still
afraid," he said. "You will never forgive me."

"Don't speak of it any more," she answered dryly. "It's ended."

They descended the road again. Annette was dumb and frozen. He had
difficulty in keeping silent. He was mortified, and he was trying to
justify himself. But he was not very eloquent, the poor man. His style
was not exactly noble. "I am a dirty cur!" he repeated angrily.

Annette, still agitated, repressed a smile. Her mind was in a tumult,
and she found difficulty in calming it. She felt at the same time the
loathsomeness and the absurdity of the scene. She had not forgiven him,
and she was ready to pity the man who was accusing himself so
pathetically beside her. He continued to flounder. She listened to him
with bitterness, compassion, irony. He struggled to explain "this filthy
madness that passes through your body." . . . Yes, this madness, she
knew it, although it was not the time to tell him so. But he looked so
wretched that, in spite of herself, she said to him, "I know. One is mad
sometimes. What's done is done."

They continued on their way, without speaking, their hearts heavy, sad
and embarrassed. Just as they were arriving at the spot where they had
left Sylvie, Annette made a gesture as if she were about to hold out her
hand to Leopold. But instead of doing so, she said, "I've forgotten it."

He was relieved, though he was still troubled. Like a schoolboy caught
in some misdemeanor, he asked, "You won't say anything about it?"

Annette gave him a little pitying smile.

No, she said nothing. But at the first glance the sharp eye of Sylvie
had seen it all. She asked no questions. They spoke of other things. And
while all three, to hide their thoughts, made a great parade of
chattering all the way home, Sylvie observed the two others.

From that day forward Annette and Leopold were never again alone
together. The jealous one was always watching; Annette too was on her
guard. In spite of herself she allowed her distrust to be viable. And
Leopold, who was hurt, brooded over his unconfessed bitterness.




XX


Annette's eyes were opened. She could no longer remain undistrustful of
herself and others. She could no longer pass along, laughing, as she had
done before, heedless, because she did not seek them, of the desires she
aroused. Society being as it is, customs being as they are, her
situation as a single woman, young and free, not only exposed her to
pursuit, but legitimized it. No one could believe that she had freed
herself, in the boldest fashion, in order to shut herself up afterwards
in a widowhood the constancy of which was without an object. She
imagined she had changed with maternity, and no doubt maternity was a
great flame. But another flame still burned in her. She tried to forget
it, because she was afraid of it; and she imagined that no one saw it.
But this was not so; in spite of her, the fire of love burned on. And
other people, if not she, were in danger of being its victims. Leopold's
adventure had shown her this. It was hideous. She was revolted by it. In
the disillusioned eyes of one who is not in love, the act of love seems
a grotesque or disgusting bestiality. As Annette saw it, Leopold's
attempt was both. But Annette did not have a calm conscience. She had
fanned these desires. She remembered her thoughtless coquetries, her
arts, the provocations she had given him. What had driven her into them?
That repressed force, that inner fire which she was obliged to foster or
stifle. Stifle it one cannot, one should not! It is the sunlight of
life. Without it, everything is plunged in shadow. But at least it
should not consume that to which it ought to give life, like the chariot
that was given into the hands of Phaëton. Let it follow its regular
course through the sky! Marriage then? After having so long avoided it,
the perception of the dangers that menaced her led her to tell herself
that a marriage of affection and esteem, of calm sympathy, would be a
bulwark against the demons of the heart and a protection against pursuit
from without. The more she convinced herself (and everything conspired
to convince her: her material and moral security, the attraction of a
home and the solicitations of her heart), the less resistance she
opposed to Julien's supplications. In order to yield to them, she went
over all the reasons she had for loving him. But she did not wait for
these reasons in order to love him. For already there had begun within
her that construction of the mind which creates an exalted vision of the
chosen one. Julien had preceded her in this, but as she had a richer and
more passionate nature she had soon outdistanced him.

No longer on her guard, surrendering to the ardor of her frank nature,
she used none of those artifices with which a cleverer woman masks her
defeat when her heart is captured and she allows people to believe that
she is still mistress of it. Annette had made a gift of hers. She told
Julien. And from that very moment Julien began to be uneasy.

He knew very little about women. They fascinated him and disconcerted
him. Rather than know them he preferred to judge them. He idealized
some, he condemned others. Towards those who fell into neither of the
two categories he remained indifferent. Very young men--and Julien,
owing to the slightness of his experience, had remained very young--are
always hasty in their judgments. As they are full of themselves and
their desires, they seek in others only for what they wish to find.
Whether on the moral or the carnal side, naïve persons are like roués
in one respect: when they love they are always thinking of themselves
and never of the woman. They refuse to see that she exists outside of
them. Love is the one test that can teach them. It teaches the few who
are capable of learning--but generally to their cost and that of their
partners; for when at last they know it is too late. The naïve
astonishment, old as the ages, that bewails the irreducible duality
which is the bitter fruit of love, that disappointed dream of unity, is
the usual result of this initial misunderstanding. For what does "love"
mean if it is not "loving someone else"? Without possessing the egoism
of Roger Brissot, Julien, through ignorance, had no less difficulty in
getting outside of himself; and he had a still more limited view of the
feminine universe. He needed to be led prudently by the hand.

Prudent was the one thing Annette was not by nature, and love did not
teach her. It gave her the need of a generous confidence. Now that she
was sure of loving and being loved, she concealed nothing. Nothing in
the man she loved could have repelled her: why should she paint herself
up? She was healthy-minded, and she did not blush at being what she was.
Whoever loved her should see her as she was! She had clearly seen
Julien's naïveté, his lack of understanding, his alarm. She found a
tender and malicious pleasure in them. She was glad that she was the
first to reveal to him a feminine soul.

One day she went to surprise him in his apartment. His mother opened the
door. An old lady, with gray hair tightly drawn across a calm brow that
was lighted up by two severe, watchful eyes, she inspected Annette with
a distrustful politeness and showed her into a neat, cold little
drawing-room with horsehair furniture.

Dull family photographs and pictures from museums added a finishing
touch to the freezing atmosphere of the room. Annette waited alone.
After a whispered consultation in the adjoining bedroom, Julien dashed
in. He was delighted and he was frightened; he did not know what to say.
He spoke absent-mindedly. They were sitting in uncomfortable chairs with
stiff backs that thwarted every natural movement. Between them was one
of those drawing-room tables that you cannot lean upon, tables with
sharp edges that hurt your knees. The cold glitter of the carpetless
floor and the dead faces under glass, like plants in a herbarium,
congealed the words on their lips and made them lower their voices. This
drawing-room absolutely froze Annette. Was Julien going to keep her here
during the whole of her call? She asked him if he did not want to show
her the room where he worked. He could not refuse, he even wanted to do
so. But he looked so hesitant that she said, "Would you rather not?"

He protested, explaining that it was not in order, and took her in. It
was in much better order than her own rooms had been at the time of
Julien's first call, but there was no air of gaiety in Julien's room. It
served him both for working and sleeping. Books, a well-known engraving
that represented Pasteur, papers on the chairs, a pipe on the table, a
student's bed. She noticed overhead a little crucifix with a branch of
boxwood. Settled in the badly upholstered arm-chair, she tried to put
her host at his ease by gaily recalling to him the memory of their
student days. She talked without prudery of what they both knew. But he
was distrait, embarrassed by her presence and her freedom of speech; he
seemed preoccupied with what was going on in the next room. Annette,
embarrassed by contagion, held out bravely and succeeded in making him
forget the "what will she think of it?" At last he became quite lively
and they had a good laugh. When she got up to go he became awkward
again, leading her out. In the corridor they passed the mother's room;
the door was ajar; Mme. Dumont, from discretion or in order not to have
to speak to the stranger, pretended not to see them. The two women had
only exchanged a glance, and they were enemies already. Mme. Dumont, the
mother, was shocked by the call of this bold girl with her free and easy
ways, her dear voice, her laughter, her animation: she scented danger.
And Annette, who, during the visit, had perceived between Julien and
herself this invisible presence, had felt angry: passing the room of the
old lady who turned her back on her, she spoke and laughed more loudly
still. And she jealously thought, "I'm going to take him away from her."

A week later, Julien came in turn, one evening, after dinner. He had had
his first discussion with his mother on the subject of Annette; and he
meant to assert his will. They were alone. Leopold had taken little Marc
to the circus. When Julien left her, a little before eleven o'clock,
Annette suggested walking back with him for the pleasure of enjoying
together the fresh night air. But when they reached his door, Julien was
troubled at the idea of leaving Annette to return alone. She made fun of
his fear. None the less, he masted on going back with her again, and she
did not protest. She would have him all the longer with her! So they
returned by the most roundabout way; and without quite knowing how they
got there, they found themselves on a steep bank of the Seine. It was a
June night. They sat down on a bench. The poplars rustled above the dark
water in which were spread the reddish and yellow lights of the lamps on
the bridges. The sky was far away, the stars were feeble, as if the
monstrous city had drawn all the life out of them. The darkness was
above and the light below. They were silent. Words could no longer
express their thoughts, but, without looking at each other, each read
the other's mind. Julien's desire set Annette's heart aflame; but his
timidity kept him bound and motionless, and he did not dare even to lift
his eyes to her. She smiled and watched him, without turning her head,
as she kept her eyes upon the red reflexions on the river; he could not
make up his mind! Then she leaned towards him and kissed him.

Drunk with love and gratitude, he kissed her in return, while the
insidious point of a dull anxiety fastened itself in his brain. A harsh
remark of his mother's: "These bold, poverty-stricken girls who are
trying to find somebody to marry them. . . ." He had pulled it angrily out
not long before, but the tip of the sting had remained under the skin.
He was ashamed. Mentally he asked Annette's pardon. He knew that the
insulting suspicion was false. He believed in her religiously, but he
was troubled. And each new visit troubled him more. Annette's freedom,
the freedom of her manners, the freedom of her ideas, the freedom of her
opinions on every kind of subject--especially on social morality--her
calm lack of prejudices, terrified him. He was as narrow in his way of
thinking as in his dress, rather dull in his ideas, inclined to
severity. She, on the other hand, was generously indulgent and full of
laughter. It did not occur to him that she might be as much of a Puritan
as he where she herself was concerned, while with an ironical tolerance
she applied to others their own measure. Tolerance and irony
disconcerted him. She saw this; and when he expressed himself on some
question with an unjust and excessive harshness she did not attempt to
oppose his way of thinking; she smiled at this naïve rigidity which did
not displease her. Her smile disturbed Julien more than her words. He
had the impression that she knew more than he. It was true. But how much
more? And just what did she know? What experience had she had?

Like his mother--and some of his mother's spiteful remarks had
contributed to make him so--this man of fine but impoverished vitality
was vaguely alarmed by the brilliant health, the radiance of this woman.
He had the most ardent desire for her, but he was afraid of her. In the
walks they took together he felt that he cut a poor figure. Annette's
perfect poise in every company added to his embarrassment. And although
she would have liked this embarrassment if she had observed it, he was
humiliated by it. But she did not observe it. She was utterly absorbed
in the song within her. Annette mistakenly thought that no one but
herself heard this song; and she did not see Julien's anxious glance
when he asked himself, "At whom, at what, is she laughing?"

She seemed so far away!

He did not cease to see--he saw more clearly than ever--her great
intellectual force, her moral energy. At the same time she remained for
him a dangerous enigma. He was divided between two opposite feelings, an
invincible attraction and an obscure mistrust that were like a remnant
of the primitive instinct that recalls to the man and the woman of to-day
the original enmity of the sexes, for which the carnal union was a form
of combat. That suspicious instinct of defence is strongest perhaps in
a man like Julien who is at once keenly intelligent and poor in
experience. As it is impossible for him to see a woman just as she is,
he sees her now too simply, now as full of snares.

Annette contributed to these oscillations of thought by her way of
alternately saying everything and saying nothing, of revealing
everything and concealing everything, her bursts of passionate
expansiveness and her hermetic silences, which sometimes lasted during a
good half of their walk. . . . These terrible silences--what man has not
suffered from them?--during which the life of the companion who walks at
your side goes down into those regions that you will never know! . . .
Not that as a usual thing they cover very profound secrets. If you
plunged into them you would find that they did not rise above your heel.
But whatever the depth may be, the sheet of silence is opaque: the eye
cannot penetrate it. And the tormented spirit of the man has plenty of
time to conjure up all sorts of alarming mysteries. The idea would never
have entered the head of a Julien that he might be the author of them,
that if a woman is silent it is often because she knows so well how
little the man understands her. Annette's silence, which was ironical
and a little weary on some days, tolerated a false interpretation of her
feelings on the part of her lover, for she knew that he loved the false
and did not love the true.

"If you wish . . . As you wish! . . . Of course. I am not as I am. I am
as you see me."

But these silences of acquiescence only lasted for a time. From the
moment Annette perceived that there might be danger in frank
explanations (since Julien was unable to understand them) and that it
would be more prudent to hold her peace, she spoke. To be silent in
order to avoid uselessly annoying Julien, yes. But to deceive him, no.
And if there was danger in speaking, all the more reason. That was the
time when you couldn't avoid speaking any longer. The greater the risk,
the greater was the pride that desired to brave it. This test of love
made her heart beat. If the test succeeded, she would love Julien all
the more. If it did not succeed? . . . It would succeed. Didn't Julien
love her? Let come what might!

She played the game loyally. But there are some men who would prefer to
have their partners cheat. When Sylvie learned of Julien's love and the
plan for the marriage, she scolded Annette: good heavens, she wasn't
thinking of telling the whole truth? Of course it was absolutely
necessary for him to learn a part of it. When they were married the
official records would be sure to enlighten him. But there was always a
way of dressing up the truth. Since this boy loved her he would close
his eyes. She had only not to open them! To do so would be really too
stupid! Later there would be time to tell each other everything. . . .
Sylvie spoke honestly out of her experience. She wished her sister's
welfare. (She wished her own too; she would not have been displeased to
see them out of her house with all possible speed.) From her point of
view one didn't owe the truth to everyone, especially to one's fiancé:
it was enough to love him! Annette's truth, of course, was innocent, but
men are weak. They cannot endure the full truth. It has to be given to
them in small doses. . . .

Annette listened to Sylvie calmly and spoke of something else. Useless
to reply: it would only make her more obstinate. Sylvie's morality was
not hers, and she preferred not to say what she thought of it. Sylvie
was Sylvie. She loved her. . . . But what a look she would have given
anyone else who had spoken to her so!

"Poor Sylvie! . . . She judges men from those she has known. But my
Julien belongs to another species. He loves me as I am. He will love me
as I was. I have nothing to conceal from him. I have never done him an
injury. If any injury was done I did it to myself alone."

Fully considering the risks, but trusting in Julien's magnanimity, she
made up her mind to speak. She brought up the subject of her past life.
With a common modesty, they had always avoided this topic. But more than
once, Annette had read in Julien's eyes what he burned and trembled to
ask, what he wanted both to know and not to know.

She placed her hand tenderly on Julien's hand and said, "My friend, you
have always been so adorably discreet with me. I thank you for it. I
love you. . . . But I must tell you at last something you don't know
about me, something that I have been. You must know me. I am not free
from reproach."

He made an apprehensive gesture that protested against what she was
going to say, as if he half wished to prevent it. She smiled.

"Don't be afraid! I haven't committed any great crimes. At least I
shouldn't call them so. But perhaps I am too indulgent to myself, for
the world regards these matters differently. It is for you to judge. I
believe in your judgment. I am what you decide I am."

She began to tell her story. More frightened than she wanted to appear,
she had prepared in advance what she intended to say. But simple as she
imagined it would be to utter this, it was very painful to her. To
overcome this constraint she made herself appear more free from emotion
than she was. She even revealed at moments a touch of irony, directed at
herself, which scarcely corresponded with the anxiety this recital
stirred in her: she resorted to it in order to protect herself. . . .
Julien did not understand it at all. He saw in this attitude only a
shocking light-mindedness and lack of conscience.

She said first that she was not married. Julien had feared this. To tell
the truth, he had even been silently sure of it. But he had always hoped
that the contrary would turn out to be the case, and that Annette should
tell him this, that doubt should no longer be possible, filled him with
consternation. Intensely Catholic at heart, under his superficial
liberalism, he had not freed himself from the idea of sin. Instantly he
thought of his mother: she would never accept it. He foresaw a struggle.
He was very much in love. In spite of the grief that Annette's
confession caused him, in spite of the real fall her past weakness
signified for him, the "error" of her whom he loved, he loved her, he
was ready, in order to have her, to fight against his mother's
opposition. But someone must help him; Annette must second him. He was
weak; to endure the combat, he needed to summon all his strength, not
the least element of which was the strength of illusion. He needed to
idealize Annette, and if Annette had been clever she would have helped
him to do so.

She saw the grief which her words caused. She had expected it; she was
sorry for it, but she could not spare him. Since they were to live
together, each would have to take his share of the trials and even the
errors of the other. But she did not suspect the conflict that was
taking place in him; and if she had thought of it, she would have
remained confident of the victory of love.

"My poor Julien," she said, "I am giving you pain. Forgive me. It is
hard for me too. You believed that I was better than I am. You gave me a
higher place, too high, in your mind. . . . I am a woman. I am
weak. . . . At least, if I have made a mistake, I have never deceived
anyone else. I have always acted in good faith. I have always done that."

"Yes," he said hastily. "I'm sure of it. He deceived you, didn't he?"

"Who?" asked Annette.

"That wretch. . . . Forgive me! . . . That man who left you."

"No, don't accuse him," she said. "I am the guilty one."

She attached to this word "guilty" only the sense of a warm regret for
the pain she was causing him, but he seized upon it greedily. In his
confusion he longed to hold fast to the idea that Annette was the victim
of a seduction and that she had repented. . . . He had an extreme need
of this notion of "repenting"; it was for him a kind of compensation for
the hurt he had suffered, a balm for the wound it could not heal but
could render endurable; it gave him a moral superiority over Annette of
which--to be fair to him--he would never have made use. In short, since
he had no doubt about Annette's sin, he also had none about the need of
repentance. His Christian nature was imbued with both these ideas. The
most liberal Christian never frees himself from them.

But Annette had sprung from a race with a different kind of soul. The
Rivières might be pure or impure, in the sense that Christian morality
attaches to this word; but if they were pure it was not in obedience to
an invisible God or his too visible representatives and their Tables of
the Law. It was because they loved purity as moral cleanliness, as
beauty. And if they were impure they regarded it as an affair between
themselves and their own consciences, not the consciences of others.
Annette could not admit that she must give an account of herself to
others. If she confessed herself to Julien, it was a gift of love that
she was making him. In all honesty, she owed him merely an account of
her life. But of her inner life she did not owe him any account. She
gave it to him of her own free will. She saw now that Julien would have
preferred to have her embellish the truth. But she was too proud to
profit by a lying excuse of which she felt no need. On the contrary,
when she understood what he wanted her to say she took pains to make it
clear that she had given herself to her lover.

Julien, who was completely upset, would not listen to her.

"No, no, I don't believe you," he said. "You are too generous. Don't
accuse yourself to defend that man who deserves nothing but contempt."

"But I'm not accusing anyone," she said simply.

Her words struck against his consciousness, but he refused to
understand.

"You are trying to exonerate him."

"I am not exonerating him. No one's to blame."

Julien struggled. "Annette, I implore you not to talk that way."

"Why?"

"You know very well it's wrong!"

"I know nothing of the kind."

"What? You don't regret anything?"

"I regret making you unhappy. But I didn't know you then, my friend. I
was free and alone; I had no obligations except to myself."

"Is that nothing?" he thought. He did not dare to say it.

"But still you regret it?" he said, insistently. "You know very well you
made a mistake."

He did not want to accuse her. But he so longed to have her accuse
herself.

"Perhaps," she said.

"Perhaps," he took her up, dejectedly.

"I don't know," said Annette.

She saw where Julien wanted to lead her. Perhaps she had made a mistake,
if yielding to a transport of sincere love and pity was a mistake.
Perhaps, yes. "But if in my heart I can regret a sincere error, I don't
need to excuse myself for it. My heart has remained alone with its
suffering, communing with it alone in the silence. It must commune now
with its regrets. They concern nobody. . . . Regrets? . . . Let's be
honest to the end! There are no regrets!" After reflecting, she said, "I
don't think I made a mistake."

Perhaps she was exaggerating in reaction against Julien's unconscious
pharisaism. (Poor Julien!) But even in the moments when she loved him
the most she could not bring herself to utter the word of regret which
he was expecting. . . . "I should so much like to say it! But I can't.
It isn't true." Regret what? She had acted in accordance not only with
her rights but with her happiness. For, costly as the latter had been,
she had had it--the child. And she knew (she alone) that this gift of
the child, far from dishonoring her, as a stupid public opinion
supposed, had purified her, delivered her for a long time from her
troubles, brought into her life order and peace. . . . No, for the sake
of assuring her future love she would never be base enough to slander
her past love. She even felt now a certain gratitude towards this Roger
who had only been an agent of her destiny, so inferior to the love and
the flame of life he had lighted in her.

Julien felt this jealously. "Ah, you still love that man?" he said.

"No, my friend."

"But you are not angry with him."

"Why should I be angry with him?"

"And you are thinking of him."

"I am thinking of you, Julien."

"But you haven't forgotten him."

"I could not forget anyone who had done me good, even if he ceased to
exist. Don't reproach me, you who have done me so much more good!"

Julien was honest enough to respect Annette's frankness, and in his
heart he felt her nobility. This for him was an unaccountable spectacle,
the unwonted dignity of which revealed to him a new world--the new
woman. But another part of his nature was in revolt. His masculine
instincts were wounded. His Catholic and bourgeois prejudices were
horrified. The idea that he had, that he continued to have, of Annette
was poisoned with degrading suspicions. Instead of being surer of a
woman who gave up her secret to him with complete loyalty, he was less
sure of a woman whose past weakness had been revealed to him. He doubted
her fidelity in the future. He thought of that other living man who had
possessed her and whose child would be his. He was afraid of being
deceived, he was afraid of being ridiculous. He was mortified, and he
could not forgive her.

As soon as Annette fully perceived the dangerous struggle that was going
on in Julien's mind and saw that the hope she had formed was menaced,
she trembled. She was utterly in the grip of the love she had provoked.
All her power of loving, all her capacity for happiness, she had centred
in this Julien. And in truth she had half deceived herself. But she had
only half deceived herself. Julien was not unworthy of her; his
qualities were real; they deserved love. Different as they were, they
would be able to live together with a little mutual effort to understand
and tolerate each other--and a little suffering, no doubt; and was a
little suffering too much to pay for a firm affection? Annette would
have been good for him; she would have invigorated him; she would have
been that great wind of confidence in life that would have swelled his
sails and carried him whither he could never have gone without her. And
Julien's delicate tenderness, his respect for woman, his moral purity,
even that candid religious faith which Annette did not share, would have
been wholesome for her; they would have given her passionate nature a
basis of security, the peace of home and of a soul of which one is sure.

Ah, the misery of hearts that miss their destiny through a
misapprehension which their passion exaggerates, that know it and
reproach themselves for it and always will reproach themselves, but will
never yield the point that separates them just because they love too
much to make a moral concession to which they would disdainfully consent
with those to whom they are indifferent!

Annette tormented herself now with the anxieties to which she had given
birth in Julien's mind. Was Julien right? . . . She was not infatuated
with her own judgment. She tried to understand other ways of judging.
Her character was not entirely formed: her moral instinct was strong,
but her ideas were not yet established; she reserved the right to revise
them. While quite young she had realized how artificial was the morality
of those who surrounded her, and she had found nothing upon which to
lean, nothing but her reason, which had often deceived her. She was
always seeking; she sought for other ways of thinking in which she might
breathe freely. And when she encountered a sincere conscience like
Julien's she scrutinized it eagerly: would this voice respond to the
appeal of her heart? She aspired to believe, this woman in revolt! She
was seeking, seeking for her moral homeland. . . . How she would have
loved to enter Julien's, to subscribe to its laws, even if they
condemned her! But it was not enough to long. She could not do it. What
Julien desired simply wasn't human!

"I realize," she said to him tenderly, "that you are judging me as the
world judges. I don't reproach you. I admire the rigorous, preservative
force of its laws. They have their place in the sum of things and I know
that their roots are deep in your family. It is natural for you to obey
them. I respect them in you. But, my friend, all the efforts of my will
could never make me deny an action, even if it is condemned by everyone,
which has given me my child. Dear Julien, how could I deny what is my
only consolation, the purest joy perhaps that heaven will grant me in my
whole life? Don't try to blight it, but if you love me share my
happiness! There is nothing in it that can injure you!"

She knew, even as she spoke, that he did not understand; she only
irritated him the more. And she was broken-hearted. But what could she
do? Lie to him? It was too dreadful that she had even thought of this
humiliating resource. But could she allow the breach to grow wider in
this affection that was so dear to her? It was as if this breach had
extended to her heart. . . . She was in mortal terror every time she
found herself in Julien's presence. What was he going to read to-day in
her face?

As for him, he abused her love with all the baseness of a man who is
certain that he is loved. He knew that he was hurting her and he went on
hurting her. He in turn felt his power, and he began to desire her less
now he was sure that she desired him.

She understood it all! She was in despair because she had betrayed her
weakness. But she went on. She abandoned herself to a superstitious
feeling: if fate intended her to be Julien's wife, she would be,
whatever she said; whatever she said, she would lose him if that was her
fate.

But secretly she wished to believe that, in exchange for her submission,
fate would be favorable to her. Julien would be touched.

"I put myself in your hands. Will you love me the less for that?"




XXI


A strange travail was going on in Julien's mind. He loved her--no, he
desired her--as much as always. Who could say which it was? (He did not
want to know.) . . . In short, he still wanted her. But he was sure now,
not only that his mother would never consent to his marriage, but that
he himself would never be able to make up his mind to it. For many
reasons: bitterness, wounded vanity, moral disapproval, what might be
called a jealous repulsion. But he preferred not to dwell on these
reasons. "Yes, we know you, but don't show yourselves." His mind
arranged expedients to satisfy at once his hidden reasons and his
desires. . . . Annette, in the past, had declared herself a free woman
in love. He did not approve of this, no; but, after all, since she was
as she was, why should she not be just this with him whom she loved?

He did not put it to her as bluntly as this. He pleaded all the things
that made marriage impossible (he brought forth new ones as fast as she
refuted them): the insurmountable obstacles, his mother's opposition,
the necessity of living with his mother, his financial straits, with
Annette accustomed to wealth, to society--poor Annette, reduced for two
years to giving private lessons!--the difference in their minds and
temperaments. . . . (This last argument came up just at the end, to the
dismay and terror of Annette, when she believed she had surmounted the
others.) With obstinate unfairness, Julien depreciated himself, the
better to mark the difference between them. It was enough to make one
laugh and weep. It was pitiable to see him looking for all these poor
pretexts for escaping, while she, forgetting her pride, pretended not to
understand, wore herself out finding replies, struggled feverishly to
keep him from leaving her.

He was not leaving her. He did not refuse to take. He refused to give.

When Annette perceived the object of all these barricades and what he
wanted of her, she had a feeling less of revolt than of prostration. She
did not have enough strength left to be indignant. To struggle was no
longer worth the trouble. That was what he wanted! . . . He! . . .
Wretched soul! . . . So he didn't know himself? So he didn't realize how
he appeared in her eyes? If he had been loved it was just because of his
solid integrity. It wasn't at all, not at all, becoming for him to play
the Don Juan, the libertine, the free lover! (For, in spite of her
grief, Annette's mind kept its ironical clearness, and it never failed
to seize the comic that was mingled with the tragic in life.)

"My friend," she thought, tenderly, pityingly, disgustedly, "I loved you
better when you condemned me. Your rather narrow but lofty idea of love
gave you the right to do so. But now you no longer have that right. What
have I to do with this inferior love you are proposing to me to-day, this
love without trust? If trust is lacking there is nothing left between
us."

Every love has its essence: where one blossoms, another withers. Carnal
love dispenses with respect. The love that is based on respect cannot
lower itself to ample enjoyment.

"Why," cried Annette in her heart, which was rising in revolt, "I would
rather be the mistress of the first passer-by who pleased me than of
you, you whom I love!"

For with him it would be degrading. Everything or nothing!

To Julien's suggestions she thus opposed a firm, affectionate refusal
that hurt him. They continued to love one another, while judging each
other severely; and neither of them could resign himself to the loss of
their happiness. There they were, appealing to each other, desiring each
other, even offering themselves--incapable as they were of pronouncing
the word that would bring them together--the one through inner weakness,
that moral debility which with rare exceptions (if a man can dare to say
it) belongs to man, and which he does not recognize, the other through
that deep-seated pride which belongs to woman and which she does not
confess either: for the two sexes have been so deformed by the moral
conventions of a society built upon the victory of man that they have
both forgotten their real character. The weaker of the two is not always
by nature the one who calls himself so. The woman is richer in the
energies of the earth, and if she is caught in the snare that man has
thrown over her she remains a captive who has not surrendered.

Julien dimly perceived the justice of Annette's motives, and he did not
question their honesty, but he could not do violence to the timidity of
his own heart. He followed the opinion of the world, which he respected
less than Annette. By himself he would have accepted Annette's past, but
he could not accept it under the eye of the world; and he persuaded
himself that this was the eye of his own conscience. He did not have the
courage to take for a wife this woman whom he desired; and his
pusillanimity he called dignity. He was not able to delude himself
completely; and he was angry with Annette because he had not been able
to delude her either. He ought to have broken with her, but he would not
consent to this. And when Annette spoke of leaving him he held her back,
hesitated, suffered, caused her suffering. He was no more willing to
accept her than to give her up. He played the cruel game of keeping up
her hope, which he later killed. He shunned her when she was most loving
and was most loving when she resigned herself. Annette went through
painful crises of wounded affection. She ate her heart out. Sylvie saw
this and finally extorted the truth from her. She had seen Julien and
she had made up her mind about him. "He is one of those people," she
said, "who never make a decision till they are forced to do so. You can
do it; make him consent. He will be grateful to you later."

But Annette had suffered too much from the thought that Julien might
reproach her some day (even if he never expressed it) if she married
him. When it was no longer possible to ignore the irremediable weakness
of his character and the futile hope of a lasting decision from which
his troubled spirit would no longer try to draw back, she settled the
question in good earnest. She wrote to Julien and told him not to
prolong this useless torment any further. She was suffering, he was
suffering, and they had to live. She had to work for her child, and he
had his own work. She had taken him away from it too long. They had both
been using up their strength, and they had none too much of it. Since
they could not do each other the good they had hoped for, let them not
do each other harm. They must not see each other any more. She thanked
him for all that he had been to her.

Julien did not answer. Silence fell between them. But in their hearts,
bitterness, regret, wounded passion still fought with one another.




XXII


Their love had not remained a secret from those who were close to them.
Leopold had watched it with an annoyance he had not been able to conceal
from Sylvie. His painful memory of that far from brilliant adventure of
his had left in his mind an involuntary resentment which had not become
less active a few months later. Far from it. For he found it possible to
pretend to himself that he had forgotten the reason for it. Sylvie,
already on the watch, was struck by his strange behavior: she observed
him and she found it impossible to doubt that he was jealous. In
accordance with the admirable logic of the heart, she was angry with
Annette. She took a violent dislike to her. In a measure the state of
her health explained these violent reactions. But the unfortunate thing
in such cases is that the reverberation is prolonged beyond the
condition that has caused them.

In October Sylvie gave birth to a little girl. Joy for everybody.
Annette became as passionately attached to the child as if it had been
her own. It gave Sylvie no pleasure to see it in her arms, and she no
longer tried to conceal the hostility that she had hitherto repressed.
Annette, who, for a few weeks, had been listening to unkind words from
her sister, which she attributed to the passing illness, was no longer
able to doubt Sylvie's estrangement. She said nothing, avoiding any
occasion for annoying her. She hoped for a return of the old affection.

Sylvie was on her feet again. The relations between the two sisters
remained apparently the same, and an outsider would not have noticed any
change. But Annette observed in Sylvie a cold animosity that hurt her.
She would have liked to take her hands and ask her, "What's the matter?
What have you against me? Tell me, dear!"

But Sylvie's look froze her. She did not dare. She felt intuitively that
if Sylvie spoke she would say something irreparable. It was much better
to remain silent. Annette felt in her sister a wish to be unjust against
which she could do nothing.

One day Sylvie said to Annette that she wanted to have a talk with her.
Annette, with her heart beating, wondered, "What is she going to say to
me?"

Sylvie said nothing that could offend Annette, not a word of her
grievances. She talked to her about getting married.

Annette gently changed the subject. But Sylvie was insistent and
suggested a match: a friend of Leopold, a sort of business agent, a
journalist in some vague way, with a certain style, the manners of a man
of the world, and varied, too varied, resources, who sold automobiles
and wrote advertisements, acted as an intermediary between the
manufacturers and their customers in clubs and drawing-rooms, and
received commissions from both sides. It was a proof that Sylvie had
changed greatly in relation to her sister that she could offer her such
a choice, and Annette was aware of the lack of affection this deliberate
slight indicated. With a gesture she stopped the description of the
candidate. Sylvie took it in bad part, asking if Annette found the
suggested suitor beneath her pretensions. Annette said that she had no
pretensions except to live alone. Sylvie replied that this was easy to
say, that it was all very well to want to live alone, but that first one
had to have the power to do so.

"But do you think I can't?"

"You? I challenge you to do it!"

"You are unjust. I can earn my living."

"With the help of other people."

In the tone, even more than in the words, there was something
intentionally wounding. Annette blushed, but she did not take her up;
she did not want to bring about an open quarrel.

During the following weeks, Sylvie's ill-humor was very noticeable. Any
pretext served her, the least disagreement in conversation, a detail in
dress, Annette's lateness at dinner, the noise little Marc made on the
stairs. They never went out together any more. If they had arranged for
a walk on Sunday, she set out with Leopold, without saying anything to
Annette, using the latter's unpunctuality as an excuse. Or at the last
moment she would call off the party they had planned.

Annette saw that her presence was a burden. She spoke timidly of looking
for an apartment in some other quarter that would be less remote from
her pupils. She hoped they would protest, beg her to remain. They
pretended not to have heard her.

She was cowardly; she stayed on. She clung to this affection which she
felt was escaping her. It was not only Sylvie whom she did not want to
leave. She was attached to little Odette. She endured more than one
painful affront without seeming to notice it. She lengthened the
intervals between her visits.

Even so, they were too frequent for Sylvie. She certainly had not
returned to her normal state. An unwholesome jealousy was working in
her. Once when Annette was innocently playing with Odette, without
noticing a dry warning that Sylvie had given her to stop, the latter
rose, irritated, and snatched the little girl from her arms. "Go away!"
she said.

There was such animosity in her eyes that Annette, struck by it, said to
her, "But what have I done? Don't look at me that way! I can't bear it.
Do you want me to go away? Do you want me not to come back any more?"

"At last you understand," said Sylvie, cruelly.

Annette turned pale. "Sylvie!" she cried.

With a cold rage, Sylvie went on: "You are living at my expense. Very
well. That's all right. But that's enough. My husband and my daughter
are mine. Hands off!"

Annette, with white lips, repeated, in an agonized tone, "Sylvie,
Sylvie!"

Then suddenly a transport seized her too. "You wicked thing!" she cried.
"You will never see me again!"

She ran to the door and went out.

Ashamed of her violence, Sylvie pretended to laugh.

"We shall see her again this evening."




_SUMMER_


PART TWO




XXIII


Annette left Sylvie's apartment intending never to enter it again. She
was weeping. She was burning with shame and rage. These two passionate
natures could not cease to love each other without almost hating each
other.

Impossible for Annette to remain under the same roof with her! If she
had had the means she would have moved the next day. Happily for her,
she had to yield to practical necessities: to give notice, to look for
another apartment. In her first fury she would have preferred to place
her furniture in storage and camp out in a hotel. But this was not the
moment to squander her money. She had very little laid aside; what she
earned was spent as she went along; even when she had no recourse to her
sister's aid, the feeling that she could appeal to her in case of need
gave her a security that spared her any too keen anxieties over the
future. When she came to reckon up what she must have in order to live,
she was obliged to recognize, to her mortification, that if she were
thrown upon her own resources her actual work would not suffice to
support her. Living with her sister and taking some of their meals
together lightened her expenses. The child's clothes were given him by
Sylvie, and Annette paid only for the material of her own dresses. And
this was not to mention the things she borrowed or those which, while
they belonged to one, served for two, the small gifts, the Sunday
excursions, the little extra pleasures that brightened the daily
monotony. And then the credit which her sister enjoyed in the
neighborhood gave Annette the benefit of a certain latitude in paying
her bills. Now she would have to count upon paying cash for everything.
The beginning would be hard. The moving, the deposit, the expenses of
settling. And the great question, who was going to look after the child?
A contradictory question: for she had to earn money for the child, and
in order to earn it she had to leave home, and who would take care of
him? Annette had to admit that she would never have surmounted these
difficulties if they had come earlier, when Marc was very young. How did
other women manage? Annette was sorry for the unhappy souls, and she
felt humiliated.

Place the child in a boarding-school? He was old enough to go to school
now. But she was unwilling to shut him up in one of those menageries.
What she had heard about those old-time institutions (things have been
somewhat improved since then), what she instinctively surmised about
this physical and moral promiscuity, had led her to regard it as a crime
to put one's child into them. She wanted to believe that the boy would
be unhappy there. Who could say? Perhaps he would have been very glad to
get away from her. But what mother can believe that she is a burden to
her child? She was not even willing to leave him at one of these schools
for his meals. She told herself that this was because of Marc's delicate
health; he needed special food; she had to watch over his diet. But it
was extremely fatiguing to come home from lunch when her lessons obliged
her sometimes to run to the other end of Paris. Going, coming, always in
movement. And the lessons did not bring in enough money. Some urgent
expense was always turning up upon which she had not reckoned. The boy
was growing very large, and Annette regretted that he was not like those
little beans which never grow faster than their shells. She had to
clothe him. Nor could she permit herself to neglect her own appearance;
her occupation would have prevented this if her pride had not done so.
So she had to find new resources. Copying to be done at home, the work
of some foreigner or a translation to be revised (an ungrateful task,
poorly remunerated); secretarial work, one or two mornings in the week
(also poorly remunerated); but all these things, taken together, were
enough. To earn money by any means! Annette did many things at once. She
made herself hated by the hungry rivals whom she thrust out of her way
in her pursuit of bread. But this time the devil could take the
hindmost. No more sentimentality! She had no time for it. You cannot go
back and pick up those who have fallen. It was true that she sometimes
had the vision in passing of some strained face that stared at her with
hostile eyes, some evicted competitor whom she would gladly have helped
in other days. A pity, but she did not have the time. She had to get
there first. She knew now where to find work, and she knew the shortest
way to it. Her diplomas, her degree, gave her an assured superiority.
And she was not unaware that she had advantages on another side, the
personal side, her eyes, her voice, her way of dressing, her skill in
handling her clients. Between her and other applicants they rarely
hesitated. Those that were sacrificed could not forgive her.

Her new life was established on a healthily rigorous system. No empty
room for useless thoughts. From one day to another, every day was as
full as a nut, full and hard. After the trepidation of the first weeks,
when she did not know whether she could manage to live and keep her
child alive, she became used to it, she grew more confident, she even
ended by finding pleasure in the difficulties she had overcome. No
doubt, in the rare moments when the necessity of acting no longer held
her mind tense, when at night she laid her head on her pillow, there
were times before she went to sleep when her accounts, the thought of
her budget, weighed upon her. . . . If she dropped on the road? . . . If
she fell ill? . . . I won't. . . . Peace, I must sleep. . . . Happily,
she was tired; sleep did not keep her waiting And when the day returned,
there was no longer room for those "ifs" and apprehensions. No more room
for that which enervated, enfeebled, broke the soul. Penury and toil put
everything in its proper place--that which belonged to the necessary and
that which belonged to luxury.

The necessary: daily bread. Luxury: the problems of the heart. . . .
Could she have imagined it? These problems seemed to her now of
secondary importance. All very well for those who have too much time on
their hands! She had neither too much nor too little. Just enough. One
thought for each thing she did, and not one to spare. So, full of
strength, she felt like a well-trimmed ship that is launched on the
waves.

She was in her thirty-third year, and nothing had yet wasted her
energies. She perceived that she not only did not need protection but
that she was stronger without it. The difficulty of her life invigorated
her. And its first benefit was in liberating her from the obsession of
Julien, from the nostalgia of love, which, dull or violent, had poisoned
all her past years. She realized how satiated she was with sentimental
dreams, sweet things, tender things, hypocritical sensuality; merely to
think of them was repugnant to her. To be occupied with the rough facts
of life, to undergo its wounding contact, to be obliged to be hard
herself--that was good, it was vivifying. A whole part of herself, the
best part perhaps, certainly the healthiest, was born again.

She no longer dreamed. She no longer tormented herself, even about her
child's health. When he was ill she did what had to be done. She did not
think about it beforehand. She no longer thought about it, indefinitely,
afterwards. She was ready for everything, she was confident. And that
was the best medicine. Dining these first years of desperate toil she
was not ill a single day, and the child caused her no real anxiety.

Her intellectual life was no less curtailed than her emotional life. She
scarcely had time to read any longer. She might have suffered from this,
but she did not. Her mind made up the deficiency from its own resources.
She had enough to do to sort and arrange her new discoveries. For during
these first months she discovered a great deal; she discovered
everything. And yet in what respect had things changed? As for work, she
had been very familiar with that--or she had thought she was familiar
with it. And this city, these people were just the same to-day as
yesterday.

Between one day and the next, however, everything had changed. From the
moment she had begun to seek her bread she had made the real discovery.
It had not been love, not even maternity. She carried these things
within her, but her life had expressed only a small portion of herself.
Hardly had she passed into the camp of poverty, however, than she
discovered the world.

The world varies, according as one considers it from above or from
below. Annette was in the street now, between the rows of houses that
stretched away on both sides: she saw the asphalt, the mud, the menace
of the motor-cars and the flood of passers-by. She saw the sky above
(rarely luminous)--when she had the time! The space between vanished:
all that had formed the object of her life hitherto, society,
conversation, theatres, books, the luxury of pleasure and the
intelligence. She knew very well that they were there and she might have
enjoyed them, but she had other things to think about. Watching her
steps, looking out for herself, hurrying. . . . How all these people
ran! . . . From above one saw nothing but the meandering of the river:
it seemed calm, and one did not notice the strength of the current. The
race, the race for bread. . . .

A thousand times Annette had thought of the state in which she found
herself to-day, in the world of toil and poverty. But what she had
thought then bore no resemblance to what she thought now that she was
taking part in it.

Yesterday she had believed in the democratic axiom of the Rights of Man,
and it had seemed to her unjust that the masses should be deprived of
them. To-day, the injustice--if there remained any question of just and
unjust--was that rights existed for the privileged. There are no rights.
Man has no right to anything. Nothing belongs to him. He has to conquer
everything anew every day. That is the Law: "Thou shalt earn thy bread
in the sweat of thy brow." Rights are the deceitful invention of a
fallen combatant, to sanction the spoils of his past victory. Rights are
nothing but the strength of yesterday, heaping up its treasures. But the
living right, the only one, is work. The conquest of every day. . . .
What a sudden vision of the human battlefield! It had no terrors for
Annette. The courageous soul accepted this combat as a necessity; and
she found it just because she was "in form," young and robust. If she
conquered, so much the better! If she was conquered, so much the worse!
(She would not be conquered. . . .) She had not given up pity, but she
had given up weakness. The first of her duties was "Don't be
pusillanimous!"

By the new light of this law of labor, everything became dear to her.
The old faiths were put to the test, and a new morality rose on the
ruins of the old, cemented on this heroic foundation. The morality of
freedom, the morality of strength, not of Pharisaism and debility. And
examining under this light the doubts that troubled her, especially that
which lay deepest in her heart, "Have I the right to my child?" she
answered, "Yes, if I can keep him alive, if I can make a man of him. If
I can do this, everything will be all right. If I cannot, everything
will be wrong. This is the only morality; everything else is
hypocritical."

This inflexible decision redoubled her vigor and her joy in the
struggle.

She was meditating in this fashion one day as she was walking about
Paris, going from one task to another. The walking excited her mind. Now
that her daily activity was methodically regulated, her dreams resumed
their rights. But they were waking dreams, clear, precise, dreams that
had nothing misty about them. The more limited her time was, the more
she made of these slight intervals; like ivy the hours climbed up,
covering the walls of the days. Annette brought her enlarged conceptions
of the true human morality face to face with the experiences of her day.
Work and poverty had opened her eyes. She had a new perception of the
untruthfulness of modern life which she had not seen when she was caught
in it. The monstrous futility of this life--nine-tenths of this
life--particularly for women. . . . Eating, sleeping, procreating. . . .
Yes, a tenth part had some use. But the rest? . . . This "civilization"?
What people call "thinking"? Is man--_vulgus umbrarum_--really made for
thought? He wants to persuade himself that he is, he puts himself into
the attitude for it, and he believes that he holds it, as by consecrated
exploits. But he does not think. He does not think over his newspaper,
or in his office, before the wheel on which his everyday activities
revolve. The wheel turns with him, turns empty. Did they think, those
young girls whom Annette had undertaken to teach? What was the meaning
of the words they heard, read, uttered? To what did their life reduce
itself? A few immense, depressing instincts brooding in their torpor
under a mass of playthings. Desire and enjoyment. . . . Thought was also
one of their playthings. Who was deceived by it? Themselves. The garment
of this civilization, its luxury, its art, its movement and its
noise--(that noise! one of its masks, to make itself believe that it was
hurrying toward some end! what end? It hurried in order to stupefy
itself)--what lay beneath it? Emptiness. People gloried in it. They
gloried in their tinsel, in their chatter, in their trinkets. How rare
were the men who revealed the shining light of Necessity! To the eternal
brute in man the voice of its gods and its sages says nothing or is only
one triviality the more. It never escapes from the confines of its
desire and boredom. Like man himself, human society is a meretricious
structure. Custom holds it together. A touch can lay it in ruins. . . .

Tragic thoughts. But they could not depress the ardent Annette. It is
the inspiration within that gives joy or sadness, not ideas. Under an
untroubled sky an anæmic soul perishes of melancholy. A vigorous soul,
exposed to storms, wraps itself as happily in shadows as in sunlight. It
knows quite well that they alternate. Annette came home sometimes
crushed with fatigue and the feeling of a dark future. She would go to
bed and sleep; in the middle of the night some ridiculous dream would
wake her up laughing. Or, more often, in the evening, as she sat with
her brow bent over her work and the fingers followed their path, her
brain, following its path in turn, would suddenly pick up some absurd
thought and she would be full of merriment. She had to take care not to
laugh too loudly in order not to awaken Marc. "I'm an idiot," she said,
as she dried her eyes. But her heart was lightened. These childish
relaxings, these sudden reactions, were a wholesome heritage that came
to her from her family. When the heart is full of clouds, the wind of
joy rises and drives them away.

No, she had no need of distractions, books. Annette had enough to read
in herself. And the most thrilling of books was her son.




XXIV


He was approaching his seventh year. He had adjusted himself to the
change of his surroundings much more readily than might have been
expected. Disagreeable or not, it was a change. He had cast his skin
like a little snake. Ungrateful childhood! All Sylvie's indulgences and
all her petting--she was so certain of her power over him!--were as if
they had never been. After forty-eight hours he no longer even thought
of them.

What pleases or displeases a child is never what you expect. The first
thing Marc appreciated in his new life was the school whither his mother
sent him pityingly--and the hours of solitude when there was nobody to
watch him.

Annette had established herself in a little apartment on the fifth floor
on the populous Rue Monge. A steep stairway, small rooms, noise from
without; but there was space above the roofs, and she needed this. The
noise did not disturb her; she was a Parisian, accustomed to movement;
it was almost necessary to her; she could think all the better in the
midst of the hurly-burly. Perhaps her nature had also been transformed
with maturity: the plenitude of physical life and regular work had given
her a poise, a nervous solidity, which she had never known, but which
would not endure forever.

The apartment consisted, on the street side, of Annette's bedroom, which
served as a sitting-room (the bed formed a divan), Marc's little room,
and a narrow recess, a sort of corner-closet. Across the passage, which
was dark at midday, was the dining-room over the court and a kitchen
that was practically filled by the stove and the sink.

Between the mother's room and that of the child the door remained open,
and Marc was too small to protest. He was at the undecided age that
floats between the sexlessness of early infancy and the first uncertain
awakening of the little man. He was no longer in the one stage and not
yet in the other. He would still run from his own bed to his mother's on
Sunday morning; and on great days he would allow her to dress him from
head to foot. On other days he would have fits of rudeness and shyness.
And he was full of curiosity also. Especially he had attacks of
secretiveness which he did not wish to have disturbed. He would slyly
shut his door. Annette would open it again. He could not make a movement
that she did not hear. It was unbearable! So he wouldn't move at all.
Then she would forget him for a little while. Not for long! . . .

Happily, Annette was not always there. She had to go out. Marc went to
his school, which was not far away. Annette took him there in the
morning, and when she was free (rarely) in the afternoon. But she could
not come for him to take him home again, for this was the hour of her
lessons. He had to come home alone, and this made her anxious. She had
tried to arrange with a neighboring family for the servant to bring Marc
home when she brought their child. But this did not suit Marc, and he
slipped away beforehand. So, proud and timorous, he would come back
alone and all alone shut himself up in the apartment. Good times till
his mother's return! Annette scolded him for his independence. But
although she would never have admitted to herself that she had this evil
feeling, she was not too sorry that he should be able to get along
without comrades. She distrusted comrades. She did not want anyone to
spoil her son. . . . Her son! Was she quite sure that he was hers? Of
course she made an effort to repress her egotistical love. No longer, as
in the days when he was very small, did she feel the blind, gluttonous
need of absorbing the little being in her passion. She saw in him now a
personality. But she persuaded herself that she had the key of this
personality, that she knew better than he its laws and its happiness;
she wanted to carve it in the image of her secret God. Believing, like
most mothers, that she was incapable of creating what she desired
herself, she dreamed of creating it through him who had sprung from her
blood. (That eternal dream, eternally frustrated, of Wotan!)

But in order to shape him, she had to catch him. Not let him escape! She
did everything to envelop him. Too much. Every day he escaped more. She
had the discouraging impression that every day she knew him less. One
thing she knew well: his body, his physical health, his illnesses, the
least symptoms. She had an intuition that never deceived her. She would
hold him before her, bathe him, touch him, care for him . . . this dear
fragile body of the little hermaphrodite. He looked transparent. But
what was inside him? She devoured him with her eyes and her hands; he
was entirely at her mercy.

"Heavens, how I love you, little monster! And do you love me?"

"Yes, Mamma," he replied politely.

But what was he thinking in his heart?

At seven Marc had scarcely a feature of his family. In vain had Annette
explored him, sought for some resemblance, tried to imagine one. . . .
No, he was not like her, either in the shape of his forehead, or in his
eyes, or in that swelling of the lips, so characteristic of the
Rivières, and especially of Annette, as if the will, the inner ardor,
had expanded them. The only point in common was the color of the iris,
and this was lost in a strange world. . . . What world? . . . The
father's? The Brissots'? Scarcely. At least, not yet. Jealously Annette
said, "Never!"

And yet would she have been so displeased to find some trace of Roger in
her son's features? Would it not have given her an obscure pleasure? She
remembered the man to whom she had given herself with a mixture of
bitterness and unconfessed attraction--an attraction less for the real
Roger than for him of whom she had dreamed. In fact, it was to this
dream that she had given herself. If she had seen him again in the image
of her son, she would have had a strange feeling of victory, the feeling
that she had wrested from him this form she loved in order to animate it
with her own soul. Yes, as long as Marc's spirit was like her own, she
would have been glad to find Roger's features in him.

But he resembled neither Roger nor herself. Roger's face, which lacked
the original expression of the Rivières, had a simple, regular beauty
of line: it was an easy book to read. But this child's face, the meaning
of this expression . . . how describe it? It was so fleeting. . . .

Pretty, delicate features, but not well proportioned, the narrow brow,
the effeminate chin, eyes a little aslant, the nose--whose did it
resemble, this long, tapering, finely arched nose?--and the wide, thin
mouth with pale, slightly crooked lips? . . . Even when he was motionless
he seemed to be moving; his air was uncertain and changing. . . . No
doubt he was seeking for his form: he was still fluctuating, but
in what direction would he decide to go? Or would he decide not to have
any direction?

Since his serious illness, he had been a child who at a first glance
would have been called nervous and impressionable (as perhaps he was).
But as you watched him, he disconcerted you with his calm ways, his air
of indifference, his reserved expression. Not disagreeable, not sulky,
not saying no. . . . "Yes, Mamma." . . . But you saw at once that he was
not paying any attention to what you said. He had not heard it. . . . Or
had he heard it? It was hard to be sure. . . . And he looked at his
mother to see what was going to happen next, and she looked at him. . . .
The little sphinx! . . . All the more a sphinx because he didn't know
that he was one. He knew no more about himself than Annette knew about
him, though this was the last thing to cause him any anxiety. When you
are seven you have ceased trying to understand yourself and have not yet
begun to do so again. On the other hand, he was trying to understand
her, his mistress and servant. And he had the time for this because she
shut him up with herself for days together. They observed one another
mutually. But she was no match for him.

Annette deceived herself in thinking that he did not resemble any one
she knew. There were astonishing similarities between his spirit and
that of his grandfather Rivière. But Annette, though this occurred to
her, had known very little about her father. He had charmed her so much
that she had never seen the real Raoul Rivière. She had merely had a
few suspicions, especially since she had read the famous correspondence.
She had not wanted to dwell on this. Even if she had to bolster them up,
she preferred to keep the pious and tender memories that had been
momentarily shaken. Besides, she had only known the Raoul of the last
phase. But if old Rivière had been able to return and inspect the
little love-child, as he would have known so well how to do, he would
have said, "I am beginning again."

He was not beginning again. Nothing ever begins again. He had merely
come back in certain details.

What mischievous tricks blood plays! Over Annette's head the two
confederates shook hands. And one of the most striking traits which the
frank Annette had transmitted from the grandfather to the grandchild was
a remarkable aptitude for dissembling. Not through any need to deceive.
Raoul Rivière had enough good-natured contempt for his contemporaries
and felt strong enough never to have any fear of showing himself, when
it pleased him, quite without disguise. (It had often pleased him, and
people would quote ferocious words of his that carried all before them.)
No, this was a gratuitous pleasure, a delight in the burlesque, a
theatrical tendency, a malicious taste for concealing his moral identity
in order to mystify people. The child, innocently of course, had
inherited this. His soul, which was still full of inconsistencies and
very heterogeneous, with nothing of the buffoon in its depths, had
slipped at birth into this malicious attitude, and it used the organs
that Nature had made for it. Just as it would have tried its beak, its
claws or its wings if it had passed into the body of a woolly or
feathered animal, so, enveloped as it were in a fold of one of old
Rivière's coats, it revealed once more the wiles of the grandfather.

Marc was guarded in the presence of grown-ups, and he could read in them
everything that concerned him. On that side his faculty of attention was
keen. When he saw what they imagined he was, he became it--at least
unless they irritated him or he wanted to amuse himself and was seized
with the whim of being contrary.

One of his occupations was to take apart the mechanism of these living
playthings, look for their hidden springs, their weak points, try them,
play with them, make them go. This was not very difficult, for they were
stupid and unsuspicious. And first of all, his mother.

She puzzled him. There was something enigmatic about her. He had heard
allusions to this subject in Sylvie's workshop, when he was sitting
under the feet of the working-girls, who were not thinking of him. He
did not understand much of it. But this added to the mystery, and he
interpreted it. Divining, discovering. In this alert little ferret-like
body, motionless, with shining eyes, the mind was always working.

Now that he was shut up with her, often for days, because of his
ill-health, his winter colds and the greedy affection of his mother, she
was his principal resource. He watched her curiously while he sang to
himself, moving about, pursuing his other occupations--for a child's
intelligence, like its body, is lithe and hard to hold. No matter if he
is facing the other way, he sees you with eyes in the back of his head,
and his cat's ears turn like weathercocks at the sound of your voice. If
this all-observing attention chases three or four hares at a time, it
never loses the trail, it amuses itself, it knows very well that
to-morrow it will begin again. . . . The hare allowed herself to be
caught. Expansive, easily carried away, prodigal in her feelings,
Annette was never niggardly. She spent herself without calculation.

At one moment she spoke to him as to a very little child, and she hurt
his feelings: he thought her ridiculous. Again she would speak to him as
to a companion of her thoughts, too old for his age, and she wearied
him: he thought her a bore. Sometimes she let herself think out loud,
carried on a monologue before him, as if he could understand it. Then he
thought her queer, and he watched her with a severe, mocking look. He
did not understand her; but people who do not understand never surrender
their right to judge.

He had adopted an artificial attitude that was convenient for him
because he could apply it to all cases: the impertinent, absent-minded
politeness of a well-brought-up child who appears to listen because he
must, but who is not in the least interested in all these things, who
has his own concerns and, when you speak to him, waits till you have
finished. At other times he amused himself playing at kissing her so as
to give her pleasure. He knew that his mother was nearly bursting with
happiness. The foolish woman responded with all her heart. When she fell
into his snares, he had a sort of affectionate contempt for her. When
she busied herself in a way that he had not foreseen, he was annoyed,
but he had more respect for her.

He was incapable of playing one part very long. A child is too yielding
and is always jumping from one thing to another. A moment after he had
pretended to be so warm-hearted and had enchanted her with his
effusions, he unblushingly betrayed his indifference in the harshest
way. Annette was completely upset.

There came a time when she ceased to be deceived or provoked any longer,
especially at the rare moments when a vague suspicion warned her that
Marc was obstinately posing. Then, nervously and violently--we ask
modern pedagogues to forgive us--she spanked him. Truly she was going
against all good principles and affronting the dignity of her child!
From the point of view of an Anglo-Saxon, poor Annette dishonored
herself forever. But we old French people don't go quite so far as that.
_Qui bene amat_. . . . The maxim still flourishes in bourgeois families
that have preserved some tincture of Latin. We have all been "well
loved." And at bottom we believe, three-quarters of the time, like
Annette's boy, that we are getting more than our deserts. But it is also
true that if, like him, we continue to love those who spank us, the
spanking results in their losing a little of their prestige. Let us
admit that perhaps it is for this reason that we--Marc and we--provoke
them!

He had a fine time afterwards playing the part of the outraged victim.
And Annette reproached herself for abusing her power. She felt that she
was at fault. She would try to find a way back into his good graces. He
would wait for her to come to him. . . .

The triumph of weakness! It is a weapon that women are expert in
handling. But the most feminine of the two in this case was the child.
This young morsel of flesh, still all bathed in the maternal milk, was
more than half feminine, and it had all the wiles and tricks of a girl.
Annette was disarmed. Beside the little rogue she was the strong sex.
The stupid strong sex, which is ashamed of its strength and tries to win
forgiveness for itself. The contest was not equal. The child made a fool
of her.




XXV


But he was no artful comedian amusing himself. Like his grandfather, he
had more than one nature. Very few had been able to see what lay hidden
beneath the mocking mask of old Rivière, the drama concealed by that
jesting cynicism, that appetite for play-acting which is sometimes
characteristic of conquering spirits. Raoul had had his dark depths
which he never revealed. They exist more often than one might suppose
under the Gallic laugh. One keeps them to oneself. Annette, who had her
own secrets, had never told them to her father, and his secrets she had
known no more than she knew those of her son. They all remained walled
up in their own inner lives. A strange reserve. People blush less at
exposing their vices and their appetites--Raoul had fairly paraded
his--than the tragedy of the soul.

Of this latter Marc had his share. A child who lives alone, without
brothers or companions, has time to wander about these caves of life.
Very deep and vast were the caves of the Rivières. The mother and the
child might have met in them. But they did not see each other; they
passed very close to each other more than once, imagining that they were
very far apart. Both of them, with eyes bandaged, Annette's by the demon
of passion that still held her, the child by the egoism that was natural
to his age--both were in the dark. But Marc as yet was only at the
entrance of the cavern; he was not, like Annette, seeking for the Way
out, bruising himself against the walls; he was crouching on one of the
first steps, dreaming of the future. Incapable of explaining it to
himself, he was building his life.

He had not had to go far to find the redoubtable wall before which the
terrified ego recoils. Death. The wall rose on all sides. Illness
skirted it like an encircling road. It was vain to seek for a passage
through it. The wall was massive and had no breach. It had not been
necessary for any one to tell Marc that the wall was there. Instantly,
in the shadow, he had scented it, like a horse with his mane rising. He
had spoken to no one about it. No one had spoken to him. The whole world
was in agreement on the subject.

Annette, like the young women of to-day, was a bad teacher who, as a
girl, had heard a great deal of talk about teaching, and was not
unwilling to talk about it as a matter of conscience. She attached more
importance to the method of bringing up children than the mothers of
former days who had gone about it blindly. But once the child was there,
she had found herself helpless before the thousand and one surprises of
life, incapable of playing her part, making up theories which she did
not apply, or which she abandoned at the first attempt. In the end she
had let them all go and fallen back upon instinct.

The religious problem was one of those that had troubled her, and she
had not been able to reach any practical solution of it for the child.
Most of the friends of her youth, in the rich, republican bourgeoisie,
had been brought up with religion by their mothers, without religion by
their fathers. They did not even feel the clash of the two conceptions.
(The two get along together very well in the world, like many other
contradictory facts, for neither feeling has a third dimension.) She
herself had gone to church, as she had gone to school: she had taken her
first communion, as she had taken her diploma, conscientiously, without
emotion. The ceremonies at which she had been present in her wealthy
parish seemed to her to belong to the order of the world. She had
separated from them when she separated from the world.

Modern society--and the Church is one of its pillars--has succeeded so
well in denaturing and weakening the great human forces that Annette,
who bore within her a richer faith than that of a hundred devotees,
imagined she was not religious. For she confounded religion with
prayer-wheels and the ceremonies of an obsolete exoticism, a luxury of
soul for the rich, a snare for the eyes and that consolation for the
heart of the poor which assures the foundations of their poverty and of
society.

Since she had given up her religious observances, she had never felt the
need for them. It did not occur to her that when she had her fiery
transports of conscience, her passionate monologues, she was really
saying mass.

She did not think of giving her son what she had gone without herself.
Perhaps the question would not even have occurred to her if,
paradoxically, Sylvie had not brought it up. Sylvie, who had no more
religion than a Parisian sparrow, would not have considered herself
married without the concurrence of the Church; and it seemed to her
indecent that Annette should not have her son baptised. Annette had not
thought of this. But she had it done so that Sylvie might be the
godmother. Then she thought no more of the matter, and things remained
where they were until Julien's arrival. That Julien had a practical
faith did not give Annette one, but it rendered the faith worthy of
respect in her eyes and brought her attention back to the problem she
had neglected. What was she to do for Marc? Send him to church? Teach
him a religion in which she did not believe? She asked Julien, who was
scandalized; he affirmed emphatically that the child had to be
instructed in the divine truths.

"But if they are not truths for me? Must I tell lies when Marc asks me
questions?"

"No, don't tell lies, but allow him to believe. It's for his good."

"No, it couldn't be for his good for me to be dishonest. And what
authority would I have when he found it out? Wouldn't he have the right
to reproach me for it? He would not believe in me any longer. And how do
I know whether this faith he would learn would not thwart his real
development later?"

Here Julien's brow darkened, and Annette hastened to change the subject.
But what was she to do? She could not, as her Protestant friends
advised, give her son a course in all the religions and leave him to
choose for himself when he was sixteen years old. . . . Annette burst
out laughing at this idea. What a strange conception of religion, as if
it were a subject for an examination!

In the end Annette had done nothing. She walked about with Marc, went
into churches, sat down in a corner, marvelled with him at the
upspringing forest of these lofty trunks of stone, the underwood gleams
that filtered through the stained-glass windows, enjoyed the flight of
the vaults, the distant chanting, the vague accompaniment of the organ.
It was a veritable bath of reverie and self-communion.

Marc did not dislike going about in this way, with his hand in his
mother's, listening, whispering. It was sweet, it was warm, it was
delightful. . . . Yes, if it didn't last too long. This sentimental
somnolence bored him. He needed to move about and think of definite
things. His little mind worked away, observed, noticed this crowd of
praying people, watched his mother, who did not pray. And without
expressing them he made his own reflexions. He asked few questions, much
fewer than most children would have asked, for he was very proud and he
was afraid of saying something naïve.

But he did ask, "Mother, who is God?"

"I don't know, my dear," she replied.

"Then what do you know?"

She smiled and pressed him against her. "I know that I love you."

Yes, the old story. He knew this, but it was not worth coming to church
for.

He was not very sensitive and he had no taste for the vague soulfulness
in which "these women" delighted. Annette, when she had her child beside
her, when she was without too many material cares, during an hour of
relaxation earned amid the tasks that pursued her, was happy. She did
not have to go very far to find God: he was in her heart. But Marc had
found in his heart nothing but himself, Marc: everything else was mere
foolishness. He had to be clear about things. Just what was this God?
The man up there over the altar, with his girlish petticoat and his
gilded shell? The verger with his staff and his exposed calves? Those
painted-up images--one in each chapel--that grinned at you with their
sickly smiles like embarrassed ladies whom he didn't like?

"Mamma, let's go on."

"But isn't this beautiful?"

"Yes, it's beautiful enough. Let's go home."

What was God? . . . He no longer insisted on asking his mother. When
grown-ups confess that they do not know something, it is because they
are not interested in it. . . . He continued his rather impatient
inquiry alone. He heard prayers, "Our Father who art in heaven"--a
localization that excited the scepticism of the more wide-awake of these
modern cubs for whom heaven was on the point of becoming a new field of
sport. He thumbed the Bible, along with other old stories, with a bored
curiosity, asked a few questions, caught a few replies, here and there,
with a negligent air--"God, some invisible person who created the
world." That was what they said. It was too far off. And not clear. He
was like his mother: God did not interest him. One king more or
less. . . .

But what did interest him was his own existence, and what threatened it,
and what was going to happen to it afterwards. Some dull conversations
with Sylvie that had taken place in his presence had very early aroused
his attention. The shivering pleasure with which these girls spoke of
accidents, sudden deaths, sicknesses, burials, chattering all the
time! . . . Death excited them. The animal instinct of the child bristled
at this word. He would have liked to question his mother about it. But
Annette, who was very healthy, never spoke of death and never thought
about it, at this period of her life. She had plenty of other things to
do! Earning the little boy's living. When, from morning till evening,
she had to think of the here and now, the beyond seemed a luxury. It
only becomes essential when those one loves have passed to the other
side. Her son was here. For the rest, if she lost him neither life nor
death would have had any value for her. She was too passionate to be
satisfied with an immaterial world, a world without a beloved body.

Marc saw her, vigorous, intrepid, busy, heedless of these fears; and he
would have been ashamed to betray his weakness. So he was obliged to
help himself alone. This was not easy. But, as one may suppose, the
child did not embarrass himself with problems of complicated thought. He
reduced the question to its proper dimensions. Death meant the
disappearance of others. Let them disappear: that was their affair. But
was it possible that he might disappear?

Once he overheard Sylvie say, "Oh, well, we're all going to die. . . ."

He asked, "I too?"

"Oh," she laughed, "you have time enough."

"How much?"

"Till you are old."

But he knew very well that they buried children too. Besides, even if he
were old he would still be himself. Some day Marc would die. . . . It
was terrifying. Was there no possible means of escaping it? Somewhere he
must find something like a nail in a wall, something he could cling to,
a hand he could grasp. "I don't want to disappear."

The need of this hand might have led him to God, as it leads so many
others, this outstretched hand that men in their anguish see projected
into the night. But that his mother did not seem to be looking for this
support was enough to drive away his thought. Even while criticising
Annette, he felt the influence of her attitude. That in spite of what
was awaiting her she could remain calm did not reassure him, but it
obliged him to stand as straight as she did. No matter if he was a
nervous, puny little boy, rather stubborn, he was not Annette's child
for nothing. . . . Since she, a woman, is not afraid, I must not be
afraid.

But it was not given to him, as it was given to these grown-ups, not to
think about it. Thought comes and goes; you cannot keep it down,
especially at night, when you cannot sleep. Well, then, he had to think
of it and not be afraid: "What is it like to be dead?"

Naturally he had no means of knowing. Save for a few pictures in the
museum, he had been spared every kind of funereal spectacle. Stiff in
his little bed, he felt the walls of his body. How could he find out? An
imprudent word revealed to him, quite close by, a window that opened on
the abyss into which he burned to look.

One summer day he was dawdling by the window. He caught some flies and
was pulling off their wings. It amused him to see them floundering
about. It did not occur to him that he was doing them any harm; he was
playing a game. They were living toys, and it made no difference if he
broke them. . . . His mother surprised him at this occupation. With the
violence that she was unable to repress, she seized him by the shoulders
and shook him, exclaiming that he was a disgusting little coward.

"What would you say if someone broke your arms? Don't you know that
these creatures suffer just as you do?"

He pretended to laugh, but he was astounded by this. It had not occurred
to him. These creatures were like him! He did not feel the least pity
for them. But he looked at them now with other eyes, troubled,
attentive, hostile. . . . A fallen horse in the street. . . . A howling
dog that had been run over. . . . He watched. . . . The need of knowing
was too strong for his pity to be awakened. . . .

At Easter, as the child, after a gray, damp winter that had been neither
cold nor sunny, had suffered from a mild, but insidious, attack of
influenza that had drained all the color from his cheeks, Annette rented
for a fortnight a room in a farmhouse in the valley of Bièvres. It
contained only one big bed for herself and the child. He did not like
this very much: but she had not asked for his advice. Happily, he was
alone during the day; Annette went back to Paris for her work, and she
left him in the care of the landlady, who paid very little attention to
him. Marc would quickly vanish into the fields. He looked around him,
rummaged about, tried to grasp, from animals and things, some secret
that concerned him; for everything in nature he related to himself.
Wandering through the woods, he heard some boys making a noise in the
distance. He was not looking for the company of other children; he was
not strong enough, and he would have wanted to dominate them. But he was
attracted just the same. He approached and saw that there were four or
five of them forming a circle about a wounded cat. The animal's back was
broken, and the children were amusing themselves poking it, tormenting
it, prodding it with the ends of their sticks. Without stopping to
think, Marc threw himself into the group and struck about him with his
fists. When the surprise was over, the band fell upon him shouting. He
beat a retreat, but he remained a few steps away, hidden behind some
bushes, and stopped his ears. He could not make up his mind to
leave. . . . He returned. The young scoundrels hailed him with jeers,
"Hello, skinny! Are you afraid? Come over here and see him croak!"

He came. He did not want to seem a milksop. Besides, he wanted to see.
The animal, with its eyes glazed and half torn away, was lying on its
side, its hindquarters rigid, already dead; its chest was panting and
its head trying to lift itself while it moaned in distress. It could not
die. The children were convulsed with laughter. Marc looked at it,
petrified. Then suddenly he seized a stone and struck with it furiously
at the creature's head. A raucous cry broke from him. He struck, struck
harder, like a madman. He was still striking when all was over. . . .

The boys looked at him, embarrassed. One of them tried to make a joke.
With blood on the fingers that were still grasping the stone, Marc,
pale, with knitted brows, a wicked look in his eye and a trembling lip,
stared at them. They went away. He heard them laughing and singing in
the distance. Setting his teeth, he walked home, and once at home he
said nothing about it. But at night, in bed, he cried. Annette took him
into her arms. The soft body was trembling.

"What is this wicked dream? My angel, it's nothing."

He was thinking, "I killed it. I know what death is."

The terrifying pride of knowing, of having seen and destroyed! And
another feeling, which he could not comprehend, a feeling of horror and
attraction. . . . The strange bond that unites the slayer and the slain,
the fingers daubed with blood and the broken head. . . . To which
of the two did the blood belong? . . . The animal was no longer
suffering. . . . He still felt its last agonies. . . .

Happily, at this age, the mind cannot cling very long to the same
thought. It would have been dangerous if this had become a fixed idea.
But other images passed and their current refreshed his brain. The idea
remained, however, in the depths of him: its presence betrayed itself,
from time to time, in sombre gleams, bubbles of air that slowly mounted
from the mud of the brook. Under the soft crust of his nature a hard
core was hidden: death, the force that kills. . . . I am killed and I
kill. . . . I will not let myself be killed! Victory to the strongest!
I shall fight!

Pride, an obscure pride that sustains its weakness, like a suit of
armor. Whence did this steel come if not from his mother--the mother for
whom he felt contempt nevertheless because of her effusiveness and
because he wound her around his finger? He was not unaware of it. Even
in the days when his preference had been all for Sylvie, who petted him,
he had recognized Annette's superiority. And he may have imitated her.
But he had to defend himself against the encroachments of this
personality who loved him too much, who got in his way and threatened
his life. He remained in arms against her, and held her at a distance.
She too was the enemy.




XXVI


Sylvie had disappeared from the horizon. When the first months of
resentment were past, she had a certain feeling of remorse as she
thought of the difficulties against which her sister was struggling. She
was waiting for Annette to come and ask her for help: she would not have
refused it, but she was not going to offer it. But rather than ask for
it Annette would have allowed herself to be cut to pieces. The two
sisters were at swords' points. They had seen each other in the street
and avoided each other. But once when Annette had met little Odette with
one of the workers, she had not resisted an affectionate impulse; she
had taken the child in her arms and devoured her with kisses. On her
side, Sylvie, seeing Marc passing one day on his way home from
school--he appeared not to see her--stopped him and said, "Well, don't
you recognize me any more?"

One can imagine the high and mighty manner this little animal assumed as
he said, "Good afternoon, aunt."

All by himself he had made his little reflexions, and, just or unjust,
he had thought it best to identify himself with his mother's cause. "My
country, right or wrong." Sylvie was completely taken aback. She asked,
"Well, are things going as they should?"

He replied coldly, "Everything is going very well."

She watched him as he walked stiffly off, blushing from the effort he
had imposed on himself. He was neat and nicely dressed. . . . The mean
little thing! "Everything is going very well." She could have boxed his
ears.

That Annette could manage her own affairs without her added to Sylvie's
indignation. But she lost no opportunity to hear about her, and she did
not give up the idea of lording it over her some day. If she could not
do so actually, she could at least do so in thought. She was not unaware
of the austere life which her sister led; and she did not understand why
Annette condemned herself to it. She knew her well enough to be aware
that a woman of her type was not made for this moral restraint, this
joyless life. How could she force her nature in this way? What obliged
her to live like a widow? In the absence of a husband she had no lack of
friends who would be happy to lighten her troubles. If she had agreed to
this, Sylvie would perhaps have respected her sister less, but she would
have felt closer to her.

She was not the only one who did not understand Annette. Annette
understood hardly any better herself the reasons for her monastic life,
the fierce dread that led her to draw back, not merely from the
possibility, but from the mere idea of one of those natural pleasures
that no religious or social law could have prevented her from enjoying.
(She did not believe in the morality of the Church, and was she not
mistress of herself?)

"What am I afraid of?"

"Of myself."

Her instinct did not deceive her. For such a nature, filled with
passions, desires, blind sensuality, there is no such thing as innocent
pleasure, there is no play without consequences. The least shock would
deliver her over to forces of which she was no longer the mistress. She
had known long before the moral perturbation caused by her brief,
passing encounters with love. The dangers would be very different to-day!
She would no longer resist. If she gave herself up to pleasure, she
would be utterly swept away by it; she would lose the faith she
needed. . . . What faith? Faith in herself. Pride? No. Faith in that
inexplicable, that divine something that was within her and that she
wanted to transmit unsullied to her son. Such a woman has no choice,
outside the strict discipline of marriage, between an absolute moral
restraint and the frankest abandonment to her passionate instincts.
Everything or nothing. . . . Nothing!

And yet, at moments--in spite of her transports of proud fervor--for
several months this agonizing thought gripped her by the throat:

"I am wasting my life."


Marcel Franck reappeared. Chance threw him in Annette's path; he had
ceased to think of her, but he had not forgotten her. He had had a
number of amorous adventures. They had not left too many marks on his
flexible heart--only a few lines, like fine scratches, about his clever
eyes. But they had left him with a certain fatigue, a good-natured
contempt for his easy conquests and for the conqueror. Scarcely had he
caught sight of Annette than he felt again the old sensation of
freshness and certitude that strangely attracted this blasé sceptic. He
explored her eyes; she too had seen life! In the depths of her glance
there were submerged lights, paths where vessels had been, shipwrecks.
But she seemed calmer and more assured. And he again regretted this
wholesome companion who had already escaped him twice. He was not too
late! Never had they seemed more ready to understand each other.

Without questioning her, he was able to find out in his own circumspect
way about her resources and her occupations. A little later he offered
her some work that was very well remunerated: it consisted in arranging
notes for the catalogue of a private collection of works of art of which
he had charge. A natural excuse for spending a few hours each week with
her. They were able to work and talk at the same time. The intimacy of
the past was soon reëstablished.

Marcel never asked Annette about her life, but he talked about himself.
This was the best way of finding out what she thought. The comic side of
his love affairs offered a variety of subjects in which he delighted. He
enjoyed making Annette his amused confidante, although she scolded him a
little. He was the first to make fun of himself, as he made fun of
everything; and she laughingly listened to his free confessions, for she
was very tolerant where she herself was not concerned. He understood
this to mean something else, and it gave him pleasure to see this gay
intelligence that was so indulgent to life. He no longer found in her
any trace of the moral pedantry, the intolerance of the young girl who
is rather circumscribed by her virtue. While they exchanged their
ironical reflexions, it occurred to him that it would be charming to
form an attachment with this witty friend, to share with her the
adventure of life. How? In any way she chose. Mistress, wife, as she
wished. He had no prejudices. Just as he had attached no importance to
Annette's "blossoming maternity," so he was not concerned with any
encounters she might have had since then. He would never torment her
with any exacting surveillance; he had no curiosity about her secret
life. Let every one have his own secrets and his share of liberty! He
only asked that in their life together she should be laughing and
intelligent, a good comrade of his interests and pleasures. (And in
pleasure he included everything, intelligence, affection and the rest.)

He thought so well of this that he spoke to her about it one evening in
the library when they had finished their work and the sun, through the
trees of an old garden, was gilding the tawny bindings of the books.
Annette was completely surprised. What, he had come back to that; it was
not finished? "Oh, my friend," she said, "how kind you are! But it can't
be thought of any more."

"Oh, yes, it can be thought of," he said. "Why shouldn't it be?"

"Well, really, why not?" Annette said to herself. "I'm glad to talk to
him, to see him. But, no, it's impossible! It cannot even be discussed."

Franck sat facing her on the other side of the table, his blond beard in
the sunlight. With his two arms on the table, he took Annette's hands
and said, "Think about it for five minutes! . . . There . . . I shall
say nothing. . . . We have known each other for how many years? . . .
Twelve? . . . Fifteen? . . . I don't need to explain myself. Everything
I can say you know."

She did not try to disengage her hands; she smiled and looked at him.
Her clear eyes were fixed upon him and yet did not see him because they
had already gone beyond him. She was looking into herself. She thought,
"This is not even to be discussed? Everything should be discussed! Why
is it impossible? He doesn't displease me. He is a handsome fellow,
attractive, good enough, intelligent, agreeable. How easy life would
be! . . . But I could not live his life with him. He is pleasant, and
everything pleases him. But he respects nothing, men, women, love or
Annette. . . ." (It was she who was speaking, for she saw herself from
outside.) "He is certainly not ungenerous so far as delicate attentions
and social respect are concerned. He gives them to me in good measure.
Perhaps he even treats me with special favor. . . . But what a complete
sceptic! Is there anything he takes seriously? He delights in his
absolute lack of faith in human nature. He discounts its weaknesses with
a complacent and sympathetic curiosity. I think he would be disappointed
if the day came when he was obliged to respect it. A good soul! Yes,
life would be easy with him--so easy that I should no longer have any
reason to live."

Beyond that she no longer put her thought into words. But the thought
pursued her, and her mind was made up.

Franck had let her hands drop. He felt that his cause was lost. He got
up and walked to the window, and with his back to the window-pane he
philosophically lighted a cigarette. He was behind Annette; he saw her
motionless, her arms stretched over the table, as if he were still in
front of her. Her beautiful blond neck and her round shoulders. . . .
Lost! . . . For whom, for what, was she keeping herself? Some new
Brissot-foolishness? No, he knew that Annette's heart was free. Well,
then? She was not cold. She needed to love and be loved!

Above all, she needed to believe. . . . To believe in what she did, in
what she wanted, in what she was seeking, in what she was dreaming, to
believe in what she was, in spite of all disgusts and disappointments,
to believe in herself and in life! Franck destroyed respect. Annette
could more easily endure not being respected than losing respect--her
own--for life. For this is the source of energy. And without the
strength to act, Annette would have been nothing. For her the passivity
of happiness was death. The essential distinction between human beings
consists in this, that some are active, the rest passive. And of all the
forms of passivity, the most mortal for Annette would have been that of
a mind tranquilly established, like Franck's, in the comfort of a doubt
that no longer recognized doubt, but voluptuously surrendered itself to
the indifferent stream of nothingness. Suicide! No, she refused that.
Then what did she think her life would be? Perhaps nothing very happy or
very complete. Perhaps it would utterly miss fire. But whether it missed
or not, it would be an effort towards an end. . . . Unknown? Illusory?
Perhaps. No matter! The effort was not illusory. . . . And let me fall
by the wayside so long as it is _my_ wayside!

She became aware of the long silence and realized that Franck was no
longer there. She turned, saw him, smiled, rose and said, "Forgive me,
my friend! Let us remain as we are. It is so good to be friends!"

"And not better otherwise?"

She shook her head. "No!"

"Well," he said, "here I am blackballed at the third examination!"

She laughed and, going to him, said mischievously: "Would you like at
least to have what I refused you at the second examination?" And putting
her arm about his neck she kissed him. An affectionate kiss. But there
was no mistaking it--the kiss of a friend.

Franck was not deceived by it. "Well," he said, "let me hope that in
twenty years I shall be admitted."

"No," said Annette, laughing. "There's an age-limit! Marry, my friend.
You have only to choose. All the women are waiting for you."

"But not you."

"I'm going to remain a bachelor-girl."

"You'll see, you'll see. For your punishment you will marry when you are
over fifty."

"_Frère, il faut mourir._' Before then."

"Until then, the life of a nun."

"You don't know what delights it has."




XXVII


Annette was bragging. It was not all delightful. She often felt cramped
in her cloistered life. She was the kind of nun who would not have found
it too much to have an abbey to manage and a God to love. The abbey was
reduced to a fifth-floor apartment and God to her child. This was very
little and yet it was immense. It was not what she was meant for, but
she made a great deal of it. All her dreams turned round it, and with
this sort of treasure she was well provided. If her everyday life was
apparently puritanical and poor, she had her revenge in the life of her
imagination. There, soundlessly and without friction, the eternal
"enchantment" continued to flow.

But how enter these retreats of the soul? The inner dream is not woven
of words. And to make oneself understand, to understand oneself, one
must use words. . . . That heavy, sticky paste which dries on the tips
of the fingers! To understand herself, Annette sometimes felt the need
of securing her dreams by telling them over to herself in a soft voice.
But these recitals were not faithful transcriptions--scarcely
transmutations; they took the place of the dreams without really
resembling them. Lacking the power to seize the spirit in its flight,
the brain makes up stories for itself that keep it busy and deceive it
about the great fairyland, the inner drama.

An immense liquid plain, a flooded valley brimming over, a shoreless
river of fire, water and clouds. All the elements were still mingled
there, a thousand currents as confused as hair on a head; but there was
a force that curled these long dark locks that were spangled with
gleaming lights. It was the countless-faceted Spirit and its troop of
dreams, led by the silent shepherd to the shadowy pastures of Hope:
Desire, the king of the worlds. A resistless gravitation drove them to
the greedy slope, now gentle, now abrupt, that drew them down.

Annette felt the enchanted river flowing; she rolled and unrolled on her
distaff the skein of the entwined currents; she abandoned herself to it
and played with the feline force that carried her on. . . . But when the
reasoning powers were suddenly aroused and wished to control the play,
they found that Annette, torn from her dream, was merely seeking for
another that she might enter. So she soberly invented one out of the
elements of her disciplined days--her memories, figures from the past,
the romance of the life she had already lived or was still to live
perhaps. . . . And Annette tried to make herself believe that the great
dream was pursuing her. She knew it had fled, but she was not troubled.
Like the bridegroom in the Gospel, it would return at an hour that no
man knew.

How many feminine souls there are whose hidden genius expresses itself
like hers in this inner stream! If one could read below the surface one
would often find there dark passions, ecstasies, visions of the abyss.
Yet all one sees is the correct middle-class woman, tranquilly going on
from day to day, attending to her affairs, coolly and sensibly, mistress
of herself and sometimes even, by reaction, assuming as Annette did
before her pupils and her son (though he was never deceived), an almost
excessive appearance of cold, moralistic reasonableness.

No, she did not deceive the child. He had sharp eyes. He was able to
read between the lines. He too knew what dreams were. Every day he had
hours when he was like a king, entirely alone with his dreams, alone in
the apartment. Annette, who was always imprudent, carelessly left at the
disposal of the child a quantity of books, debris from the shipwreck of
her library and that of the grandfather. They were of every sort. For
several years she had not had the leisure to hunt through them. The
little boy took charge of that. Every day, on his return from school,
when his mother was not there, he would set out on the chase. He read at
haphazard. Quite early he had learned to read quickly, very quickly; he
galloped down the slope of the pages, pursuing his quarry. His
school-work suffered from this; he was classed as a poor,
scatter-brained student who never knew his lessons and skimped his
duties. The teacher would have been very much surprised if the little
poacher had recited what his eyes had caught in his game-preserve. He
had even caught the "classics" in his snare, and what a different scent
they had! Everything he gathered freely in this way, in the unknown, had
for him the taste of beautiful forbidden fruit. There was nothing that
could soil him yet in these encounters, nothing that could even
enlighten him too brutally. His eyes passed merrily round dangerous
corners without even seeing the carnal bait in the trap. But, happy and
carefree, he felt the breath of warm life in his face; in this forest of
books his nostrils caught the adventure and the eternal struggle of
love.

Love, what is love for a child of ten? All the happiness one does not
possess, that one will possess--that one is going to seize. . . . What
will it look like? With a few scraps of what he has seen and heard, he
tries to construct its image. He sees nothing. He sees everything. He
desires everything. To possess everything. To love everything. (To be
loved! For him that is the real meaning of love. . . . "I love myself. I
must be loved. . . . But by whom?") His memories give him no aid. They
are too close for him to be able to see them well. At his age there is
no past, or so little of a past. The present is the theme with its
thousand variations.

The present? The child lifts its eyes and sees its mother. About the
round table, under the warm light of the oil lamp, they are sitting
together. Evening, after dinner. Marc is studying--supposed to be
studying--his lessons for to-morrow; Annette is mending a dress. Neither
of them is thinking of what he is doing. They are trusting to their
machines, their willing servants. The dream rolls on. Annette follows
the current. The child observes her as she dreams. . . . That is a more
interesting spectacle than the lessons his lips are repeating.

Marc seemed never to have noticed what was going on about him during
these years; he could not have explained any of his mother's
occupations. Yet nothing had escaped him. Julien's love. Her love for
Julien. He had been obscurely aware of it. And a jealousy of which he
was not conscious made him rejoice, like a little cannibal who dances
about the stake, in the disastrous climax. His mother remained his. His
property! Did he care so much about her? He had only appreciated her
when someone else had wanted her. He looked at her--those eyes, that
mouth, those hands. In the manner of children who lose themselves in a
detail as in a world--and they are not always wrong--he studied each of
her features. One shadow of an eyelid, the curling of a lip, are
mysterious and vast landscapes. They fascinate the mind of the child.
His glance hovered like a bee up and down the half-open mouth. . . . The
red door. . . . It plunged into the depths, it emerged again. Searching
so closely, he forgot what he was looking at, the woman herself. . . .
A stupor full of affection. . . . He roused himself to remember (ugh)
to-morrow's lesson, a boy he disliked, a bad mark he had hidden from his
mother. . . . And then his attention was caught again by the gleam of
the lamp in the shadow of the room, by the silence of the chamber amid
the rumbling of Paris--that sense of a little island, of a ship at sea,
and the expectation of shore, of what he was going to find, what he was
going to carry away on the ship that would be full of his treasures, his
hopes, the spoils of life he was going to capture. Among these he counted
his mother, her beautiful blond hair and her arched eyebrows. . . . The
little Viking! How much he suddenly loved her! With the ardor of
a lover, but one who had kept the gift of divine ignorance! And at
night, lying awake, he listened to her breathing. . . . All this
mysterious life troubled him, absorbed him. . . .

So they both dreamed; but she was in mid-ocean and accustomed to the
long voyage. He was just setting out, and everything was a discovery for
him. And as everything was new to him, he saw with a keener eye, and
often he saw further. He had moments of astonishing seriousness. They
did not last. He was like an animal: suddenly this penetrating glance
would waver. He would not be there any more! But in the moments when he
fastened on his comrade-mother his young new force of attention and
love, shut up with her in a burning silence, his whole being was
impregnated with the odor of this soul: he divined without comprehending
them her faintest tremors, and he touched as if by lightning the secrets
of her heart.

Soon he would lose the key. He would no longer be interested. He would
no longer be able to see. There were two beings in him: the light from
within and the shadow from without. As the body of the child develops,
the shadow increases with it and covers the light. As he climbs, he
turns his back on the sun; he seems most a child when he is least one;
and when he is grown-up, his view is more limited. For the moment Marc
still enjoyed a magic clairvoyance of which he was completely unaware.
Never had he been closer to Annette; not for many years would he be so
close again.

Towards the end of this period the attraction she had for him became
stronger than his distrust. He no longer resisted the impulse that flung
him suddenly, face, eyes and mouth, against his mother's breast. Annette
discovered with rapture that her child loved her. She had given up hope
of this.

Several months passed, as delicious as a mutual first love. The
honeymoon of the child and the mother. The ravishing purity of this
love, carnal as all love is, but carnal without sin. A living rose.




XXVIII


It passes. It passes, the matchless hour. They pass, these years of
close intimacy, severe discipline, a crowded life. These rich years.
Annette, with all her strength intact, unimpaired. The child with all
the flower of his little universe.

But a mere vibration of the air will be enough to throw this harmony of
souls into confusion. Is the door shut?




XXIX


One Sunday morning Annette was at home alone. Marc was playing ball with
a friend in the Luxembourg Gardens. Annette was doing nothing; she
enjoyed being able to rest without talking, without moving, sitting in
her armchair on this day of rest; the flood of her thoughts followed its
meandering course. A little stiff with weariness, she let herself float
along. Someone knocked. She hesitated to open the door. Disturb this
hour of silence? . . . She did not move. The knock came again; there was
an insistent ring. She rose regretfully. She opened the door. . . .
Sylvie! For months they had not seen each other. . . . Annette's first
movement was one of joy, and Sylvie's face responded to her cordial
expression. Then the memory of their grievances, their strained
relations returned, and they were embarrassed. They exchanged polite
questions, asked about each other's health. They spoke to each other
without any formality, and in both their questions and their replies the
forms of their language were familiar, but their hearts remained cold.
Annette was thinking, "What has she come for?" And Sylvie, if she knew,
did not seem to be in any hurry to say. All the time, while speaking of
this and that, she showed that she was preoccupied with some thought she
was trying to defer, but which at last came out. "Annette," she said
suddenly, "let's put an end to this! There have been mistakes on both
sides."

Annette, in her pride, would not admit that there were any on hers.
Strong, too strong, in her right, and not forgetting the injustice that
had been done her, she said, "There were none on my side."

Sylvie did not like to go halfway and have no one come to meet her. In a
tone of vexation she said, "When you have made mistakes, you should at
least have the courage to recognize them."

"I recognize yours," said Annette, obstinately.

Sylvie was offended and she poured out all her old accumulated
reproaches. Annette replied haughtily. They were on the point of saying
the harshest things to each other. Sylvie impatiently rose to leave, but
she sat down again, saying, "Stupid thing! Nothing will ever make her
admit that she was wrong."

"When it isn't true," said Annette, not budging an inch.

"At least, for politeness' sake, don't make me the only one who has done
wrong!"

They laughed.

They looked at each other now with softened, twinkling eyes. Sylvie made
a wry face at Annette. Annette's eyes were full of amusement. But they
did not lay down their arms.

"Vixen!" said Sylvie.

"I don't admit it," said Annette. "It was you who--"

"Well, let's not begin again. Listen, I am frank; wrong or right, I
would not have come back here just for myself. I can't forget either--"

In spite of what she had just said, she had again begun to remember
jealously, half in fun, half seriously, with a mixture of bitterness and
humor, that Annette had tried to turn her husband's head. Annette
shrugged her shoulders.

"Well," Sylvie ended by saying, "you may be sure that if it had been
only on my own account I should not have come!"

Annette studied her curiously. Her sister said, "It was Odette who sent
me."

"Odette?"

"Yes. She asked why we never saw Aunt Annette any longer."

"Really? She thought of me?" said Annette, astonished. "Who reminded her
of me?"

"I don't know. She saw your photograph in my room. And then you must
have made an impression on her when she met you, I don't know where, on
the street, or in your house perhaps. . . . Intriguer! Looking as if you
weren't interested, with that secretive manner of yours! You know very
well you carry away people's hearts."

(She was only half joking.)

Annette remembered the tender little body she had caught up as she
passed, on that chance encounter, and lifted in her arms, the little
dewy mouth that clung to her cheek.

"Well," Sylvie went on, "I told her that we had quarrelled. She asked
why. I told her to hold her tongue. This morning, in bed, when I came in
to kiss her, she said to me, 'Mamma, I wish you wouldn't be angry with
Aunt Annette.' I said, 'Let me alone.' But she was unhappy. So I kissed
her and said, 'Do you care as much as all that for your aunt? What
difference can it make to you? What an idea! Well, if you care so much
about it, I shan't be angry any more.' She clapped her hands and said,
When will she come?' 'When she wishes.' 'No, I want you to go straight
away now and tell her to come.' So I started out. The little wretch! She
does what she likes with me. . . . Now you must come. We are expecting
you for dinner."

Annette, with lowered eyes, said neither yes nor no. Sylvie was
indignant: "I hope very much you won't have the heart to make me beg
you."

"No," said Annette, lifting radiant eyes that were filled with tears.

They kissed each other passionately, half lovingly, half angrily. Sylvie
bit Annette's ear. Annette cried out, "So you are biting now! Suppose it
were I whom you call crazy. But it's you. Are you angry?"

"Yes, I am," said Sylvie. "How can you expect me not to hate you? You
steal from me everything I have, my husband, my daughter. . . ."

Annette burst out laughing. "Keep your husband. He means nothing to me."

"Nor to me either," said Sylvie. "But he is mine. I forbid anyone to
touch him."

"Why not put a sign on him?"

"You are the one I should like to put it on, you ugly old thing! . . .
What is it about you that attracts them? They all fall in love with
you."

"Oh, no."

"Yes, they do. All of them, Odette, that silly Leopold. . . . Other
people. . . . Everybody. . . . And I too! I detest you! I wish I could
get rid of you. But it can't be done. There's no way of shaking you
off!"

They held each other's hands and laughed as they looked at each other,
this time as sisters.

"You silly old thing!"

"You don't realize what a true word that is!"

It was a fact. They had both aged, and they both noticed it. Sylvie
stealthily exhibited a false tooth which she had had made without saying
anything about it. And Annette had a lock of white hair on her temple.
But she did not hide this.

"You poseur!" said Sylvie.

So they were on the best of terms again, just as in the old days. And to
think that without the little girl they would never have seen each other
again!

That evening Annette, with Marc, went to dinner. Odette had hidden
herself: they could not find her. Annette set about looking for her; she
discovered her behind a big curtain. Stooping to pick her up, as she
crouched on her heels, calling her pet names, she held out her arms to
the child. The little girl turned her head to one side, unwilling to
look at her; then there was an explosion; she threw herself on Annette's
neck. At table, where she had the happiness to be placed beside her
aunt, she remained tongue-tied: she was overcome by what had happened.
At the very end she took an interest in the dessert. They drank to their
restored friendship, and as a joke Leopold offered a toast to the future
marriage of Marc and Odette. Marc was annoyed by this; his ambitions
were loftier. But Odette took it seriously. After dinner the two
children tried to play together, but they did not understand each other.
Marc was contemptuous, Odette was mortified. The parents, as they
talked, heard slaps and tears. They separated the combatants. Both were
sulking. Odette was unnerved by the emotions of the day. She had to go
to bed, and she crossly refused to do so. But Annette suggested carrying
her in her arms, and the child allowed herself to be taken. Annette
undressed her and put her in bed, kissing her plump little legs. Odette
was in ecstasy. Annette stayed by her till she was asleep--which was not
long. Then, finding Marc on Sylvie's knees, she said to her sister, "How
would you like to make an exchange of the children?"

"All right!" said Sylvie.

In the bottom of their hearts neither of them would have exchanged. Marc
might have suited Sylvie better, and Odette might have suited Annette.
But neither would have been "her own."

The children were much more ready to accommodate themselves to an
exchange. They had heard it spoken of jokingly and they clamored for it.
To please them it was arranged. On Saturday evening the exchange took
place between the two mothers. Odette spent Saturday night and all day
Sunday at Annette's, and Marc at Sylvie's; on Sunday evening they were
restored to their rightful owners. In the interregnum they were
scandalously spoiled, and naturally enough they returned home grumbling.
Their tenderest affections they had reserved for the one who was not
their everyday mother.

Odette enchanted Annette by her fondling ways, her little confidences,
her endless prattle. Annette had been deprived of this. Marc had the
passionate temperament of his mother, but he knew better how to repress
it; he did not like to surrender himself, especially to those who were
closest to him, for they abused his confidence. With strangers it was
less dangerous, for they misunderstood you anyway. Odette, like Sylvie,
had endearing, expansive ways, but she had a very loving heart; she said
out loud what Annette longed to hear. When the sly little creature
perceived this, she doubled the dose; she awakened the echo of what
Annette had thought as a child. At least, Annette imagined this, and she
loved her partly because of this suggestion. Listening to her, she
dreamed of her own early years which she unconsciously falsified, for
she threw into them the burning clearness of her thoughts of to-day.

These blessed Sunday mornings! The little girl lay in the big bed. (It
was a holiday for her to spend the night nestling in the arms of her
aunt, who received the thumps from her feet without flinching and was
afraid to breathe lest she should awaken her.) She watched Annette
dressing; she chattered like a sparrow. She was sole mistress of the
bed, and, having affirmed her possession of it, she stretched across it
and carried on while her aunt's back was turned. But Annette, arranging
her hair before the mirror, laughed as she saw in its depths the little
bare legs in the air and the rough brown head on the pillow. This
attitude did not prevent Odette from following each of her gestures and
making comic observations on her toilet. Amid her prattle the child made
grave reflexions that were most unexpected and irrelevant and made
Annette prick up her ears: "What did you say? Say it again."

She could not remember. . . . So she made up something else, not as good
as the first thing she had said. Or, more often, she was seized with a
sudden transport of affection.

"Aunt Annette! Aunt Annette!"

"Yes, what is it?"

"I love you. . . . Heavens and earth, how I love you!"

Annette laughed at the energy she put into it.

"Impossible!"

"Oh, I love you madly!"

(For, sincere as she was, she was also a born actress.)

"Nonsense! I like it better without the madness."

"Aunt Annette, I want to hug you!"

"Just a minute."

"Right away. I want to. Come here, come here!"

"Yes."

She calmly finished combing her hair.

Odette turned over in bed in a pet, throwing the bedclothes in all
directions.

"Ah, that woman has no heart."

Annette burst out laughing, dropped her comb, ran to the bed.

"Little masquerader, where did you pick that up?"

Odette hugged her furiously.

"Come, come, you're suffocating me. See, you've pulled my hair down
again. I shall never manage to get dressed to-day. You monster, I don't
want to have anything more to do with you!"

The little girl's voice became anxious; she was on the point of crying.

"Aunt Annette! Love me! . . . I want you to love me! I implore you to
love me!"

Annette pressed her in her arms.

"Ah," said Odette, with a pathetic accent, "I would give my blood for
you!" (A phrase from some newspaper serial she had heard read in the
workroom.)

When Marc was a witness of these effusions, he pouted disdainfully; and,
with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised, he marched off,
assuming a superior air. He despised this babbling, this feminine
sentimentality that poured everything out. As he declared to one of his
small friends, "These women are silly."

At bottom, he was annoyed by the signs of affection that his mother
lavished on Odette. When he was the object of them, he repulsed them;
but it did not please him to have someone else get the benefit of them.

Of course, he had his aunt, and with her he could take his revenge. In
fact, he did take it. To punish his mother's ingratitude he was ten
times more lovable with Sylvie than Annette had ever seen him. But it
must be admitted that, although Sylvie petted him, he was disappointed.
Sylvie treated him as a child, and he could not endure it. He did not
like her to imagine that she gave him pleasure by taking him every
Sunday to the cake-shop. He was certainly not indifferent to the cake,
but he did not like to have anyone insult him by believing that he
attached any importance to it. Besides, he felt too much that his aunt
regarded him as a personage of no importance: she was entirely
unreserved with him, and, while Marc's curiosity was satisfied, his
self-esteem was not. For he noticed the difference. It would have
pleased him if Sylvie had taken him into her private life, not as a boy,
but as a real man. In short, although he would not have admitted it to
himself, he lost his illusions when he saw Sylvie at close range. The
careless girl never suspected for a moment what was going on in the pure
and troubled brain of the ten-year-old boy, the fabulous image he had
manufactured of woman, and the shock of his first discoveries. Sylvie
took no more account of her acts and her talk in his presence than she
would have done before some pet animal. (We have no evidence, after all,
that a pet animal is not often shocked.) Through an instinct of defence
against the disillusionments which the damaging of his idol caused him,
there unfortunately developed in him certain precocious ideas that were
quite naïvely cynical, ideas upon which it is better not to dwell. He
tried to appear (in his own eyes; for the present he did not think of
appearing so in the eyes of others) a blasé man. But with all the blind
senses of an eager and innocent child, he uneasily breathed in the
enigmatical charm, the animality, of the feminine being. He felt for
woman a disgusted attraction.

Attraction. Repulsion. Every real man knows them. At this period of life
the dominating sentiment of the two in Marc was repulsion. But even this
repulsion had a sharp savor that made the other sentiments and the
children of his own age seem tasteless to him. He despised Odette and
regarded this little girl as beneath his dignity.

She was a very little girl in reality, and yet, strangely, a woman. In
spite of the theories of those illustrious pedagogues who divide
childhood into chambered compartments, one for each faculty, everything
already exists in the young child from its earliest infancy, everything
that one is and will be, the double Being of the present and the future
(to say nothing of the immense, impenetrable past that determines both).
Only, to catch a glimpse of it, one must have one's eye open. In the
half-light of dawn it appears only in gleams.

These gleams were more frequent in Odette than in most children. A
precocious fruit. Very healthy physically, she carried within her a
little world of passions that were too great for her. Whence had they
come? From some region that lay behind Annette and Sylvie? Annette was
reminded of herself at Odette's age. But she was mistaken; she had been
much less precocious; and when, observing Odette, she recalled the
forgotten passions of her own childhood, she antedated, in all good
faith, the feelings that belonged to her fourteenth and fifteenth years.

Odette was an aviary, filled with a sound of restless wings. Little
invisible loves passed through her; their flight left lights and shadows
behind it. She was placid and hysterical by turns; without any reason
she would begin to sob, then burst out laughing; then she would have a
feeling of lassitude, of indifference to everything; then again, no one
knew why, at a word, at a gesture, interpreted to suit herself, she
would be happy again, so happy! . . . Overwhelmed with happiness, drunk
with it, like a thrush that is gorged with grapes, she would talk, she
would talk. And then, in the twinkling of an eye, she would vanish; no
one knew what had become of her; they would find her again in a corner
of the store-room, hiding, enjoying the inexplicable happiness she
hardly understood herself. This flock of birds came and went in her
soul; they succeeded one another in a flash.

One never knows how far children are entirely sincere in their emotions:
as they come to them from far away, much further back than themselves,
they are at first astonished to witness them, and they become actors who
play with them experimentally. This power of unconsciously dividing
their emotions is an intuitive process of self-preservation, permitting
them to carry a burden which, without this, would crush their frail
shoulders.

Odette felt, for this person or that, and sometimes for nobody,
transports of passion to which she spontaneously gave a theatrical
expression, not always out loud, but in a whispered monologue for her
own relief; in simulating the feeling she deadened the shock. These
impulses were directed most frequently towards Annette or Marc--towards
the two together; and she often said Annette when she meant Marc,
because Marc made fun of her, Marc despised her, and she hated him. Then
she would have a paroxysm of humiliated and jealous suffering, a desire
for vengeance. . . . Why? What harm could she do him? The worst harm of
all. How could she reach him? . . . Alas, she had only the claws of a
child. It was exasperating. Since she could do nothing (for the moment)
she would pretend to be indifferent. But it was hard to be able to do
nothing; and it was hard also to be indifferent when one always had a
desire to laugh or weep. Such a constraint was against nature: Odette
was in despair over it. She was prostrated till suddenly a peremptory
reawakening of her childish gaiety and the need of movement threw her
back again into her play.

Annette watched, divined, sometimes imagined, these miniature despairs,
and she pityingly remembered her own. How she too had consumed herself
with the fever of loving, desiring, tormenting herself, and for whom,
for what? What purpose could this all serve? It was so out of proportion
with the object, which was limited by the nature of things! What a
squanderer of energy! And what a force of love she spent at random! Some
people had too much, others not enough. Annette, like Odette, was one of
those who had too much, and her son was one of those who did not have
enough. He was the lucky one, poor little fellow!

He was not so poor! The life of his affections was not less rich than
Odette's, nor were the struggles of his mind less lively--though he said
nothing about them. Nor were his feelings less violent, though their
ardor tended in another direction. Yes, he was indifferent to the things
that occupied these women. His spirit was agitated, however, by very
different passions. Intellectually richer and much less absorbed by the
more backward life of his senses, this little man, who felt the obscure
flood of desire rising in him, was turning his energies, like a true
man, towards action and domination. He dreamed of conquests beside which
that of a feminine heart would have seemed to him very paltry--if at
this time of his childhood he had thought of such a thing. The boys of
the preceding generations had dreamed of soldiers, savages, pirates,
Napoleon, adventures on the sea. Marc dreamed of aeroplanes, automobiles
and wireless. About him the thought of the world danced a giddy round; a
delirious movement made the planet vibrate; everything was running and
flying, cleaving the air and the waters, revolving, whirling. A magic of
mad invention was transmuting the elements. No more limits to power;
consequently, no more to the will. Space and time--pass the juggler's
ball!--were volatilized, spirited away by the swiftness of things. They
did not count any more. And men still less. What counted was will,
limitless will. Marc scarcely knew the rudiments of modern science. He
read, without understanding it, a scientific review to which his mother
subscribed; but without realizing it he had been bathed from his birth
in the miracles of science. Annette did not perceive this, for she had
learned science in the scholastic way; she had not breathed it in as a
living thing. She saw the figures written in chalk and the numbers on
the blackboard, the arguments. Marc's imagination was filled with
fabulous forces. Just because he was not embarrassed by his reason he
was carried away by a poetic enthusiasm as vague and ardent as that
which filled the sails of the Argonauts. He dreamed of extraordinary
exploits: piercing the globe with a tunnel from one side to the other,
rising without motor-power into the air, connecting Mars with the earth,
pressing a button and jumping over to Germany--or some other country (he
had no particular preference). With such mysterious words as volts,
amperes, radium, carburator, which he used at random, very coolly, he
conjured up the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. How the devil
could his mind stoop from such a height to a silly little girl?

But body and mind are twin brothers that do not keep step. In their
double growth there is always one of the two--it is not always the same
one--that loiters on the road while the other gallops on ahead. Marc's
body remained that of a child; and while the spirit roamed about aloft a
cord held him by the foot and brought him down again where it was
pleasant to amuse himself. Then, for want of anything better, he would
condescend to play--he would even play with his whole heart, without
condescension, with the silly little girl. These were happy interludes.

They did not last long. There were too many inequalities between the two
children, not only in their age, nor because she was a girl. Their
temperaments were too different. Odette, who was not pretty, and rather
suggested her father, though she had Annette's eyes and a chubby,
well-rounded figure, with her flattish nose, was a robust, healthy child
whose warmth of feeling did not disturb her physical equilibrium but
seemed the natural overflow of an abounding vitality. She had escaped
all the little ailments of childhood. Marc, on the contrary, had been
stamped by the illness of his first year; and although later the
soundness of his constitution was to come out on top, this struggle of
the organism, in which he was often beaten, had spoiled part of his
childhood. He had remained susceptible to the least chill and was often
checked by slight returns of bronchitis or fever. His self-respect
suffered from this, for all his instincts were those of pride and
strength.

Towards the end of 1911, one year after the reconciliation of the two
sisters, Marc had one of those winter illnesses, complicated by
influenza, that caused a passing anxiety. Odette went to see him when he
was in bed. She had been forbidden to do so for fear of infection, but
she had found a way of slipping into the room one evening when the two
mothers were busy in the next room. She was full of sympathy, and Marc,
who was a little feverish, let himself go as he had never done before.
He was restless.

"What are they saying, Odette?" (He imagined they were hiding from him
the gravity of his illness.)

"I don't know. They don't say anything."

"What does the doctor say?"

"He says it isn't anything."

He was somewhat relieved, but he was still suspicious.

"Is that true? No, it isn't true. They're concealing it from me. . . . I
know very well what I've got."

"What have you got?"

He was silent.

"Marc, what have you got?"

He retreated into a proud and hostile silence. Odette was in agony. She
ended by believing that he was very ill, and her anxiety communicated
itself to him. With that passionate exaggeration of hers which assumed
melodramatic forms she clasped her hands.

"Oh, Marc, I implore you, don't be so ill. I don't want you to die."

Nor had he the least desire to do so. He liked to be condoled with, but
he had not wanted as much as all this! Hearing uttered what he feared
himself, he was frozen with fright. He did not want to show this, but he
did show it.

"You see, you're hiding it from me. You know. I am very ill."

"No, no, I don't want it to be so. I don't know. I don't want you to be
very ill. . . . Oh, Marc, don't die! If you die, I want to die with
you!"

She flung herself on his neck, weeping. He was very much moved, and he
too wept; he did not know whether it was because of her or himself. At
the sound the mothers ran in scolding and separating them. They felt
very close together at that moment.

By the following morning, however, Marc had thought things over. He was
no longer anxious; he was even annoyed--for to drive away his fears
they had made fun of him--to have shown himself a coward; he blamed
Odette for having led him, by her stupid anxiety, into betraying these
signs of weakness. And then he heard her laughing and saw her passing
his door, overflowing with health. He was angry with her because of this
health. She had too much of it. He envied her and he was humiliated.

After he was well again, he continued for a long time to feel mortified
for having betrayed himself before his cousin's eyes. He was the more so
because he had really been afraid and she had seen it. Once her emotion
had passed, Odette maliciously remembered it all. She had seen him off
his high horse, a timid little boy. She only liked him better for this.
But he could not forgive her.




XXX


Marc was well again. Odette was flourishing. The previous summer she had
proudly made her first communion. (It was about this date that the
Church, like Joconda in search of innocence, had sniffed with its great
distrustful nose the air of the time and made up its mind that there was
no such thing as real innocence after the age of seven.) Odette
considered herself a woman and tried to appear one by toning down her
impetuosity, the impetuosity of a young tethered goat--though at any
moment, with a caper, the little horned creature would escape from one's
hands. . . . Sylvie was happy; her business was going well. And Annette,
who found in her sister's household nourishment for the need of
affection which her age and her ordeal had somewhat tempered, seemed to
have reached a haven of peace. Everything was hopeful.

One warm afternoon, between three and four o'clock, at the end of
October, one of those radiant days when the unveiled light seems as
naked as the stripped trees, the windows were open to let in the rays of
an autumn sun as mild and golden as honey. It was the day after Odette's
eighth birthday. Annette was at Sylvie's. In the room over the court,
they were looking out together and examining materials, gossiping and
gravely occupied with their investigation. Odette was on the other side
of the passage, in the room at the end that overlooked the street. Just
a few minutes before, the inquisitive child had peeped through the
half-open door to see what they were doing. They had pretended to scold
her and had sent her back again to finish a little piece of work before
they all had tea together. Marc was at school; they were expecting him
home again in half an hour.

The moments were flowing along smoothly, without a ripple, without a
wave, unhastingly, as if they were to flow this way for the rest of
their lives. They felt so calm that they did not even think of enjoying
it. It was natural! In the ivy on the wall of the court the happy
sparrows were chirping. The last flies of autumn were humming their
content, warming their torpid wings in the lingering rays of
sunlight. . . .

They heard nothing, nothing. Yet they both became silent at the same
moment, as if the fragile thread on which their happiness was suspended
had broken.

There was a ring at the door.

"Marc, so soon? No, it's too soon."

A ring. Someone was knocking again. What a hurry some people are in!
We're coming!

Sylvie went and opened the door, and Annette followed her a few steps
behind.

At the door the concierge, out of breath, was shouting and waving her
arms. At first they did not understand.

"Madame doesn't know . . . the terrible thing that's happened. The
little girl . . ."

"Who?"

"Mademoiselle Odette. . . . That poor little darling."

"What? What?"

"She's fallen."

"Fallen!"

"She's down below."

Sylvie screamed. She pushed the concierge aside and dashed downstairs.
Annette would have followed her, but her legs failed her; she had to
wait till her heart would allow her to walk. She was still upstairs,
leaning over the baluster, when from the street the wild cries of Sylvie
came to her.

What had happened? Probably Odette, who did not like to work and was
dawdling and rummaging about, had leaned out of the window to see if
Marc was coming and had fallen. The poor little thing had not even had
the time to understand. . . . When Annette, tottering, at last reached
the street, she saw a great crowd gathered. Sylvie, like a madwoman, was
holding in her arms the little broken body, with its legs and head
hanging like a slaughtered lamb. The brown hair veiled the fractured
skull; nothing was to be seen but a little blood at the nose. The eyes
were still open and seemed to be asking. Death had replied.

Annette would have thrown herself on the ground, screaming with horror,
if Sylvie's wild fury had not absorbed all the misery of the world. She
had fallen on her knees on the sidewalk, almost lying on the child, whom
she lifted up and shook with mad cries. She called to her, she called to
her, she denounced . . . Whom? What? Heaven, the earth. . . . She was
foaming with despair and hatred.

For the first time Annette saw in her sister the frantic passions that
Sylvie bore without knowing it in the depths of her nature, passions
that her life till then had spared her from expressing. And she
recognized them as those of her own blood.

The wildness of this grief prevented her from yielding to her own. She
was obliged, by reaction, to remain strong and calm, and she did so. She
took Sylvie by the shoulders. The screaming woman struggled with her;
but Annette, leaning over her, lifted her up; and Sylvie, submitting to
this commanding gentleness, became silent, raised her head, saw the
circle about her, threw a fierce glance towards it and, with the child
in her arms, reentered the house without a word.

She had crossed the threshold. Annette was going in after her when she
saw Marc at the corner of the street on his way home; and, in spite of
her lacerated love for the poor little girl, her heart bounded in her
breast. What a joy that it wasn't he!

She ran to Marc to prevent him from seeing. At her first words, Marc
turned pale and clenched his teeth. She led him away from the scene; she
told him that Odette was seriously hurt. But he, with the distrustful
intuition of a child, knew that she was dead; and with his clenched
fists he tried to drive the terrible thought away. In spite of his
agitation, he was still thinking of himself, his own attitude and the
people who were passing. He noticed that his mother was walking
bareheaded beside him in the street and that people were looking at
them, and this embarrassed him. His annoyance contributed to calm him.
When they had gone halfway, Annette, seeing that he was steadier, told
him to go home alone. She returned hastily to Sylvie. She found her
prostrated, sitting in a state of collapse in a corner, near the bed of
the little dead girl, unable to hear or understand, breathing noisily
like a wounded animal. Her workers were busy with the child. Annette
bathed the little body, dressed it again in white linen, laid it back in
the bed, just as on those faraway evenings--yesterday--eternally far
away, when she had listened to the whispered confidences of the child.
When this was finished, she went over to Sylvie and took her hand. Moist
and cold, the hand lay limply in hers. Annette pressed these fingers
from which the life seemed to have withdrawn, but she did not have the
courage to whisper a tender word, for it could not have penetrated
through the wall of despair. Nothing but the sisterly contact of their
bodies could make her pity slowly find its way through. She wrapped her
arms about her, her forehead resting on Sylvie's cheek; and her tears
dropped on her sister's neck as if to melt the ice that enveloped her
heart. Sylvie was mute and did not stir; but her fingers were feebly
beginning to respond to the sisterly hand when her husband arrived.
Annette went away.

She returned to Marc and told him the truth. It was not news to him. He
did not seem very much moved; he was afraid of his emotion and was
anxious to keep his air of assurance. He should not have been obliged to
speak, for as soon as he opened his mouth his voice began to tremble; he
ran and hid himself in his room to cry. Annette perceived with a
mother's insight the anguish of this childish heart in its first
encounter with death, and she avoided speaking of the redoubtable
subject; but she took him on her knees as she had done when he was a
baby. And he, with no thought of complaining at being treated as a baby,
took refuge in the warmth of her breast. After they had calmed each
other, lulling their fear to sleep and feeling that there were two of
them to protect each other, she put him to bed and begged him to be a
brave little man, not to be frightened if she had to go out and leave
him alone for a part of the night. He understood and promised.

She set out through the dark for the house of tragedy. She wanted to
watch by the dead child. Sylvie had emerged from her dejected
insensibility. She had not returned to her first furious despair, but
the spectacle was not less painful. Her mind was a little unbalanced.
Annette saw a smile on her lips. Sylvie raised her eyes as she heard her
coming in, looked at her, went to her and said, "She is sleeping."

She took her hand and drew her over to the bed. "See how beautiful she
is!"

Her face lighted up, but Annette saw a shadow of anxiety passing over
her brow; and when, after a moment, Sylvie repeated in an undertone,
"She is sleeping well, isn't she?" Annette met the feverish glance that
was waiting for her to say, "She is sleeping. Yes." She said it.

They went and sat down in the adjoining room. The husband was there with
one of the workers. They forced themselves to talk in order to occupy
their attention. But Sylvie's wounded mind was running away from itself,
leaping from one subject to another, without stopping. She had taken up
some work which at every moment she threw down again; she took it up and
threw it down to listen for sounds from the sleeper's room. Again she
said, "How she sleeps!"--her eye wandering over the others in order to
convince them, to convince herself. Once she returned to the little bed,
and, leaning over the child, uttered endearing words to it. This was
cruel for Annette. She wished Sylvie would be silent. Leopold, in a low
voice, implored her not to disturb the illusion.

The illusion fell of itself. Sylvie, coming back to her place, took up
her work and did not speak again. The others were talking around her,
but she no longer heard them. They in turn became silent. A sombre hush
hovered over them. Suddenly Sylvie cried out. Without words. A long cry.
Throwing herself down on the table, she struck her head against it.
Hurriedly they removed the needles and the scissors. When her speech
came back to her, it was to curse God: she did not believe in Him, but
she had to have someone against whom to avenge herself! Her eyes blazed,
and she hurled vulgar oaths at him.

Exhaustion followed. They carried her to bed. She did not stir again.
Annette remained beside her until she was unconscious.

Then she went home again, utterly worn out. The streets were pale with
early dawn. Marc had not slept. She lay down shivering. But just as she
was about to get into bed--it was too much, all she had suffered and had
to repress during the last twelve hours!--she ran in her nightgown and
bare feet into her son's room and passionately kissed his mouth, his
eyes, his ears, his neck, his arms, his hands. "My dear, my dear little
boy," she said. "You, you are not going to leave me?"

He was very much upset, disturbed, frightened. He wept with her, more
for himself than for the others, though he wept for the others too. He
realized now what he had lost; he wept over the affection he had never
desired. He remembered the evening when he had been ill and Odette had
come in to see him. He was stricken with affection and sorrow. But he
thought, "I'm still alive anyway!"

Annette trembled at the thought of beginning another day like the last.
Her strength was not equal to it. But the day that followed did not have
the terrifying violence of the previous hours. Human suffering, when it
reaches its zenith, must descend again. One dies or becomes used to it.

Sylvie had recovered her self-possession. She was livid, with hard lines
about her nostrils and lips which later, as they grew fainter, left
scars behind. But she was calm, active, busy, with her workers, cutting
and sewing her mourning clothes. She gave orders, oversaw things,
worked; and her hands, like her expression, were sure and precise. She
fitted Annette's dress. Annette was afraid to utter a word that would
recall the funeral. But Sylvie spoke of it coldly. She would not leave
the details to anyone else. She decided everything. She preserved her
unnatural calm to the very end of the ceremony, but with a cold and
concentrated rage she had set herself against any religious service. She
could not forgive! . . . Till then she had been vaguely sceptical,
indifferent, not hostile; and while she laughed at it a little, she had
been moved without confessing it on the day when she had seen her
beautiful little girl dressed in white for her first communion. . . .
Exactly! She had been tricked. . . . That dastardly God! She could never
forgive him.

Annette was expecting that the inhuman constraint which Sylvie had
imposed upon herself would be paid for by a fresh crisis when they
returned to the house. But she was not allowed to stay with her sister.
Sylvie harshly forbade it. Annette's presence was intolerable to
her. . . . Annette had her son!

On the following day the anxious husband came to tell Annette that
Sylvie had not gone to bed. She had not wept, she had not groaned, she
was eating her heart out in silence. She had relentlessly resumed her
work in the shop, a mechanical duty that was more imperative than life.
No one would have perceived her state of mind except for certain
accidents, errors that had never happened before. She cut a gown wrongly
and afterwards destroyed it without a word, and she hurt her fingers
with her scissors. They induced her to go to bed at night, but she
remained sitting upright without sleeping, and she did not reply when
they spoke to her. And every morning, before appearing in the workroom,
she made a visit to the cemetery.

This went on for fifteen days. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, she
disappeared. Customers came in and waited. At supper-time she had not
returned. Ten, eleven o'clock passed. Her husband feared that something
desperate had happened. Towards one o'clock she came in, and that night
she slept. No one could find out anything from her. But the next evening
she vanished again, and on the two following days she did the same
thing. She talked now; she seemed to have relaxed. But she did not say
where she had gone. The workers gossiped. Her good husband shrugged his
shoulders with pity and said to Annette, "If she is deceiving me I can't
be angry with her. She has suffered too much. . . . And besides, if it
can only save her from her obsession, well, all right!"

Annette succeeded in catching Sylvie as she was going out, and she
tactfully made her understand the anxiety, the suspicion, the pain,
which her wanderings caused. Sylvie, who did not want to be stopped at
first, seemed to be indifferent to what people might think, but she was
touched by her husband's kindness; and, as if she felt a sudden need of
unbosoming herself, she led Annette into her room and shut the door. She
sat down close beside her and in a low, mysterious voice, with shining
eyes, confessed that she went every evening to a circle of initiates who
gathered about a table in order to talk with her little girl. Annette
listened, horrified, without daring to betray her feelings, while
Sylvie, in a soft voice, recounted the child's replies. There was no
longer any need to urge her to talk; she delighted in the joy of
repeating to herself out loud the puerile words into which she had
transfused all the blood of her heart. Annette could not destroy an
illusion that gave her sister life. Leopold was ready to encourage her:
for his sound common sense this was as good as any other religion.
Annette asked the advice of the doctor, who told her to let the sorrow
wear itself out.

Sylvie was radiant now. Annette asked herself if she would not have
preferred a noble despair to this preposterous joy that profaned death.
In the workroom Sylvie no longer concealed her relations with the world
beyond the grave; the workers made her describe the séances; it gave
them all the shivering pleasure of a popular novel. When Annette came
in, she heard them mingling their lively reflexions with the account of
the last conversation Sylvie had had with Odette; one apprentice was
laughing at it behind the material she was folding up; and Sylvie, so
lately an expert in the handling of irony, saw nothing as she babbled
away, absorbed in her phantasmagory.

She did not stop there. One evening, without saying anything to Annette,
she took Marc with her. She had come to feel once more an exalted
affection for him. The moment she saw him her face lighted up. Annette,
not finding Marc in the house, guessed what had happened. But she took
care not to make him tell her about it when he came in, very late,
depressed and unnerved. The child cried in his dreams. Annette lifted
him up, calmed him, stroked his head with her tender hands.

In the morning she severely demanded an explanation from Sylvie. Her son
was involved, and she spoke directly to the point. This time she did not
conceal her disgust and aversion for these dangerous follies, and she
angrily forbade her sister to mix the little boy up in them. Sylvie,
who, at other times, would have replied in the same tone, bowed her head
with an equivocal smile, avoiding Annette's furious look; she did not
feel instinctively sure enough of her revelations to expose them to her
sister's passionate criticism. She would discuss nothing, she promised
nothing; she had a sly, wheedling manner, like that of a scolded cat
that still means to do just what it chooses.

She did not venture, however, to carry Marc off again. But she did
confide to him what she had heard in her séances; and it was very
difficult to prevent their meetings, which Marc distrustfully kept as
secret as his aunt. Sylvie told Marc that Odette spoke of him. It was
this that bound her to the young boy: Odette had bequeathed him to her.
She transmitted messages between the two children. Marc did not really
believe in all this; the critical sense of his grandfather defended him
against these absurdities, but his imagination was stirred. He listened,
interested, repelled. Even while he lent himself to this unwholesome
game, he condemned Sylvie severely; and he extended his condemnation to
women in general. But this atmosphere of the grave was poisonous for a
boy of his age. The horrible buffoonery of life and death gave him a
precocious, haunting obsession. He felt surrounded by an odor of decayed
flesh. He had moments of suffocation; and, as his mind was not yet
strong enough to defend him, his feverish, preadolescent vitality
reacted by taking refuge in his troubled instincts, which roved about
like animals in the night. A redoubtable flock they were! It seems as
if, by a sort of embryogenesis, the psychic organism passes in its
evolution through the whole series of animal forms--has to pass through
the most bestial stages before it reaches the point where they can be
sublimated by intelligence and human will. Fortunately, this return to
our savage origins is brief; it is a procession of spectres, and the
best thing is to stand aside and let them pass as quickly as possible,
doing nothing to arouse their shadowy consciousness. But this hour is
not without its dangers, and the most loving watchfulness cannot protect
the child from them. For this little Macbeth is the only one who sees
the spectres. For the others, those who are closest to him, Banquo's
seat remains empty; they perceive the fresh voice, the pure features of
the child, but they do not see the formidable shadows that pass in the
depths of its limpid eyes. The curious spectator himself hardly sees
them. How can he recognize them, since they issue from a world in which
he was not born, these instincts of possession, violence and even crime?
There is no perverse thought that he does not touch, that he does not
taste with the tip of his tongue. Neither of the two women who petted
Marc dreamed what a little monster it was they held so close to them.

Little by little Sylvie grew calm. The accounts of her séances ceased
to have a mysterious character; she spoke of them unfeelingly,
hurriedly. She did not care to dwell on them. Soon she even ceased to
mention them except with a certain constraint. And suddenly she stopped
speaking of them altogether; she no longer replied to questions. Had she
met with some disillusionment she did not wish to acknowledge? Or was
she tired of them? She told no one. But in the long conversations she
continued to have with Marc the occult world held less and less of a
place, and it ended by disappearing. She seemed to have recovered her
equilibrium. The passing of the ordeal was only evident to those about
her by the appearance of a slight change in her age, an expression that
was not more refined through suffering, but rather more material, by
features that were a little heavier and a somewhat fuller figure. She
still had the same grace, and she was brighter than ever. The powerful
need to live avenges itself for the agony that has been endured. And new
pains and new pleasures, the leaves of the falling days, the dust of the
road, little by little covered the grave in her heart.




XXXI


A deceptive appearance.

Life began again in the Rivière household. But the catastrophe had made
a breach in their souls.

The disappearance of a child is a very small event in the general order
of things. We are surrounded by death; it should never surprise us. From
the moment when we begin to look about us, we see it at work and grow
accustomed to it. We think we grow accustomed to it. We know that some
day it will come and work its will in our own homes, and we foresee our
misery. But there is so much more than misery! Let each one look into
his own heart! There are few who will not recognize the revolution that
a death has produced in their whole existence. It marks a change of
eras . . . _Ante, Post Mortem_. . . . A being has disappeared. Life
in its entirety is affected, a whole kingdom of beings, yesterday the
kingdom of the day and to-day that of the shadow. If this little stone,
this one stone, falls from the vault, the whole vault falls. Nothingness
has no measure. If this little I is nothing, no I is anything. What I love
is nothing; I who love am nothing. For I only exist because I love. The
unreality of everything that breathes becomes suddenly apparent. And
everyone is aware of this, though not in the same fashion, everyone,
with all his organs, his instinct, his intelligence, whether he faces it
directly or averts his eyes and flees from it.

On the family tree from which the little branch of Odette had been
broken off the other branches continued to grow. But the development of
three at least of the four was altered.

The least affected was the father. On the day of the funeral his grief
was painful; his throat and his chest panted like those of a fallen
horse. But a fortnight later he was already caught up again by his
business and the powerful demands of his physical life; he was working,
eating twice as much as ever, travelling, forgetting.

Of the two women Annette seemed to be the real mother. She could not be
consoled. Her grief became all the more bitter the more the traces of
the little girl were obliterated. Odette for her was like a chosen
child, a child created not of her flesh, but of her need of affection,
more hers than Sylvie's, more hers than her son. She accused herself of
not having loved her enough, of having begrudged the caresses of which
this eager little heart had never had enough. And she persuaded herself
that she alone preserved the memory of the child to which the others
were false.

Sylvie exhibited now a strange, busy, agitated gaiety. She talked in a
high voice, with a wearisome flow of words, flashes of jocularity, harsh
tittle-tattle that made her little group of workers burst out laughing.
Marc quietly drank it all in when he happened to be there and heard it
flying about him. He too had relaxed; he was working less, loafing,
running about the streets, always looking for opportunities to do
nothing and laugh. His organism was shielding itself against the terror
within. . . . What outsider could have suspected it? We are impenetrable
to one another; we seem indifferent; we want to unbosom ourselves and we
cannot do so. . . . "There is no communion possible in suffering."

But Annette, whose intense devotion to the dead child made her unjust to
the living, saw only their egoism. In every way it was trying to return
to life and let the stone of memory drop to the bottom; and she was
angry with them.

One day, however, one Sunday when Marc had gone out with Leopold to a
ball-game, Annette, arriving at Sylvie's, found the door of the
apartment open. She went in and heard a long, heavy groan. Sylvie, alone
in her closed room, was talking and moaning. Annette withdrew on tiptoe;
she reclosed the door on the landing and rang. Sylvie came and opened
it; her eyes were red; she said it was a cold and talked with a noisy,
rather vulgar animation. She began to tell one of those eternal indecent
stories of which she seemed to have an endless supply. Annette's heart
sank. Was it possible she was pretending? She was only half pretending.
It was herself, far more than others, whom she wished to deceive. An
utter despair, without a gleam or an outlet, had brought her to a sort
of jocose contempt for life. If she did not want to die, there was no
other alternative but forgetfulness and this mask of careless cynicism
which had ended by replacing the features of the true face. Nothing
meant anything. Nothing was worth the trouble. Propriety, honor, were
all humbug! Nothing was worth taking seriously. Laugh at life! Enjoy
yourself! Work alone continued to exist, for work was a necessity, and
one couldn't get along without it.

Many other things continued to exist beneath all this devastation.
Instinct in Sylvie was sounder than thought, and when she threw away
everything else Annette and her son remained in her flesh and blood.
They were only one person, these three! But this instinctive, almost
material, love did not prevent her from cherishing bad feeling. Sylvie
had no more tenderness for Annette than she had for herself. She was
aggressive and full of mockery in her attitude to her sister, whose
earnestness and silent sadness, heavy with memories, irritated her like
an unspoken reproach.

A reproach indeed. Annette did not have the charity to spare her. She
saw clearly, however, that Sylvie was fleeing from her misery as a
hunted animal flees from a dog, and she pitied her. She pitied the
misery of human nature, but she despised it for seeking safety at the
expense of its dearest treasures, for being always ready to betray its
sacred affections in order to elude the savage pursuit of suffering. She
was embittered by this; for in her own heart she heard the call of this
cowardice in the presence of life, and she scourged it.

Consequently, during these months that followed the disaster, she
imposed upon herself an austere discipline of the heart, a proud,
pessimistic restraint that concealed her wounded love.


After the dark winter Easter had come. That Sunday morning Annette was
wandering about Paris. The sky had blossomed again; the air was
motionless. With her soul wrapped in its mourning, she heard the
nostalgic calls of the church-bells; and their sonorous net caught her
up in its meshes, drew her outside the flood of this indifferent age to
the beach where the dead God lay. She entered a church. She had scarcely
taken two or three steps before she was stifled by her tears; she had
repressed them so long, and they were flowing again. On her knees, with
bowed head, in a corner of a chapel, she let them flow. Never had she
felt as now the tragedy of this day. She listened to the organ, to the
hymns, the hymns of joy. . . . Joy! . . . Sylvie's laughter, with her
soul weeping in its depths. . . . Ah, she realized it so clearly to-day:
there was no resurrection for the poor dead! And the despairing love
for one's own, that age-old love, wearing itself out denying their
death. . . . How much more grand and religious this poignant verity was
than an illusory resurrection! That passionate self-deception, that
heart-breaking self-deception, which could not consent to losing one's
beloved ones.

She could not share her thoughts with anyone. Shut up in herself, with
the little dead girl, she defended her against the second, the most
terrible, of deaths, oblivion. She reacted harshly against herself and
against the others. And as every reaction against a way of thinking
leads by its recoil to a contrary reaction, her attitude of reproach
provoked those who felt themselves hurt by it to exaggerate their own.
And the breach widened.

It became almost complete between the mother and the son. Marc grew
further and further away from Annette. For years the antagonism had been
growing more evident, but until these latter days it had remained, on
the child's side, veiled, hidden, cautious. During the long period when
he had lived so intimately with Annette, he had been very careful not to
fall into any argument with her; he would have been no match for her,
and above everything else he wanted peace. He let his mother talk. Thus,
one by one, she revealed her weaknesses to him, while he revealed
nothing. But now that he had found an ally in his aunt, he no longer
concealed his hand. How many times in the past his mother, losing
patience with this little mollusc, who drew his mind back into his shell
when she wanted to reach it, had said to him, "Come out of your hole!
Let's have a glimpse of your head. Don't you know how to talk?"

He knew, Annette could have her satisfaction. He talked now. . . . It
would have been better if he had continued to be silent! . . . What a
little wrangler! Ah, he no longer hesitated to contradict her. He
allowed nothing to pass from his mother's mouth without obstinately
cavilling at it. And in what an impertinent tone!

This had happened all of a sudden; and no doubt Sylvie, by maliciously
encouraging this warfare, was partly responsible for it. But the real
cause lay deeper. This change of attitude corresponded with a change of
nature, for the crisis of puberty was approaching. The child was
transformed. In a few months he had assumed another character, and his
rude and crotchety ways were interspersed with returns of his old
taciturnity. There was nothing left of the polite, conciliatory, rather
crafty silence of the child who wanted to give pleasure; one felt now
something hostile and bristling in him. . . . His brusque, off-hand
manner, his flagrant impoliteness, the inexplicable harshness with which
he responded to affectionate advances, made Annette's sensibility bleed.
Sufficiently armed against the world, she was not at all so against
those whom she loved; a single rude word from her son wounded her to
tears. She did not show this, but he was not unaware of it. He went on;
he seemed to be seeking for things that might be unpleasant to his
mother.

He would have been ashamed to behave so with people for whom he cared
nothing. But to her he was certainly not indifferent. He clung to her.
How? Like the living fruit which, when the hour has come, breaks away
from the mother's womb. He was made of her flesh, and to make this flesh
his own he tore it.

Marc had many elements that belonged by nature to another race than his
mother's. But, strangely enough, it was not through these different
elements that he most came into conflict with his mother: it was through
those he had in common with her. For his jealous desire for independence
was not yet in possession of a personality that properly belonged to
him, and every resemblance to his mother seemed to him a sort of threat
of annexation. So, to defend himself, he tried to be different. Whatever
she said, whatever she did, he was the opposite. Because she was loving,
he was insensible; because she was confiding, he shut himself up;
because she was passionate, he was cold and cutting. And everything that
she fought, everything that was repugnant to Annette's nature--ah, how
well he knew these things!--became attractive to him, and he made haste
to let Annette know it. Because she cared about her morality, the wilful
child considered it the proper thing to regard himself as unmoral and
made a point of proclaiming, "Morality is all fiction."

So he declared to his mother, and the credulous Annette took it
seriously. She attributed it to the deplorable influence of Sylvie, who
amused herself by casting disorder into the little soberly cultivated
brain. . . . There they go into the flower-beds, a handful of wild
seeds! And she raked the smooth paths the wrong way. She had plenty of
good reasons for persuading herself that she was acting in the interest
of the child. "That poor little fellow, shut up in a greenhouse, kept
locked up in a box! We're going to take him out of his flower-pot!" Even
while she loved her sister, she took a lively and cruel pleasure in
stealing away from her this heart that was a slip of her own.

The shrewd self-interest of the child in everything that concerned him
had perceived the duel that was being waged between the two sisters, and
naturally he exploited it. He cunningly kept his favors for Sylvie, and
he was much pleased by the jealousy which he aroused in his mother.
Annette no longer concealed this. She justified it, with more reason
than Sylvie, as being in Marc's interest. Sylvie loved the child and she
had plenty of common sense. Her light wisdom was just as good as the
weightier wisdom of some other people, but it was not suitable for a boy
of thirteen, and the good he got from it was dangerous. If she sharpened
in him the appetite for life, she did not give him respect for it; and
when respect vanishes too early, look out for a smash! Sylvie was no
person to form Marc's taste, except in the matter of clothes. She took
him to silly movies and music-halls from which he brought back
bewildering songs and images that left little room for serious thoughts,
and his work showed the effects of it. Annette was angry and forbade
Sylvie to take Marc out. This was a good way of sealing the alliance of
the nephew and the aunt. Marc felt that he was persecuted; he discovered
that, in our time, the profession of being an oppressed people is
remunerative; and Annette learned, to her cost, that of the
oppressor is not all tranquillity.

On every occasion Marc now made her feel that he was a victim and that
she abused her strength. Well, so be it! She would abuse it to keep him
in line. She would not tolerate the frivolity of his language, the
unseemly habit he had picked up of making fun of everything, his
impertinent blague. To subdue it she opposed him with her severe
principles. He had a fine blow to give her in return. For a long time he
had been waiting for the chance.

One day when he was finding support in his aunt's words against some
prohibition of his mother's, Annette impatiently told him that Sylvie
had the right to say and do what she wanted; one couldn't condemn her,
but what was good for her was not good for him. He was not to take her
as a model. "She is not to be imitated in everything."

Marc listened to the tirade and said carelessly, "Yes, but she has a
husband."

Annette could not reply at first; she did not want to understand. What
had he said? No, it wasn't possible! And then a blush spread over her
forehead. Sitting there, with her hands motionless over her work, she
did not stir. Nor did he make any further movement. He was not very
proud of what he had said, of what was about to happen. The silence
continued a long time. A flood of anger rose in Annette's vehement
heart. She let it pass. Pity, irony, took its place. She sighed
contemptuously. "Little wretch!" she thought. And at last, as her
fingers resumed their task, she said, "And no doubt you consider that a
woman without a husband who works to support her child is less worthy of
respect?"

Marc lost his poise. He did not reply. He did not excuse himself. He was
mortified.

That night Annette did not sleep. So she had sacrificed herself in vain!
That the world should blame her was in the order of things. But he to
whom she had given everything! How had he known? Who had breathed this
thought into his ear? She could not be angry with him, but she was
overwhelmed.

Marc slept peacefully. He was not free from remorse, but the sleep was
stronger than the remorse. After a good night he would have forgotten it
if he had not encountered it again in his mother's anxious look. It
annoyed him that his mother had not forgotten as he had. He was sorry,
but he could not make up his mind to say so; and, since he was
uncomfortable, his childish logic made him angry with his mother.

They did not allude to the scene. But after it things were no longer as
they had been before. They were constrained when they kissed each other.
Annette no longer treated him wholly as a child.

How had he known? Conversations at school had made him reflect on the
name he bore, which was that of his mother. Old allusions, picked up as
they had passed in old days in the workshop, which he had not
understood, became clear now. Some imprudent words of Sylvie to her
sister, in the child's presence. And the enigma this mother was for him,
at once irritating and fascinating him, through the aura of passions
which, without the power to discern them, his puppy-instinct had
scented. Over it all he had built a strange, vague fairy-tale which did
not hang together very closely. His birth puzzled him. How could he find
out about it? The reply that hurt his mother was partly a trap he was
setting for her. In his heart there was a mingled curiosity and
bitterness in regard to what had happened, about which he knew nothing.
He had never dared to question Sylvie on the subject, for he was proud
on his mother's behalf and he suspected that she had been wronged. But
he thought he had the right to be angry with her because of the
important secret she was hiding from him. This secret stood like a
stranger between herself and him.

A stranger indeed. Marc never suspected that at moments he invoked
before his mother's eyes the stranger, his father, and, even worse, the
other Brissots. For in the secret warfare that went on henceforth
between the mother and the young boy the latter instinctively armed
himself with everything he could find, in his own nature, that was
opposed to Annette. Thus, without knowing it, he sometimes disinterred
and used against her various traits he had inherited from his Brissot
ancestry: the famous condescending smile, the self-satisfaction, the
waggish philistinism the hostile certitude of which nothing could shake.
A shadow, a reflexion on the water. Annette recognized them and thought,
"They have caught me!"

Was he really a stranger? No, he was not. The weapon, the inherited
traits, yes; but the hand that held it was of Annette's substance. And
that rebellious hand was clenched in that opposition between two beings
who were too closely related, too much akin, which was only one of the
thousand tricks of Love and Destiny.




XXXII


He had no friends. This boy of thirteen, who spent every morning and
afternoon in a class with thirty other children, was isolated from his
comrades. When he was smaller, he had enjoyed chattering, playing,
running, shouting. For a year or two now, he had had fits of
speechlessness, a sudden hunger for solitude. This did not mean that he
had ceased to feel the need of companions. He may even have needed them
more than before. Exactly! He needed them too much; he expected too much
and he had too much to give. And there were bristles everywhere in this
spring thicket. A bridling self-esteem. A mere nothing wounded it, and
he was afraid of being wounded and especially of showing it. That was a
weakness, and he had to take care not to give the enemy a hold over him.
(There is an enemy in every friend.)

What he had grasped, or rather imagined, regarding his civil status, his
mother's past, kept him in an absurd, ridiculous, towering state of
torment. His reading contributed to this; he was convinced that he was a
"natural" child. (His romantic books called him by a harsher name.) He
found a way of taking pride in this. He almost went so far as to catch
in the archaic insult the wild, musty scent of nobility. He considered
himself interesting, different from other people, solitary, just a
little damned. It would not have displeased him to find himself among
the Satanic bastards of Schiller and Shakespeare. This would have given
him the right to despise the world, with lofty tirades--in secret.

But when he found himself in the world again--in his class at school,
among his comrades--he was intimidated, weighed down by his secret,
suspicious that they might guess it. His strange ways, his fated look,
the thin voice that was beginning to break, his pretty girlishness,
blushing, yet insolent as a young cock, excited the attention and the
ill-will of his companions and even exposed him to the shameful advances
of one of those little scamps who persecuted him with his half-comic,
half-serious, proposals. He was completely upset by this; that night he
was sick with revolt and disgust. He did not want to go back to school
again, and he could not tell his mother the reasons; he had to win
respect for himself unaided. He said to himself, "I shall kill him."

His riotous mind was excited by a deep ground-swell.

He had reached the time when the reproductive forces awaken. They
fascinated him and terrified him. The strange innocence of his mother
existed there beside him without seeing or suspecting anything. He would
have died of shame if she had seen or suspected. And alone, despising
himself, he surrendered frantically to the terrible solicitations of the
degrading instinct. . . . But what could the child do, a poor child
delivered over to these mad forces? This monstrous nature puts into a
thirteen-year-old body the brutal fire which for want of nourishment
devours it. There are natures which find salvation in throwing
themselves wholly, through a contrary excess, into an ascetic exaltation
of the spirit which often entails physical ruin. The young people of our
time, more fortunate than their elders, have begun to practise the
virile discipline of athletics. Marc would have asked nothing better than
this, but there again nature was against him. He was not strong enough.
Ah, how he envied the strong! How jealously he loved their beauty! . . .
So much that he hated it. . . . He would never be like them.

Desires, all the desires, pure, impure, a chaos! . . . All the hostile
demons! He would have been the plaything of chance--nothing could have
helped him--had it not been for a basis of moral health and
decency--rather, the grandeur that is unaware of its own capabilities,
that divine something, the result of the sufferings, the valor, and the
long patience of the best of the race, which will not endure the shame
of defilement, the disgrace of falling, which has an anxious instinct
for what is vile and cowardly, which follows its trail inward, into all
the sinuosities of one's thought, which does not always escape stains,
but never fails to condemn them, to condemn oneself, to brand oneself
and punish oneself.

Pride! All praise to pride! _Sanctus_ . . . In childish natures like
this pride is health. It is the affirmation of the divine in the mire,
the principle of salvation. In a solitude without love who would
struggle without pride? Why struggle, if one does not believe one has
supreme blessings to defend, and that for them one must conquer
or die! . . .

Marc was determined to conquer. Conquer what he understood and what he
did not understand. Conquer what he was ignorant of and what was
repugnant to him. Conquer the enigma of the world and his own baseness.
Ah, here as elsewhere, he was incessantly conquered. In his effort to
work, to read, to concentrate, he slipped beyond his own control, he
found himself out of hand. He always lacked the strength. . . . It was
there, but it was hardly formed, unequal to the task and the demands of
the will. He was devoured by desires and curiosities, healthy,
unhealthy, that plagued him on all sides, weltering as he was in torpor,
incapable of doing anything or determining anything. He wasted his time,
and he was always in a hurry. Already his future filled his mind, the
choice of a career; for he knew that it would be necessary for him to
decide early, and he had no grounds for deciding; he floated through
everything, equally interested and indifferent, attracted and disgusted.
He wanted and he did not want; he was not even capable of wishing or of
not wishing. The machine was not running aright. It would bound forward
and suddenly stop, and he would find himself sprawling on the ground.

Then he looked around him. And this child who was suffering and
devouring himself was quicker than anyone else to perceive the emptiness
and the ennui of an age that had begun its journey to destruction. He
had a keen sense of the abyss.

But his mother saw none of all this. She saw a sulky, overweening,
rebellious, childish boy, morbidly susceptible, grandiloquent, always
making trouble, who sometimes took delight in uttering obscenities, and
at other moments was shocked at a mere free expression. Above all, she
was irritated by his sneers. She had no suspicion of his feeling of
bitterness, still less of his defiance of an evil fate. He felt cruelly
the injustice of his lot; he was (or thought himself) without strength,
without beauty, without talent, good for nothing; he ended by swamping
himself, adding to his real defects others that he imagined; he conspired
with all the outward signs that were able to humiliate him. . . . Those
two little working-girls who laughed as they passed him were
laughing, he thought, at him; he did not suspect that they were laughing
just to arouse his interest, that they rather liked his blushing, shyly
girlish air. He thought he saw in the eyes of his teachers a
contemptuous pity for his mediocrity. He thought his more robust
comrades despised his weakness and were showing up his cowardice; for
since he was excessively nervous, he had his moments of pusillanimity;
and, as he was sincere, he confessed this to himself and felt that he
was dishonored. As a means of self-punishment, he secretly compelled
himself to commit dangerously imprudent acts that brought the cold sweat
to his brow and rehabilitated him a little--so little!--in his own eyes.
It was at himself, often, that this little Nicodemus was sneering, at
himself and his own weaknesses. But he was angry with the world that had
made him what he was, and especially with his mother.

She did not understand his hostile air. . . . What an egoist he was! He
thought only of himself.

He thought only of himself? What would have become of him if he had not
thought of himself? If he had not helped himself, who would have helped
him?

They remained alone, walled up, side by side. The day of confidences was
past. Annette was beginning to repeat the lamentation of mothers, "How
much more loving he was when he was younger!"

And he was saying to himself that mothers only love their children for
their own amusement. No one loves anyone but himself.

No, everyone wants to love the other person. But when one is in danger
one must think of oneself. One will think of the other afterward. How
can one save the other if one hasn't saved oneself? And how can one save
oneself if one lets the other hang about one's neck?




XXXIII


Annette, pushed aside by her son, became as hard as he. When the heart
is deliberately closed to love, the mind, freed by the absence of the
object that nourishes its affection, is driven to satisfy its
intellectual hunger and its need of action. She worked all day, read in
the evening, and at night slept soundly. Marc spitefully envied and
despised the health of this vigorous woman, the faculty she seemed to
have for escaping self-torment.

Annette, however, suffered from the privation of not being able to share
her thoughts with a companion. She filled the void by work, by actively
forgetting. . . . But work for work's sake is itself so empty! . . . And
upon whom can one spend those unused forces one feels in oneself?

Sacrifice! . . . That need of sacrifice! . . . Annette found it
everywhere about her, often pathetic, sometimes absurd. For as a good
observer she incessantly explored faces and souls every day and all day
long; she distracted herself from her own troubles by throwing herself
into those of others. Perhaps curiosity prevailed over pity during this
period when her heart was petrified (as she thought) by the spectacle of
so much suffering, and especially so many defeats and abdications.

Among women who are struggling as she was to wrest from society the
means of existence, how many are broken, far less by the harshness of
things than by their own weakness and abnegation! Almost all are
exploited by some affection and cannot exist without being exploited.
One would say that this is their only reason for living--the reason for
which they die. . . .

One of them sacrifices herself to an old mother or an egotistical
father. Another, to a vulgar husband or some man who deceives her.
Another, another--myself!--to a child who does not love her, who will
forget her, who will betray her to-morrow perhaps. . . . Well, what does
it matter? If I find a joy in being betrayed by him, imposed upon,
forgotten? "If it pleases me to be beaten!" Ah, derision, trickery! . . .
And the others envy you, those who have no one to whom to sacrifice
themselves! They marry a dog, a cat, a bird. Each one has her idol. If
you must have one at any price, God would serve better. He, at least,
amounts to something. . . . I too have my God, my unknown God, my hidden
truth, and this passion that drives me on to seek it. . . . Deceptive,
perhaps, like the others. But I shall not know it till I have reached
it. And if this is deceptive, at least it is elevated and worth the
trouble.

Annette revolted against the absurdity of some sacrifices. No, nature
does not wish the best to be sacrificed to the most unworthy. And if she
did wish it, why should I submit to it? But she does not wish it! She
wishes one to sacrifice oneself to the best, to the grandest, to the
strongest.

Sacrifice at any price, to the worst as to the best, perhaps even to the
worst by preference, because the sacrifice is thus most complete,
sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice--yes, that is conformable enough to
the idea people have of God . . . _Credo quia absurdum_ . . . Like
master, like man! This God is indeed he who rests on the Seventh Day,
finding that which he has made is well made. If one had listened to him,
the chariot of man would have stopped at the first turn of the wheel.
All the progress of the world is made against his will . . . _Fiat_! We
shall drive the chariot on. It may crush us, but at least we wish it to
go forward.




XXXIV


A tragic incident increased Annette's aversion to these immolations that
seemed to her so pointless--immolations of those who were worth more to
those who were worthless.

She had recently been in competition, for a course for foreigners at an
institution at Neuilly, with a young woman whose strong-willed rustic
face had attracted her. She tried to strike up a conversation with her.
But she was suspicious and could think of nothing but getting Annette
out of the way. At that time Annette, who was still unused to these
struggles that repelled her, had held up her own end badly; indeed,
through her desire to make a friend, she had withdrawn in the interest
of her rival. The latter had shown her no gratitude for this. Nothing
counted for her but her own advantage. An ant eagerly hastening to heap
up her gains. Annette did not interest her.

Annette had lost sight of her, and when, six years later, chance brought
them again into one another's presence, they had both changed. Annette
was no longer disposed to be generous, or rather fastidious. . . . Life
is as it is. . . . I am not able to modify it. I want to live. You must
take second place.

The struggle began. It did not last long. At the first blow the rival
was knocked out. How she had aged! Annette was struck by her ravaged
look. She had remembered her as a brunette with ruddy cheeks marked with
two or three little black dots like raisins in bread, a solid peasant
girl, short-waisted, thick-set, a face with fine, dry features, which,
if it had not been so sullen, would not have lacked a certain grace--a
stubborn brow, abrupt, always hurried movements. She saw now a thin,
shrivelled face, a hard glance, a bitter mouth, hollow cheeks, young but
blighted like scorched grass.

The disputed situation was that of secretary to an engineer: it required
only two mornings of attendance each week to go through the business
correspondence and receive visitors. Annette encountered Ruth Guillon in
the antechamber, and their hostile eyes met.

"You have come for this place," said Ruth Guillon. "It has been promised
to me."

"It has not been promised to me," said Annette. "But I have come for
this place."

"No use, it's going to be given to me."

"Whether it's useless or not, I've come. It belongs to the one who gets
it."

A moment later Annette was called into the engineer's office and chosen.
She was known as an accurate, intelligent worker.

As she came out she ran into Ruth and passed her coldly. Ruth stopped
her and asked, "You are going to have it?"

"I have it."

She saw the other's forehead redden strangely. She was expecting some
violent remark, but Ruth said nothing. Annette continued on her way, and
the other followed her. They descended the stairs. As she reached the
street, Annette, turning round, threw a rapid glance towards her
defeated rival, and Ruth's dejected air touched her. In spite of her
resolution to be hard, she went back and said to her, "I'm sorry. One
has to live."

"Oh, I'm quite aware of that," said the other. "Some have all the luck.
I never have any."

Her tone had entirely changed. Dejection without animosity. Annette made
a movement to take her hand, but Ruth drew back her own.

"Come, don't feel badly! One day one of us loses; another day it will be
the other."

"It's every day with me."

Annette recalled their first encounter when Ruth had succeeded in
getting the place. Ruth did not reply and walked along dejectedly beside
Annette.

"Couldn't I help you?" said Annette.

The blush overspread her forehead again. Wounded pride, emotion? Ruth
said dryly, "No!"

"It would give me pleasure to do so," Annette insisted.

And with a familiar gesture she seized her arm. Ruth was surprised and
pressed Annette's hand nervously under her arm, and, turning her head,
she bit her lip. Then she tore herself away in irritation and walked
off.

Annette let her go, following her with her eyes. She understood her:
yes, one has no right to offer one's pity to one who does not ask for
it.

A few days later, entering a dairy, she saw Ruth making some purchases.
She held out her hand to her. This time Ruth took it, but with an icy
air. She made an effort, however, to appear less sullen; she uttered a
few common-place words, and Annette, satisfied with this ungenerous
advance, replied. The two women discussed the prices of the things they
had bought. Annette, though she did not show it, was astonished that
Ruth spent more than she on fresh eggs and special milk. Ruth was a
little ostentatious in paying in front of her. As they went out, Annette
said, "How much it costs to live!" She almost excused herself for the
eggs she had bought, saying, "They're for my child."

Ruth, with a lofty air, remarked, "Mine are for my husband."

Annette knew nothing about the other's life. "Is he ill?" she asked.

"No, but he is very delicate."

She spoke proudly of the care that his health required. Annette, who
knew how touchy Ruth was, did not ask her any questions, but waited for
her to speak. Ruth said nothing more and they were about to separate
when Annette remembered. . . . She offered Ruth a job--the revision of
some work by a foreigner--which had been offered to her and which she
did not have time to undertake. Ruth at once showed the liveliest
gratitude: money played in her life a capital rôle. Annette asked for
her address in case she had other orders to pass on to her. Ruth
hesitated and replied evasively.

"It's only to be of service to you," said Annette impatiently. "In any
case, I live myself--" And she gave her address.

Ruth reluctantly gave her own. Annette felt rebuffed and decided to
think no more about her.

But Ruth came and looked her up a few weeks later. She excused herself
for having seemed so unfriendly. And this time she confided to her a
little, not much, about her life. Born of a family of rich farmers, she
had quarrelled with her father because she had wanted to come to Paris
and teach. Her father had wounded her pride and she had sworn never to
accept anything from him. She wanted to earn her own living. She had
worn herself out. In spite of her energy, thinking was too much for her;
she labored at her books like an animal at the plough; the blood swelled
her temples; she was obliged to stop in a state of congestion. An
incipient neurasthenia forced her to give up the examinations she was
just ready to pass. She fell back upon giving private lessons. She was
succeeding, with difficulty, in earning her living when she fell in love
with a man whom she married and who became simply one burden the more.
But this she did not say; Annette learned it elsewhere. She was acute
enough to divine a part of the truth in the course of the discreet
questions she asked her new friend. She saw that the husband had no
occupation: he was an "intellectual," an "artist," a "writer." And she
did not have to go very far to find what he wrote. Verses! . . .

Ruth had no more taste than any other little provincial soul. But the
poetry overawed her.

She was in no haste to introduce her "artist." She kept him at home. But
from this time forward she saw Annette more often--too often. She ended
by overwhelming her with testimonials of friendship, flowers, attentions
that were seldom very well inspired and only irritated Annette. She had
no middle way: it was all or nothing with this passionate soul. She had
never had a woman friend; she had never confided in anyone. From the
moment when she made up her mind to like Annette she monopolized her.
Annette was bored to death by this affection, and she realized that the
husband would not find it easy to bear.

At last she succeeded in surprising and catching a glimpse of the
precious bird: a dull, insignificant man with vague blue eyes who gave
the impression that he was a secret devotee of absinthe. Very vain and
far from sure of himself, utterly mediocre, he was anxious for Annette's
good opinion. He did not love his wife, but he found it convenient to be
pampered by her and assumed languishing, piteous, sad airs in the name
of his health, his unrecognized talents and the envy of his
fellow-writers. Annette pierced him through and through with her clear
eyes. He was cautious with her and moderated the jeremiads for which the
silent irony of his listener was waiting. But Ruth swallowed everything
whole; she was incapable of judging and as proud as Artaban. . . . "Let
her keep her illusions. She needs some one to love, a man to protect.
She has a passionately domestic soul. She would lie down under his
feet. . . ." But sometimes she quarrelled with him bitterly. Once, as
Annette was climbing the stairs, she heard the "poet" bawling and whining.
Ruth was slapping her husband.

Annette no longer had any doubt that the best part of Ruth's money was
spent for José's loafing and absinthe. He played the races also. Ruth
never complained: she struggled to save up enough for him to publish a
volume of his poems. But he was in no hurry to write them. And when, one
day, she went over her accounts she discovered that he had stolen
three-quarters of the money: he had robbed himself!

That day, with her pride utterly broken, she confessed her misery to
Annette. She would not have spoken if it had concerned herself alone.
But for years she had been wearing herself out for him--"for his glory,"
as she said. And he had destroyed it himself!

One confidence leads to another. Annette ended by learning almost all of
Ruth's sufferings. Her health was ruined. She was growing weaker every
day and less able to restrain her thoughts. As death approached her eyes
were opened and she realized the inanity of this man and his lack of
affection. José was hardly ever at home any more. He would steal away,
finding no pleasure in the society of a sick, disappointed wife.

When her last days came, Ruth had no illusions left. She declared,
however, with sincere pride, that she regretted nothing and that she
would do it all over again.

"_That_ has killed me. But I have lived by it."

She did not believe in anything; she expected nothing, either in this
world or in the other. . . .

Annette was alone with her when she lay on her deathbed. A hemorrhage of
the brain had struck her down.

José, who had fled at the approach of death, showed his timorous face a
few moments afterwards. He had a brief moment of feeling. After he had
wept, his first words were, "But what in heaven's name is to become of
me?"

"You'll find someone else to support you," said Annette.

He threw her a spiteful glance. And he let Annette pay the funeral
expenses.

"There you are!" Annette thought, by the bedside of the dead woman. "She
was a tower of pride, will, ascetic devotion. . . . What good did it all
do? What a mess! Giving oneself to a dog! Poor Ruth was hard. She was
not hard enough. One must be harder still."




XXXV


Reaction against the deception of the heart--my accursed heart which is
only there to delude me. My head and my senses will and know. My heart
is blind. It is my business to direct it. Reaction against love, and
against sacrifice, and against goodness.

In everyone's life, as in the life of society, there are phases of
feeling that succeed one another without resembling one another. Their
first law, indeed, is not to resemble one another. While one phase is in
the ascendant, everyone shares in it with complete seriousness, feeling
nothing but contempt for the ridiculousness of the phases that have
passed out of date and convinced that his phase is and will always be
the best. . . . Annette passed in this way through a phase of hardness.

But whatever one's garment may be, the human being remains the same. One
cannot get along without others. The proudest needs his share of
affection; and the more circumstances oblige one to shut oneself in, the
more one's treacherous mind conspires to betray one.

Annette felt very strong. Strong in her experience and her intelligence,
firm, practical, disillusioned. She was sure now that she could live by
her will--of course, by working, but the work too was her will. She did
not fear any lack of this. She did not need anyone's help. Nor was she
going to put herself out either to please or to displease.

She had found herself in competition lately with a new kind of rival,
men. She gave lessons to boys to prepare them for school and
examinations. She was successful, but along with her success came the
increasing animosity of those to whom she was preferred. They considered
themselves thwarted. There was no question of gallantry any more. The
most destitute of consideration were the married men: their wives
spurred them on. They slandered Annette: what would they not insinuate
in regard to the means by which she managed to reach the best places?
Annette, with her hard, attractive smile on her lips, followed her own
road, scornful of public opinion.

At bottom, however, there was the invisible stamp of the wear and tear
exacted by these long years of merciless toil. Her fortieth year was
approaching. Life had passed and she had not realized it. An obscure
feeling of revolt was rising within her. All this lost life, this life
without love, without action, without luxury, without any rich
joy. . . . And all that she had missed she had been so completely
fitted to enjoy!

What was the use of thinking of it? It was too late now!

Too late?




_SUMMER_


PART THREE




XXXVI


Solange had the small, well-rounded, rustic face of a Gothic Madonna, an
oldish, infantile air, laughing, wrinkled eyes, a pretty nose, a
delicate mouth, a rather heavy chin, fine skin and a ruddy complexion.
She liked to discuss serious thoughts in a serious tone, very serious,
contrasting comically with her kind, humorous face, which tried hard not
to be so; but her words hurried along for fear of losing the thread of
her sober ideas; and sometimes she actually did stop in mid-course with
a void in her mind: "What was it I meant to say?"

Her auditors seldom whispered a reply, for they scarcely listened to
her. But she did not irritate them, for Solange was not one of those
people who hold forth and insist upon your following their insipid
discourse. She had no pride and was ready to apologize affectionately
for having bored you. But incapable as she was by nature of grasping an
idea, she had a naïve aspiration for thought and an immense good will.
Nothing very much came of it: her thoughts never quite arrived. The
grave books, Plato, Guyau, Fouillée, yawned at the same page for weeks
or months; and the great, beautiful projects, idealistic,
altruistic--works of social aid or new systems of education--were
intellectual toys that she soon forgot in their corners and under the
furniture till the next chance brought them to her attention again. A
good little bourgeoise, gentle, amiable, pretty, sensible,
well-balanced, with a dash of pedantry, unconstrained, droll, who,
without posing, imagined that she had intellectual needs and really had
to talk about the ideal and many other things, all on the same plane,
calm, tidy, well-dressed, polite, innocent and a nobody.

Younger than Annette by three or four years, she had once felt for her
one of those paradoxical attractions that harmless natures feel for
those that are dangerous. It is true that these phenomena usually
manifest themselves at a distance. In fact, she had approached Annette
very little at school, where they were in different classes. It was only
because she saw her as she came and went and had picked up some echoes
from the older girls that little Solange had conceived for her elder a
timid fascination. Annette had had no suspicion of it; and since then
Solange had completely forgotten her. She had married, and she was
happy. Not to have been happy, she would have had to have a monster for
a husband--or a passionate man. Victor Mouton-Chevallier was, heaven be
praised, neither one nor the other. A sculptor by vocation, he was not
tormented by inspiration, for he had an income and a rich placidity. He
had no lack of taste, but he felt no pressing need of translating into
his art anything different from what had already been done by this, that
or the other of his illustrious confrères of all ages. And as he was
innocent of ambition, as he was free from illiberal feelings (from
others too, perhaps), he enjoyed an unmixed satisfaction in finding
himself so well, so completely, expressed--at least, so he flattered
himself in believing--by Michael Angelo, by Rodin, by Bourdelle, or by
the smaller gentry; for he was eclectic and found his good things
everywhere. In this happy state he would certainly not have made the
effort to produce anything himself if this had not added to his pleasure
one savor the more: the flattering illusion that he belonged to the
family. He was willing to accept the tender respect that he felt called
upon to show for the heroes of art and their misfortunes. He shared in
these latter--from afar; and he forced his jovial face to assume an air
of austere melancholy as he listened to his wife discreetly playing the
Sonata Pathétique on the piano--for Beethoven also belonged to the
family. Solange had fully responded to his domestic needs. A tranquil
affection, an easy kindness, a gentle, uniform, complacent humor, an
indoor idealism that did not risk itself outside when it was windy or
muddy, a propensity for admiring that renders life so much more
comfortable!--in short, in a word that says everything, _security_ was
their true unconfessed ideal. Their circumstances, both of fortune and
of heart, permitted them to have this. They were sheltered from material
cares, and there was no fear that they would introduce trouble into
their household.

But they did introduce Annette. If they had known the elements this Frau
Sorge carried within her, they would have been dreadfully upset. But
they did not know. They were like innocent children playing with an
explosive; they would have had an attack of nerves if they had guessed
what they held in their hands. But guessing nothing, after having their
own sport, they went and laid it down gently, without intending any
harm, in the garden of a friend. . . . They laid Annette down in the
garden of the Villards.




XXXVII


When Solange discovered Annette again, she also discovered in herself
once more the old feeling she had had for her: she fell in love with
her. Like everyone else, she knew about Annette's "irregular" life. But
in her goodness--a goodness without depth, but also without prudery--she
did not think any the worse of her. It must be said that she did not
understand it very well. With her indulgent disposition, which was the
most sympathetic side of her amiable nature, she supposed that Annette
had undoubtedly been victimized, or perhaps that she had had her own
serious reason for acting as she had done. In any case, it concerned
only herself; and she was indignant at public opinion. After seeing her
friend again, she made inquiries about her and learned of her courage
and self-abnegation; she conceived the most exaggerated admiration for
her. This was one of those periodic infatuations that left her, for a
time, no room for any other feeling. Her husband, whom she fed with her
enthusiasms, found in this one an opportunity for melting over Annette's
nobility of heart, and that of his wife, and his own as well. (Is there
anything that enables us to enjoy our own moral beauty more than to be
stirred by that of a fellow-creature?) Husband and wife tried to outbid
each other in their noble intentions towards Annette. They could not
leave her alone, destitute of sympathy, that poor woman, the victim of
social injustice! The Mouton-Chevalliers set out to find Annette,
climbing all the way up to her fifth floor. They surprised her in the
act of doing her housework. This struck them as all the more touching;
and her coldness seemed to them an admirable dignity. They did not leave
till they had won Annette's promise to come and dine with them with her
little boy, _en famille_, the following evening.

Annette was not very much pleased by this renewed friendship. She saw
how insipid it was. Her years of moral solitude had given her a savage
instinct. It was not good to avoid people too much; one found it hard to
get into touch with them again; one became aware of an odor of
corruption under the flowers. In the quiet household of the
Mouton-Chevalliers, Annette was not at her ease; their conjugal
happiness did not make her envious. "Too mild, too mild, too mild!" as
somebody says in Molière. "No, thank you! Not for me!". . . She had
reached a time when she needed the harsh winds of life. . . .

Well, she ought to have been satisfied! The mild Solange was going to
see that she got them.




XXXVIII


Annette was dressing to go out to dinner. This evening she was to meet
at the Mouton-Chevalliers those friends of whom she was sick of hearing
from Solange--Doctor Villard, a fashionable surgeon with a rather garish
reputation, and his brilliant young wife. She was troubled. "What if I
shouldn't go?" She half thought of sending a line to excuse herself. But
Marc, who was bored with being alone with his mother, was delighted at
any pretext for going out. Annette did not want to deprive him of this
distraction. Besides, she knew she was absurd. "What's the matter?
What's troubling you?". . . It was like a presentiment of evil. . . .
Silly! The rational spirit that dwelt in her, side by side with the
instincts that took no account of it, made her shrug her shoulders. She
finished her toilet and, taking her son's arm, set out for Solange's.

The superstitious instinct was not long in taking its revenge. It is no
miracle, indeed, when a presentiment is realized. A presentiment is a
predisposition towards what one is afraid of feeling. Consequently, if
it comes to pass, there is nothing magical about it. It is a sort of
divining-rod; as it approaches a spring, a shiver warns it that the
water is eating its way under the surface.

On the threshold of the drawing-room, Annette felt the warning; but she
knit her brows, and as soon as she entered the room she was reassured.
Even before Solange had presented him to her, she had made up her mind
at a glance about Philippe Villard: he was antipathetic to her. She had
a feeling of relief.

Philippe was not handsome. He was small, thick-set, with a brow that
bulged above the eyes, a strong jaw, a short, pointed beard, a steely
blue glance. Very much master of himself, he was cold in a courteous,
commanding way. Seated beside Annette at table, he followed two
conversations: the general discussion that Solange was carrying on in
her desultory manner and that which, in the intervals, he held with his
neighbor. In both he had the same brief, precise, trenchant way of
talking. Never a hesitation, either for a word or an idea. The more
Annette listened, the more hostile she felt towards him. She replied,
concealing herself under a rather dry and distant indifference. He did
not seem to attach great importance to what she said. No doubt he was
judging her from the silly eulogies he had heard from Solange. He was
barely polite. This did not surprise anyone: they were used to his
abrupt ways. But it irritated Annette to have to endure them. She
observed him beside her, without appearing to see him, feature by
feature; and she could find nothing about him that pleased her. But the
total impression was not the total of her impressions of details; and
when, without difficulty, she reached the end of her examination, she
felt uneasy again. A movement of the hand, a wrinkling of the face. . . .
She was afraid of him. And she thought, "Above everything in the
world, he mustn't see into me!"

Solange spoke of an author who, she said, had the gift of tears.

"A pretty gift!" said Philippe. "Tears in life are not worth much. But
in art I know nothing more disgusting than to collect them in a bottle."

The ladies cried out at this. Madame Villard said that tears were one of
the pleasures of life, and Solange said they were an ornament of the
soul.

"Well, how about you, don't you protest?" he asked Annette. "Do you too
get your supplies from the property-man?"

"I have enough of my own," she said. "I have no need of other people's."

"You live on your capital?"

"Can you suggest any way for me to get rid of them?"

"Be hard!"

"I'm learning," she replied.

He threw her a brief sidelong glance.

The others continued to unbosom themselves.

"Look over there," said Philippe to Annette. "There's a good chap who
ought to be taught it."

With a corner of his eye he indicated Marc, whose mobile face was
naïvely betraying the various emotions which the pretty Madame Villard,
sitting beside him, stirred in him.

"I'm afraid," said Annette, "that he already has too much of a tendency
that way."

"All the better!"

"All the better for those who meet him along the way?"

"Let him walk over them!"

"That's easy for you to say."

"You have only to step aside yourself."

"That would be against nature."

"Oh, no, the thing that's against nature is to love too much."

"One's own child?"

"Anyone, one's own child especially."

"He needs me."

"Look at him! Is he thinking of you? He would disown you for a crumb
from my wife's hand."

Annette's fingers clenched on the tablecloth. . . . Ah, how she hated
him! . . . He had seen her fingers. "I didn't create him just to give
him up."

"You didn't create him at all," he replied. "Nature created him. She
uses you and casts you aside afterward."

"I shall not let myself be cast aside."

"A battle, then?"

"A battle!"

He looked her in the face, "You will be beaten," he said.

"I know it. One always is. But what's the difference? One fights just
the same."

Under the cold mask her eyes smiled defiantly. But the blue gaze of the
other penetrated her like a stab. She had given herself away.

Philippe was a forceful man. His force was part of his genius. He
carried it as much into his clinic, in his terrible diagnostics and the
sureness of his hand, into the operating-room, as into the acts of his
life and his decisions. Accustomed to reading at a glance the depths of
human bodies, he had understood Annette completely at once--Annette, her
passions, her pride and her troubles, her temperament and her strong
nature. And Annette felt that she had been caught. With her helmet
fallen so soon, her visor broken, furiously angry, she betrayed
henceforth to the eyes of her adversary only an icy armor. In the
constriction at her heart, she knew now that the enemy had come. The
enemy? Yes, love. . . . (Ah, that insipid word, so far from the cruel
force itself! . . .) To the sudden awakening of interest which she had
perceived in him, she opposed an ironical inflexibility that very
inadequately concealed the hostility she felt. It only completed her
self-betrayal. She was too genuine, too passionate. She could not
pretend. Her very animosity revealed the depths of her being. Philippe
was the only one to see this. He did not attempt to revive the
conversation again; he had learned enough, and, with a detached air,
recounting to the company one of those bitter, amusing stories that were
stamped with his own harsh experience, he measured with his eye the
woman he intended to capture.

None of the others who were present had observed anything. The
Mouton-Chevalliers were regretfully convinced that Annette and Philippe
were unsympathetic to each other: between their two characters there was
nothing in common. However, in bringing Annette and the Villards
together, they had hoped that Annette and Mme. Villard would become
friends. "They were made for each other." And so far as that was
concerned, they had the pleasure of seeing that they were not mistaken.

Noémi Villard was a delightful Creole, with small bones, plump flesh
gilded like a roast pigeon, the eyes of a roe, a fine nose, spare
cheeks, a prominent little mouth that always seemed to be ready to snap
something up; round, innocent, youthful breasts, generously revealed,
frail arms, a slender waist, small feet, delicate legs. She played the
part of a child-woman, with her infatuations, her languors, her
enthusiasms, her laughs and tears and lisping words. She seemed to be a
fragile creature, expansive, sensitive, not too intelligent. In reality
she was just the opposite. With plenty of brains, sensual, dry and
passionate, observing everything, calculating everything, unweariable,
unbreakable, fragile, yes, like a willow that bends and--bing!--comes
lashing back, made of solid cement under the friable enamel. She alone
could have told how much energy this delicate enamel cost. As for
intelligence, she had enough of it and to spare: she kept it in the
bank, but she utilized it only for the object that interested her, her
husband, whom she held jealously. Theirs had been, on both sides, a
passionate marriage of the head and the senses--passionate in its
pleasures and its vanity. Noémi's decision had long preceded Philippe's
choice, and even his attention. This man who, after the example of his
illustrious Parisian confrères, carried on with equal ardor his
crushing professional activity and a ceaseless social life, had found
the time to indulge in many love affairs. His triumphant reputation had
had a good deal to do with Noémi's mad love and her determined desire
to capture him, for herself alone, and keep him. Philippe cared nothing
about intelligence in women. He wanted them to be well-made, healthy,
elegant and stupid. He went so far as to say that a woman could never be
stupid enough. Noémi certainly was not, but that made no difference. A
woman who desires a man can assume, before her mirror, the mind as well
as the eyes that he likes. She intoxicated Philippe with her youthful
body and her idolatry. She absorbed him greedily.

But the career of a mistress is not a sinecure. It requires the
expenditure of a kind of genius. And there is never a moment of rest!
After a long period of mutual amorous servitude Philippe was beginning
to grow weary. Noémi, marvellously prompt in perceiving in the heart of
her husband-lover the least signs of a veering of the wind, slept with
one eye open; always jealously on the watch, while Philippe was unaware
of it, she was able to turn danger aside with one stroke and entrap
again, by the allurement of the senses and her subtle wit, the man who
was about to escape her. It was a game at first, but not for long. Still
more than Philippe she had to watch herself, to be always attentive,
always ready to ward off the unexpected ravages of the perfidious
minutes, the infallible ravages of the days and the years. Noémi no
longer had all her first freshness; her complexion was mottled; the
fineness of her face was turning to dryness, her throat was growing
heavy, and the pure cords of her neck were menaced. Art flew to the aid
of the endangered masterpiece and even added a few additional charms.
But what tension this always meant! The least moment of abandon would
have betrayed the secret to the keen eye of the master, who would not
have forgotten it. Never to allow oneself to be taken unawares! . . .
What a tragedy one morning when one of the little upper incisors broke!
Noémi had remained half the day invisible at the dentist's, for if, on
her return, Philippe had not seen her exhibit her impeccable smile, he
would have had suspicions into which jealousy did not enter. (Though
even jealousy is less terrible than a broken tooth!) She had to play a
fast game. Philippe was not one of those husbands whom one can easily
deceive in regard to the quality of one's physical wares. He belonged to
that trade himself. Noémi always felt her heart beat a little when he
turned on her one of those "X-Ray" glances (as she called them,
laughing, to put him on the wrong scent) with which he made her undergo
a visit of inspection. "Does he see?" she would, wonder. He saw, but he
did not show it. Noémi's art seemed to him a part of nature; and so
long as the effect pleased him everything went well. But look out for
the day when the effect might fail! . . . She could not sleep two nights
running on her laurels. She had to win them anew every morrow morning.
And she was not permitted to appear anxious. To please the master she
had to seem always gay, young, radiant. It was crushing at times. In
moments of weariness, when she knew she was not being seen, she slid
down in the hollow of a divan, with a hard wrinkle between her eyes, a
shrivelled smile, her carmine lips bleeding. . . . But the attack of
weakness never lasted more than a minute or two. She had to set out
again. And she did set out. Young, gay, radiant. . . . Why not? She was
so. And she did not slacken. . . . Besides, there are ways of avenging
oneself against, a tyrant whom one cannot do without and who abuses one.
Enough! She had her secrets. . . . We shall speak of them presently if
she is willing. For the moment she laughs, not merely with her lips; she
is satisfied with herself and with him, she is sure, she has kept
him! . . . And naturally this is the hour when he escapes from her. . . .
In vain all her talent! All this trouble in vain! There always comes a
moment when the attention is relaxed. Even Argus slept. And the caged
animal, the heart of the chambered lover, regains its liberty.

Through one of those aberrations to which nature is accustomed, which
the good mediator finds to her advantage, Noémi, for once, saw a woman
without distrust. And that woman was Annette.

She was relying on the deceptive assurance that Philippe abhorred
intellectual women. Annette was the last one to cause her any
uneasiness. From the physical portrait of her rivals in the past, from
her own portrait, Noémi had made an image of the woman who might steal
her husband away from her. She saw her as small, like herself, rather
dark, pretty, of course, delicately made, coquettish, knowing how to
make the best of her advantages. Philippe professed the humorous opinion
that woman, being exclusively made for the service of man, should, in
modern life, be an extremely finished drawing-room trinket, but one that
was easy to handle--that, without taking up too much space, she should
agreeably furnish the drawing-room and bedroom. He did not like large
women and valued grace more highly than beauty. As for the qualities of
the mind, he said that, when he needed them, he found them in men, and
that the only mind he demanded of a woman was the "mind of the body."
Noémi did not contradict him in this: she corresponded with the
portrait. Annette did not correspond with it at all. Large and strong,
with a heavy beauty, in repose, when nothing animated her, and (when she
did not wish to have it) without grace. A Juno-heifer slumbering in a
meadow--so Noémi judged her reassuringly; and the fact that Annette
appeared so frigid with Philippe made her attractive. On her side,
Annette, who was very susceptible to prettiness in women, and inclined
to like what did not resemble herself, was charmed by Noémi; in talking
with her she showed that she too, when she wished, had an enchanting
smile. Philippe lost nothing of this; and his new-born flame blazed up
for this Annette with her two masks, one of which was not for him.
(Wasn't it for him? The love one repulses has such clever ways of
re-entering the place from which it has been expelled!) At the same time
that Annette was preventing Philippe from scrutinizing her mind and
intrenching herself behind her most unattractive manner, she was not
displeased that he should see her most captivating expression over the
wall. . . . Yes, he had seen it clearly. From the opposite corner of the
drawing-room, as he was describing to his hosts some recent experience,
he observed his wife, who was working for him unawares. Annette and
Noémi were lavishing on each other all the little graces with which
Noémi was always well supplied, inspiring in Annette a complex feeling
from which the uneasy thought of Philippe was not absent. And her ear
followed, from the opposite corner of the room, the derisive voice that
knew it was being listened to.

She hated him, she hated him. . . . He represented the deepest part of
her repressed nature, the nature she wished to repress, the good and the
bad, the hard, commanding pride, the need of dominating, the demands of
the will, those of the intelligence, of a sensual, violent body, passion
without love, stronger than love. And as she hated this faun of the
soul, hated it in herself, she hated it in him. But this was to engage
in an unequal combat. There were two against her--he and her own self.




XXXIX


Philippe Villard came from the small, independent merchant class.

His father, a printer in a little town, active, bustling, bold, had at
once the energy and the freedom from scruple that are necessary for
success on a vaster scene; but he did not succeed, because for success
there is a line of audacity that one must be able to reach and not go
beyond, and he had always gone beyond it. Managing a local newspaper
that swam on the troubled waters of politics, a Gambettist republican, a
tireless anti-clerical, a great hand at elections, he once exceeded the
limits of libel and blackmailing that are authorized by the law (no, by
custom!) and was condemned and dropped by those whom he had served. Ill
in addition, he saw that he was ruined; his plant was sold and all the
local hatreds were unmuzzled, now that he no longer had the means to
make himself useful or feared. He fought furiously, like a wolf, against
illness, poverty and misfortune. The exasperation made his condition
worse, and he died, expressing with his last breath his implacable
bitterness against the treason of his old companions. The son was ten
years old; and none of these imprecations was lost on him.

His mother, a proud peasant woman from the slopes of the Jura mountains,
accustomed to struggling with an ungrateful soil that was bitten by a
harsh wind, went out by the day as a washerwoman in the canal and
undertook the roughest work. She was as strong as a Percheron mare,
attacking her work with her four limbs and her iron frame, greedy for
gain, but painstaking, honest, hard on herself and close-fisted; she was
feared and sought after; she had a redoubtable tongue, which she
restrained, and people knew that, through her husband's death, she was
the mistress of many family secrets. She made no use of these, but she
possessed them, and it was more prudent to pay for her services than to
do without them. She had no intellectual scruples and was rigorously
active, rather sombre (for in this race Spain has left its blood), with
a limitless passion of energy which, mingled with Gallic
disillusionment, believes in nothing and yet acts as if salvation or
damnation were awaiting it. She loved nothing but her son. She was
ferocious in her love. She did not conceal from him any of the things
about which she held her tongue with other people; she treated him as a
partner. Ambitious for him alone, she sacrificed herself, and he was
going to sacrifice himself--for whom? For _her_ revenge. (_Hers_? Yes,
her own, that of the son, that of the mother--all the same thing!) No
tenderness, no indulgence--above all, no whimpering. "Go without things!
You will gloat over it later." When he came home from school--heaven
knew by what efforts of work and diplomacy she obtained for him a
scholarship in the town grammar-school, then at the lycée in the
county-town!--when he came home, thrashed and humiliated by the little
bourgeois boys, the fool-hardy heirs of the hidden spite of their
fathers, she said to him, "You will be stronger than they are later.
They will kiss your feet. Rely on yourself! Don't rely on anyone else!"

He did not rely on anyone else, and he soon made it clear that they
would have to reckon with him. She succeeded in clinging to life until
her son's studies were brilliantly finished and he had taken his first
term in medicine in Paris. He was in the midst of an examination when
she had to take to her bed with an inflammation of the chest. She did
not want to disturb him before he had finished. She died without him. In
her rude handwriting, twisted like the claws of the vine in spring, with
all the dots and accents well marked and in their places, she wrote to
him on a blank sheet carefully cut from a letter from her son, who was
reckless with his paper, "I am going. My boy, keep strong. Do not give
way."

He had not given way. Returning to the country to bury his mother, he
found a small sum of money, collected from day to day, which enabled him
to pay his way for another year. Then, thrown upon himself, he spent
half his days and sometimes his nights earning what the other half
demanded for his subsistence. No task was too much for him. He worked at
natural history for a taxidermist, he served as a sculptor's model, as
an extra boy on Sundays in suburban cafés, or on Saturday nights at
wedding-parties in restaurants. In winter, when he was hungry one
morning, he even took a job under the sewerage commission in a gang of
snow-sweepers. He did not hesitate to have recourse to bold-faced
begging, to charity societies, to accepting humiliating loans which he
could not pay back and which gave mean souls the right to treat him
without consideration for a five-franc piece. . . . (The blackguards!
They didn't try it again after the look he gave them! But then, since
they could not repay themselves with scorn, they did so with hatred,
prudently behind his back: they slandered him.) During a few months of
desperate labor, he went so far as to accept the money that a girl of
the neighborhood offered him. He did not blush at this, for it was not
for himself (he was killing himself with privations), it was for his
success. Of course he had needs! He wanted to take everything, but he
repressed his desire. Later on! He must conquer first. And to conquer he
must live. Live by every means. Victory cleanses everything. And it was
his due. He felt he was a genius.

He attracted the attention of his masters, his comrades. He was given
work to do that was signed by men at the top after they had made a
pretence of touching it up a little. He allowed himself to be exploited
so as to acquire a hold over those who barred the gates to new-comers.
They were in no great hurry to let him in. They respected him, and
respect is a kind of money that enables one to dispense with other
kinds. They appreciated him, oh, yes. But he did not grow fat on this.
In spite of his native strength, the strength of his mother's Jura
mountains, he was on the point of going under from fatigue and
malnutrition when Solange happened upon him. It was at one of those many
charities which she patronized with a sincere though intermittent
generosity, with her heart and her money; a children's clinic. Solange
saw Philippe there, devoting himself with a rage--that rage he felt to
conquer, whenever there was the least chance of it--at the beds of the
little patients who were apparently doomed. He spent nights there and
came away from these battles looking worn and debilitated, but with eyes
flaming with fever and genius. When he had conquered he was almost
handsome and seemed more than good as he sat by the little sufferer whom
he had just saved. Did he love him? It was possible, not certain. But he
had got the best of the disease.

Solange, when she saw Philippe's situation, passed through one of those
periodical crises of "patheticness" in which her whole horizon was
filled by a single object. Whoever wished to profit by this had to lose
no time. Philippe did not lose it. This drowning man grasped the hand
that was held out to him. He even took the arm with it, and he would
have taken the rest if he had not perceived that Solange, in her
infatuation, had no thought of an amorous relation. She loved to feel
exalted, but this in no way disturbed her tranquillity. Philippe had
never seen a woman who was interested in him without being in pursuit of
some interest of her own. The good Solange found her pleasure in
herself. All she asked of others was that they should not gainsay the
image she had formed of them. At heart she did not really want to know
them. She took pains not to see anything in the other person that might
displease her, saying to herself that this was not his "real nature";
and she accepted as real only what resembled herself. Thus she succeeded
in creating in her own mind a whole universe composed of good,
comfortable souls after her own pattern. Philippe let her go her own way
with a little contempt and a little respect. He did not like stupid
people; and he regarded as such those who did not see the world as it
was; but a goodness that does the good of which it speaks was for him no
everyday spectacle. Whatever their value might be, moral or immoral, the
essential thing was that such people counted. Solange's goodness was not
fictitious. Since she had become aware of Philippe's destitution and
toil, she gave him a pension till he finished his years of study; she
provided him with leisure so that he might work in peace. She did more:
she made use of her extensive relations to interest one of the
influential masters of the Faculty in him, or rather, since this
cautious man had not failed to observe the restless power of the hungry
young wolf, to so arrange things that his interest should not remain
confined _intus et in cute_, but should show itself in the open. In the
end she brought him into touch with an American oil-king who wanted to
immortalize himself vicariously and opened for him a rapid path to fame.
He laid the foundation of this across the ocean by his audacious feats
of surgery in a palatial hospital founded by this Pharaoh.

During the course of these trying years, however, Solange would
sometimes totally forget her protégé for months, and as a result of
her carelessness the promised pension would cease to come. With all
their good will, the rich cannot understand that some people have to
think of money all the time. Money is a constant anxiety with the poor.
Solange would send Philippe tickets to concerts. Philippe had to swallow
all his pride to remind this charming woman, in her box at the theatre,
of the unpaid pension. He swallowed it. It was sometimes the only
nutriment he had taken during the day. On these occasions Solange would
open her big, surprised eyes: "What's that. . . . Ah, my dear friend,
how astonished I am! The moment I get home . . ."

She would promise, forget it again for a day or two and finally send it,
excusing herself as gracefully as possible. Philippe, maddened by the
delay and the humiliation, would swear that the next time he would die
rather than ask for it again. But dying is not good for people who feel
the necessity of living! And he felt this necessity. . . . He would ask
for it again as often as he was obliged to do so. . . . Solange was
never put out with him. If she often forgot--she had "so much to think
of!"--when he reminded her of it she always took the same pleasure in
giving.

How strange was the relation between this man, young, ardent, hungry for
all the good things of the earth, and this woman, scarcely older than
himself, elegant, pretty, gentle, good enough to eat, who, as the years
passed, were often alone together, without any hint of anything
equivocal in their friendship! The calm Solange maternally advised
Philippe about his clothes, about the little problems of society and the
practical life. Philippe's pride was not ashamed to accept this, to ask
advice and even make her his confidante, to tell her of his ambitions
and his disappointments. He could do so without fear. Solange would hear
nothing that was evil, nothing that was real. What did it matter? She
listened, and she said afterwards, with her kind smile, "You want to
frighten me, but I don't believe you."

For she only believed what was not true.

And this man, pitiless to everything that was mediocre, made only one
exception in life: for Solange. He abstained from judging her.

Preceded by a reputation of the American kind, flashy, but substantial,
and based on indisputable realities, he had come back to Paris seven or
eight years before. The support of his patron, bringing official favor
with it in the wake of his insolent dollars, had opened a way for him in
spite of the triple barriers piled up by routine, jealousy and the just
rights of those who had been long awaiting their turn to enter. Whether
it was just or not, he was advanced over them all. Philippe had not
permitted himself to accept any honors or advantages he had not
deserved; but, knowing that he deserved them, he did not trouble himself
about the means by which he got them. He despised men too much not to
borrow their own contemptible weapons, when it was necessary, in order
to get the better of them. He did not despise a newspaper puff that
pierced people's ears like the brass instruments that used to accompany
the village tooth-pullers on their platforms. He was a great man for
fashionable exhibitions, first nights, varnishing-days, official galas.
He lent himself to sensational interviews. He himself wrote--one is
never served better than by oneself--and, through one or two examples,
showed those who contradicted him that he could handle the pen as well
as the knife. A counsel for amateurs! . . . Never be ambiguous! His way
of holding out his hand meant, "Alliance or war?" He allowed no means to
escape him by being neutral.

At the same time, a habit of working desperately, with no more
consideration for himself than he had for others, an indifference to
risks, brilliant results that could not be denied, made the internes in
the hospital he directed his enthusiastic partisans. He indulged in rash
communications to the Academy that aroused the exasperated incredulity
of comfortably settled souls who did not like to be turned upside down:
Homeric jousts from which he almost always emerged with the decisive
word and always with the last one.

He terrified the timid. He had no regard for individuals when the
interests of science or humanity seemed to him at stake. He would have
liked to experiment on criminals, destroy monsters, sterilize the
abnormal, undertake heroic operations on living subjects. He loathed
sentimentality. He did not give way to sympathy with his patients, and
he did not allow them to pity themselves. Their groans had no interest
for him. But when he was able to save them he did save them--harshly; he
cut down to the quick to cure the living man. He was hard of heart, but
his hands were gentle. People were afraid of him and they pursued him.
He fleeced the rich and asked nothing of the poor.

He lived in a large way, for he had acquired the taste for luxury. He
could give it up, however, on a day's notice; but, leading this life, he
led it whole-heartedly. His wife was part of his luxury. He enjoyed them
both and he never demanded of them anything they could not give. He did
not ask Noémi to share in his intellectual life; he did not give her a
chance to do so. Noémi did not care; if she had the rest, she had, as
she thought, the important part. He had made up his mind that in any
case this was all that women ought to have. A woman who thought was a
cumbersome bit of furniture.

Why, then, was he so immediately captivated by Annette?

Through that which resembled himself. Through the quality in the Annette
of this period that was like himself, the quality he alone could
perceive. At the first crossing of their glances, as their first
responses struck, steel against steel, he said to himself, "She sees
these people as I see them. She's one of my kind."

Of his kind? It scarcely seemed so, to judge by the facts. Annette had
fallen out of the social sphere into which Philippe had succeeded in
elbowing himself, and they had met each other, in passing, on one of the
rungs of the ladder. But at this particular moment they were on an equal
footing, they both felt that they were strangers in this world,
adversaries of this world, that they both really belonged to another
race, once mistress of the soil, but now dispossessed, scattered over
the earth and almost vanished. After all, who knows the mysteries of
races and their vicissitudes, that mingling of all, in the ultimate
future towards which, as it seems, humanity is moving for the final
triumph of mediocrity? . . . But it has its unexpected resurgences, and
sometimes the former master of the soil resumes his estate for a day.
Whether it was his estate or not, Philippe claimed it as his own. And in
this way he had just appropriated Annette.




XL


When Annette returned to her apartment again, with lowered head, heavy
with thought, she went to bed without speaking. She tried to make her
mind a blank, but she could not sleep. She had to struggle to escape
from a certain mental picture, for the moment she became drowsy the
picture appeared at the door of her imagination. To forget it she tried
to fix her mind on her everyday affairs: they did not interest her. Then
she appealed against the threatening invasion to an ally whom she
usually feared to invoke, because by doing so she ran the ride of
stirring up too many past troubles: Julien and the world of thoughts,
more fictitious than real, which her regrets and dreams had grouped
about the beloved name. They returned for a moment and fell back again,
frozen. She persisted in trying to grasp them by force. She held in her
arms only withered sheaves. A hot sun had dried up their sap. In her
desire to revive them Annette, with her feverish hands, only burned them
up. She was agitated, turning and turning her pillow. But she had to
sleep for the sake of to-morrow's work. She took a sleeping-powder and
fell into oblivion. But when she awoke after three or four hours, her
anxiety was still there. It seemed to her that even during her sleep it
had not left her.

During the next day and the days that followed, her anxiety persisted.
She came and went, gave her lessons, talked, laughed as usual. The
well-equipped machine went on of itself. But her soul was troubled.

One grey day, as she was crossing Paris, everything suddenly became
bright. On the other side of the street Philippe Villard was passing.
She went home filled with joy.

When she made up her mind to get to the bottom of this joy she was
thunderstruck. It was as if she had discovered a cancer in herself. . . .
So once more she had been caught in the trap. Love? Love for a man who
could only be for her another cause for useless suffering, a man whom
she was sure was dangerous, heartless, a man who could not belong to
her, who belonged to someone else, a man she could not love because she
loved someone else. Someone else? Yes, yes, she still loved Julien.
Well, if she loved him, how was it possible for her to love another man?
She did love him. . . . But how, how could her heart give itself to two
persons at once? Give itself wholly to each without dividing itself? For
when she gave her heart Annette gave it completely. . . . She had a
feeling that she was prostituting herself. To be sure, to surrender her
body would have seemed to her less shameful than to surrender her heart
to two loves at once. Wasn't she sincere, loyal to herself? . . . Of
course she was. She did not know that she had more than one heart, that
she was more than one being. In the forest of a soul there co-exist
thickets of thoughts, jungles of desire, twenty different essences.
Ordinarily one does not distinguish them: they are asleep. But when the
wind passes over them their branches dash against one another. . . . The
clash of passions had long since stirred this multiplicity to life in
Annette. She was at once a dutiful and a passionately proud woman, a
passionate mother, a passionate mistress. Mistress? Mistresses? The
forest in the wind with its branches flung out toward all the points of
heaven. . . . Annette, humiliated by the oppression of the force that
was disposing of her without her consent, thought: "What is the use of
willing and struggling for years if one moment is enough to ruin
everything? Where does this force come from?"

For she repudiated it, furiously, as something alien. Didn't she
recognize it as of her own substance? Ah, that was even more
overwhelming. How escape from herself?

She was not the sort of woman who yields passively to an inner fatality
that she despised. She determined to stifle a feeling that mortified
her. And with the help of her work she would have succeeded had it not
been for Noémi.

She received a letter in the large handwriting of this little person
who, although she had made a study of worldly elegance, was unable to
disguise the cold resolution that lay behind it. A few friendly lines
inviting her to dinner. Annette excused herself because of her work.
Noémi repeated the invitation, expressing this time the warm desire she
felt to see her again and leaving her to choose the evening. Annette,
determined not to risk a danger of which she had become aware, declined
the invitation again, pleading her extreme fatigue at the end of her
days. She thought the matter was settled, but the little Pandarus, who,
when he is bored and malicious, is one of the thousand forms of love,
left Noémi no peace until she had introduced Annette into her
sheepfold. And one evening when Annette, returned from her lessons, was
preparing dinner--the hour that idle people always choose to make their
calls--who should appear but Noémi, chirping, assuring her of her
eternal friendship. While Annette, embarrassed at appearing at such a
disadvantage, was beguiled by the affectionate manner of this woman in
whom she unconsciously loved the reflection of "the other one," she held
her ground, in spite of Noémi's entreaties, and absolutely refused to
dine with her. But she could not do less than promise to return her
call, carefully making sure of the hours when she would be certain to
find Noémi alone. Noémi perceived how anxious Annette was to avoid
Philippe; she put it down to timidity and a lack of sympathy with him.
Her own sympathy increased. When she was at home again she indiscreetly
poured out to Philippe an account of her call, dwelling, with the
charming perfidy of the best of friends, upon everything which, to her
mind, might tend to depreciate a woman in Philippe's eyes: the poverty,
the disorder, the odor of ink and cooking--in a word, Annette in the
kitchen. Philippe, who knew all about Annette's gallant history and who
knew still better the odor of poverty, made other reflections than those
he was expected to make, but he kept them to himself.

It was not altogether by chance that Annette, a few days later, as she
was coming out of Noémi's house, met Philippe in the street on his way
home. As she had not expected to meet him, she felt she had a right not
to combat the secret joy that ran through her. They exchanged a few
words. While they stopped to talk, a young woman passed to whom Philippe
bowed. Annette recognized her. She was the intelligent actress who was
playing Maslova just then. Annette was attracted to her, and this
attraction was evident in her look. Philippe asked: "Do you know her?"

"I have seen her," she said, "in _Resurrection_."

"Ah," he replied, with a contemptuous curve of his mouth.

"Don't you like her acting?"

"Her acting isn't the point."

"Is it the play then? You don't like it?"

"No," said Philippe. And seeing that Annette was curious to know his
reasons, he added, "Let's walk a little way together, shall we? It's
rather unconventional, but conventions were not made for us."

They walked along together. Annette was embarrassed and flattered.
Philippe talked about the play with a mixture of hostility and humor
such as Tolstoy himself--it was a fair enough turn of the wheel--had
often employed in regard to people he did not like. He interrupted
himself, amused at his severity, "I am not fair. . . . When I see a play
I see those who are watching it. I see under their membranes, and the
spectacle is not beautiful."

"It is with some people," said Annette.

"Yes, there are some people who have the gift of making the misery of
the world seem beautiful. This saves them the trouble of remedying it.
These good idealists manage to have many a sweet hour with the
misfortunes of others. They serve them as a means for artistic or
charitable emotions of the most tranquillizing kind, but they are of
even more service to the villains who exploit them. Their sentimentality
flies its protecting flag over patriotic leagues, leagues for
repopulation, the founding of missions, colonial wars and other
philanthropies. . . . The epoch of the teary eye! . . . There is no eye
that is colder and more self-interested! The epoch of the kind
employer--you have read Pierre Hamp?--who builds a church, a
slaughter-house, a hospital and a brothel near his factory! Their lives
are divided into two parts: one consists of talking about civilization,
progress, democracy, the other of the sordid exploitation and
destruction of the whole future of the world, the corruption of the
race, the annihilation of the other races of Asia and Africa. . . .
After this they go and melt with emotion over Maslova and take their
afternoon nap to the soft harmonies of Debussy. . . . Look out when the
awakening comes! Ferocious hatreds are piling up. The catastrophe is
coming. . . . So much the better! All their dirty medicine does is to
keep diseases going. Some day they will have to come to surgery."

"Will the patient recover?"

"I take away the disease. The patient has to take his chance!"

A joke. Annette smiled. Philippe threw her a sidelong glance. "It
doesn't frighten you?"

"I am not ill," said Annette.

He stopped and looked at her. "No, you are not. In your presence one
breathes the fragrance of health. It frees me from my physical and moral
infections. The latter are the worst. Excuse my diatribe! But I've come
from a meeting, a dispute with a gang of hypocrites over the official
support of disease--that is, over hygiene. I was furious and suffocating
with disgust, and when I saw you with your clear eyes, walking along so
freely, with everything about you so proud and wholesome, I selfishly
drank in a whiff of your air. There! It's better now. Thank you."

"So I'm promoted to the rank of a doctor. And after what you have just
been saying about them?"

"Doctor, no. Medicine. Oxygen."

"You have a direct way with people!"

"This is the way I class them: inspiration, expiration, those who bring
you to life and those who kill you, whom you must kill."

"Whom do you want to kill now?"

"Now?" He took her up. "Don't you think I have enough to do with my
patients?"

"No, no, I couldn't help saying that," replied Annette, laughing. "It
was my old classic blood. . . . But may I ask you with whom you were
angry when I met you?"

"I should so much like to forget it, now that I'm with you. To put it
briefly, it was about a block of unsanitary houses that has been a
breeding-ground for cancer and tuberculosis ever since the time of Henry
IV. The finished product: eighty per cent infected during the last
twenty years. I had brought the matter before the sanitary board and
demanded radical measures, that the buildings should be expropriated and
torn down. They seemed to agree with me and asked me to draw up a
report. I drew up the report, went back and found that the oracles had
changed their minds. . . . An impressive report, dear and eminent
colleague, a fine document. We must think it over. We must look into
this. There is no doubt that these people have died, but were their
deaths really due to the houses they lived in? . . . One of them brings
me some certificates (manufactured how?) proving, with the complicity of
various families who had been bribed by the owner, that one man had
already bought his ticket to the cemetery when he came and settled in
the waiting-room, that in another case the cancer was the result of an
accident. Another contests the idea that old houses are less sanitary
than new ones and says they are larger and more airy; he gives his own
as an example. . . . We must make things sanitary, not destroy.
Moderation in all things. A good cleaning will be enough; the owner
promises to have them disinfected. . . . Besides, we are poor, our
pockets are empty, we haven't the money to expropriate them. . . . Ah!
if it were a question of making a new gun! . . . But, after all, cancer
kills more surely than a gun. . . . To finish the farce, one of the
augurs ended by talking about beauty. It seems that since these
buildings belonged to the period of Henry IV, they ought to be preserved
for the sake of history and art. . . . I am fond of art myself, and I
can show you some pictures in my own house, ancient and modern both; but
age (unless we are talking about beautiful Madame So-and-So) is not the
mark of beauty; and, beautiful or not, I shall never admit that the past
should poison the present. Of all hypocrisies, the aesthetic hypocrisy
revolts me the most, for it tries to create nobility out of its own
barrenness. So I said some pretty stiff things on that score. . . . In
the middle of the discussion a colleague motioned to me, drew me aside
and said, 'Don't you know that old beetle who feeds on the corpses
of his tenants is an intimate friend of the president of that great
committee of commerce and food-supply which brings about elections and
coalitions, one of those grizzled dignitaries who rule over our
democratic banquets and conventions, the invisible man out of whom the
rabble constructs the tottering masonry--freemasonry--of our Republic?
This friend of the people doesn't want to have the people turned out of
their tomb . . . because, and this is the best of all . . . because of
his philanthropy. . . .' At the end they hand me a petition from the
tenants, drawn up in fine style, protesting against this desire to turn
them out of their quarters! What do you expect me to do against all
these people? The augurs laugh, they say. So I laughed. But I added that
one shouldn't keep a good joke to oneself, that I was not an egoist, and
that I intended to share it to-morrow with the readers of the _Matin_.
They cried out at this, but I shall do as I said. I know what to expect;
every knife will be raised against me. . . . The disciples of
Hippocrates, to whom I've just given a good drubbing, will miss no
chance. They have their own way of getting back at me. But, as you say,
'War,' my Lady Warrior! How about the other evening at Solange's? All
this seems to amuse you?"

"Yes, it's splendid. I like this, fighting against injustice. I should
have liked to be a man."

"There is no need to be a man. You have done your share. . . ."

"I have never complained of my share in the struggle. It's only the
suffocation. Our lot is to fight in a cave, but you fight in the open
air, on a mountain-top."

"Ah! that quivering of the nostrils! A horse sniffing the powder. I've
seen that already. I noticed it the other evening."

"You laughed at me the other evening."

"Not at all. It was too much like myself for me to laugh."

"You harassed me; you started me off."

"Yes, I saw it at once. . . . I wasn't mistaken. . . ." "Just the same,
you were contemptuous enough in the beginning."

"How the devil could I have expected to find you, to find you at
Solange's house?"

"Well, but what about yourself? Why were you there?"

"It's another matter with me."

"A liking for sentimentality?"

"It's your turn to tease. . . . Poor Solange! . . . No, don't let's talk
about her. I know everything that can be said. But Solange is taboo."

She did not question him, but she looked at him.

"I'll tell you some other time. . . . Yes, I owe her a great deal."

They had come to a stop. They were about to separate. Annette smiled.
"You are not as bad as you seem."

"And perhaps you're not as good!"

"That makes an average."

He looked her directly in the eyes. "Will you?"

He was no longer joking. The blood streamed into Annette's cheeks, and
she could not find a way to reply. Philippe's eyes held her and would
not let her go. Was he saying something? Was he not saying anything? On
his lips she read, "I want you."

He bowed and went on.




XLI


Annette remained alone in a torrent of flame. She walked straight ahead
and ten minutes later she found herself at the point from which she had
started. Without realizing it, she had made the complete circuit of the
iron fence of the Luxembourg Gardens. She came to herself to find that
she was all on fire, with the three flaming words engraved on a black
background. She made an effort to efface them. Had he uttered them? . . .
She saw again the impassive face, she tried to disbelieve it. But the
imprint was there, and her resistance weakened and suddenly gave way.
Well, it was decreed. . . . She knew it in advance. . . Instead of
revolting, as she would have thought of doing an hour before, she felt
relieved. The die was cast. . . .

She went home with her mind clear, no longer feverish. She had decided.
She knew that whatever Philippe wished he would do, and what Philippe
wished she wished also. She was free, nothing held her back. . . . The
thought of Noémi? She owed her only one thing, the truth. She would not
lie. She would take what belonged to her. . . . What belonged to her?
The other woman's husband. . . . But blind passion whispered to her that
Noémi had stolen him from her.

She did nothing to hasten the inevitable. She was sure that Philippe
would come. She waited.

He came. He had chosen the hour when he knew that she would be alone.

As she went to open the door she was seized with terror. But it had to
be as it was. She opened the door, revealing nothing of what she felt,
unless her paleness did so. He entered the room. They remained standing
before each other, a few steps apart, their heads lowered; then he
looked at her with his serious eyes. After a silence he said, "I love
you, Rivière."

And this name of Rivière in his mouth brought up the image of a stream
of water.

Annette, trembling, motionless, replied, "I don't know whether I love
you. I don't think I do, but I know that I am yours."

The gleam of a smile passed over Philippe's grave face. "Good," he said.
"You don't lie. Neither do I."

He took a step towards her. She drew back instinctively and found
herself leaning against the wall of the room, defenceless, the palms of
her hands pressed out behind her, and her legs gave way beneath her. He
had stopped and he looked at her. "Don't be afraid," he said. There was
something tender in his hard look.

Like a captive who accepts her fate calmly, she said, with a shadow of
scorn, "What do you want of me? Is it my body you want? I will not
dispute with you over that. Is that the only thing you want?"

He took another step and sat down on a low chair at her feet. His cheek
brushed her dress. He took Annette's hand, which she limply abandoned to
him. He breathed in its fragrance, passed his lips over the fingertips
and, bending down, placed it on his head, on his eyes. "This is what I
want."

Under her fingers, Annette felt the rough, bushy hair, the swelling of
the forehead and the beating temples. This imperious man was placing
himself under her protection. She leaned towards him and he raised his
face. It was their first kiss.

His arms encircled Annette, who had dropped on her knees beside him and
no longer resisted, as if she had no breath left, and Philippe, violent
as he was, had no thought of taking advantage of his victory. "I want
everything," he said, "all of you, mistress, friend, companion--my woman
altogether."

Annette extricated herself. Noémi's image had risen before her. A
moment before it had been she who had driven her from her consciousness.
But that Philippe should do the same thing wounded her in a way, wounded
her in that instinctive freemasonry of women who, even as enemies, find
themselves leagued against the aggressiveness of man--one body in
common.

"You cannot," said Annette. "You belong to another."

He shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing of me that she possesses."

"She has your name and your faith."

"What does the name matter? You have the rest."

"I don't care about the name, but I must have your faith. I give it and
I ask for it."

"I am ready to give it to you."

But Annette, who had asked for it, felt a certain revolt when it was
offered to her. "No! no! Do you mean to take it away from her who has
shared your life for years and give it to me whom you have only seen
three times?"

"It has not required three times for me to see you."

"You don't know me."

"I do know you. I have learned to see into life quickly. Life goes by
and no moment ever appears twice. You must make up your mind on the spot
or you can never make it up. You are passing, Rivière, and if I do not
take you I lose you. I take you."

"You may be making a mistake."

"Perhaps. I know that when one makes a decision one often makes a
mistake. But in not deciding one always makes a mistake. I should never
forgive myself the error of having seen you without determining to
possess you."

"What do you know about me?"

"More than you think. I know that you have been rich and that you are
poor, that you had a youth filled with all the pleasures of wealth and
that you were ruined and cast out of your world, that you have struggled
and not weakened. I know what your struggle has been, for I underwent it
myself, every day, for thirty years of my life, a hand-to-hand struggle,
and twenty times I was on the point of giving in. You have held out. As
for me, I was used to it. I have known abject poverty from the cradle.
You had a thin skin, and you were pampered and made much of. You did not
yield. You have never accepted any shameful compromise. You never tried
to escape the struggle by any feminine means, seduction or the honest
expedient of a marriage for money."

"Do you imagine it has been offered to me so many times?"

"That is because they knew very well, even the meanest of them, that you
are not a person to be bought by contract."

"Inalienable, yes."

"I know that after having loved and had a child you refused to be the
wife of your child's father. I do not need to know the reasons of your
heart. But I do know that in the face of a cowardly society, you dared
to demand, not the right to enjoy, but the right to suffer, the right to
have a son and bring him up, in your poverty, alone. It was nothing to
have demanded this right, but you have exercised it, all by yourself,
for thirteen years. And knowing, through my own experience, what these
thirteen years mean in suffering and daily effort, I see you before me,
intact, straight, proud, without a trace of wear and tear. You have
escaped two defeats, that of failure and that of bitterness . . . I
myself have not escaped the mark of the latter. . . . I am a connoisseur
of the battle of life. I know what the quality of a character like yours
is worth. That serious smile, those clear eyes, the calm line of the
lids, the loyalty of those hands, that tranquil harmony--and, under it
all, the burning fire, the joyous thrill of the struggle, even if one is
beaten. (It doesn't seem to matter! One goes on fighting . . .) Do you
suppose that a man like myself does not know the value of a woman like
you? Or that, knowing it, he should not be ready for anything to win
it? . . . Rivière, I want you. I need you. Listen! I am not trying to
deceive you. Although I desire your good, I do not want you for your own
good, but for my own. I am not offering you any advantages, only more
ordeals. . . . You don't know about my life. . . . Sit down here beside
me, my beauty of the eyebrows!"

Seated on the floor, she raised her eyes to his. He held her two hands
in a firm clasp while he talked to her. "I have a name, I have success,
I have money and everything it gives. But you don't know how I got them
or how I keep them. I took them by force and I hold them by force. I
compelled my fate, if there is a fate. I succeeded in spite of things
and in spite of men. And I have never tried, or desired, to win
forgiveness for my success by bandaging the wounded self-esteem and the
interests that have been trampled upon as I passed. My dear colleagues
expect that success at least will have its narcotic effect upon me.
There hasn't been any such effect. They have tried in vain to flatter
me; they feel that I am not and never will be one of them. I can't
forget what I have seen on the other side of the fence, the innumerable
rascalities and iniquities. I have had time to meditate on the social
lies for which the best watchdog has always been the intellectual class,
in spite of what it pretends and what people expect from it. Apart from
a few knowing fellows who, where their art and thought are in question,
have the reputation of respecting nothing, but who, outside their own
bailiwick, tip their hats very politely to the reigning imbecility. I
have had the conspicuous folly never to pay court to it. At this very
moment I am planning an attack upon some of their sacred impostures,
impostures that condemn thousands of beings to poverty and endless
misery. I am going to make the three heads of Cerberus howl, the three
hypocrisies of morality, patriotism and religion. I shall tell you all
about it later. I shall be beaten, too, I know. But I shall fight on
just the same, for the joy of it, for the difficulty, and because it has
to be done. . . . You see why your words, the other evening, brought me
a message you never foresaw. Your words are mine. The mouth ought to be
mine."

Annette gave it to him. He took her forehead and her Cheeks tenderly in
his strong hands. "Rivière, I need you. I never expected to find you.
Now that I have you I shall hold you."

"Hold me firmly! I am afraid I may escape."

"I know how to keep you. I offer you my hard life, my enemies, my
dangers."

"Yes, you know me. But none of this can be mine. It is not yours to
dispose of. It belongs to your Noémi."

"What would she do with it? She doesn't want to know anything about it.
She ignores all truth, everything that is painful in life."

Annette looked at Philippe, and he read in her eyes the question she
withheld.

"You are thinking, 'Why did he marry her, then?' The woman lies, yes, I
know it. Her whole body is a lie, from the roots of her hair to the tips
of her nails. Well, the odd thing is that I took her for that very
reason. It is almost the reason why I love her. When falsehood is as
perfect an art as that it deserves a good theatre. . . . (Don't we know
that the theatre, that almost all art, lies, except in the case of a few
freaks who bewilder their confrères; then the confrères say that they
are not artists, that they ruin the trade.) If the world is a lie, at
least we have the right to demand that the lie shall be pleasant.
Everything considered, I prefer for my satisfaction and my society those
who lie prettily. They don't take me in. I see through them. Noémi's
grace is as artificial as her sentiments. But she makes a success of it.
She does me credit. I enjoy it when I come home in the evening with my
eyes befouled by the cutting up of spoiled meat. She is like laughing
water. I bathe in it. Let her lie! It is of no importance. If she spoke
the truth she would have nothing to say."

"You are hard. She loves you."

"No doubt, and I love her too."

"If you love her, why do you need me?"

"I love her in her own way."

"That's a great deal."

"A great deal for her, perhaps. It's not much for me."

"But can I give you what she gives you?"

"You are not a toy."

"I should like to be a toy, too. Life is a game."

"Yes, but you believe in it. You are one of those players who take the
game seriously."

"So are you."

"Because I wish to do so."

"How do you know that I too don't wish to do so?"

"Well, let's wish together!"

"I don't want a happiness that is built on ruins. I have suffered. I
don't want to cause suffering."

"All life is bought with suffering. Every happiness in nature is built
upon ruins. In the end everything is ruined. At least we can have built
something!"

"I can't make up my mind to sacrifice another person. Poor little
Noémi!"

"She would have less pity if she had you under her feet."

"I suppose so. But she loves you, and to me it is a crime to kill a
love."

"Whether you wished it or not, it's done now. Your presence has killed
it."

"You think of nothing but yourself."

"No one thinks of anything but himself in love."

"No, no, that's not true. I think of myself, of you, of the woman who
loves you, of everything that you love and everything that I love. I
should like my love to be good and full of joy for everyone."

"Love is a duel. If you look to the right or the left you are lost. Look
straight before you into your adversary's eyes."

"My adversary?"

"I."

"You are indeed, but I don't fear you. But Noémi is not my adversary.
She has done me no harm. Can I come into her life and destroy it?"

"Would it be better to lie to her?"

"Deceive her? Far better to destroy her! . . . Or destroy me. Renounce."

"You will not renounce."

"How do you know?"

"Women like you never renounce through weakness."

"Why shouldn't it be through strength?"

"I will not admit that there is any strength in abdicating. I love you
and you love me. I defy you to renounce."

"Don't defy me!"

"You love me."

"I love you."

"Well?"

"Well, what you say is true, I can't, I can't renounce."

"Then?"

"Then so be it!"




XLII


They had not yet said anything to the "other woman."

Annette had sworn to herself that she would not belong to Philippe till
he had spoken to Noémi. But the strength of passion had been too much
for her resolution. No one appoints the hour for passion. It seizes its
own. And now it was Annette who restrained Philippe. She dreaded his
implacability.

Philippe would not have scrupled to leave Noémi in ignorance. He did
not respect her enough to feel that he owed her the truth. But if he was
obliged to tell it, he meant to tell it without stopping to consider
her. He was a terrible man, terribly without kindness when a passion had
seized upon him. Nothing else existed. The love that he had felt for
Noémi was that of a master for a valuable slave, and indeed she had
never been anything more than this for him. Like many women she had
adapted herself to this; when the slave holds the master nothing exceeds
her power. She is everything until the day comes when she ceases to be
anything. Noémi knew this, but she felt confident in her youth and her
charm for many more years. After us the deluge! Besides, she had been on
the watch. She had known of Philippe's passing infidelities. She had not
attached much importance to them because she had wisely realized that
they were momentary. She simply consoled herself with the luxury of
small revenges of which she said nothing to him. She had deceived him in
a temper on one occasion, one sole occasion when Philippe's
unfaithfulness had stung her more than usual. She had enjoyed it very
little; she had even been rather disgusted. But no matter, they were
quits. Afterwards she had been more affectionate to her husband than
before. It gave her satisfaction to say to herself, as she embraced him,
"My dear, I am lying to you. This will teach you! You're it, this time!"

The fear she would have had of Philippe, if he had learned the truth,
added to the interest. Philippe knew nothing definite, no facts, but he
read the lie in her eyes. Whether Noémi had deceived him or not, he
knew she was thinking about it. And she saw a flash pass through his
eyes; his hands might have crushed her. But he knew nothing; he would
never know anything; she closed her eyes with the languorous air of a
dove.

He said brutally, "Look at me."

She had time to assume an innocent expression. He knew it was false--and
he did not resist it.

He was not angry with her, but if he had caught her in the act he would
have broken her back. He did not expect from her what she could not give
him, frankness and faithfulness. Since she pleased him, and as long as
she pleased him, all was well. But he considered himself free to break
with her when she no longer pleased him.

Annette had more scruples. She was a woman, and she knew better what was
going on in Noémi's heart. Noémi might be false and vain and she might
deceive Philippe, but she loved him. No, for her it was not just a game,
as he had said it was. She was bound to him as if he were a part of her
own flesh, not merely by the fiery bond of sensual pleasure, but from
the bottom of her heart, for good or evil. Good and evil. In love
nothing counts but the strength of love, that imperious magnet that
draws soul and body together, one being into another being. She clung to
him as the aim and purpose of her life, as what she had wanted, wanted,
wanted through long years. A woman does not always know why she has
fallen in love. But because she has fallen in love she cannot liberate
herself. She has expended too much of her strength and her desire to be
able to transfer them to another object. She lives like a parasite on
the being she has chosen. It would be necessary to cut into them both to
separate them.

A suspicion began to eat its way into Noémi. A mere nothing, at first,
the nibbling of a mouse. There was no change in their life. Philippe,
hard as ever, always in a hurry, with little desire to talk, listened to
her without hearing her, absorbed, with a flame in his eyes. Just at
this time he was deep in a very disagreeable affair, a bitter
controversy in which he had involved himself. Noémi knew about it, but
the last thing she wanted was to be kept informed of these bothersome
matters. When he was in the midst of them he thought of nothing else,
and he neglected her. She had only to wait and let him fast; he would
come back to her later with more appetite than ever. But he was fasting
too long now! At other times she had amused herself by enticing him in a
way that moved Philippe to rebuff her, for it annoyed him to be
distracted when he was engrossed in something; but although she had
protested loudly at his rudeness she had not been angry. She had been
like a child playing with a fire-cracker; the more noise it made the
more it diverted her. But this time, calamitously, the fire-cracker had
not gone off. . . . Noémi's provocations had met with nothing but
indifference. Philippe did not even notice them. . . . The mouse of her
suspicion went away, came back, took up its abode in her. It nibbled so
far that it reached the quick. There came a day when Noémi cried out.

They were both in bed, one morning, side by side. His eyes were open.
She had just awakened, but she pretended to be asleep and she watched
him. Instinctively she felt that the reflection of another face was
passing over this one. (For, unaware of it as we may be, the outer
casing of the mind is moulded by the image that dwells in it.) Her
jealous attention was instantly caught. From under her lowered lids her
eyes pierced him like a gimlet as she lay there, motionless, continuing
to breathe regularly as if she were sleeping; she keenly studied this
man who was so far away, so near, this man who belonged to her, this
eternal stranger whose thigh was touching her own and between whom and
herself lay an impassable world. No, she was not mistaken, there was some
other anxiety in his mind aside from his ideas. . . . Anxiety? . . . She
saw him smile. He was thinking of another woman. To snatch him
away from this phantom, to test her own power, she groaned as if she was
dreaming and rolled over against him. He drew away from this body that
was seeking him, assured himself that she was asleep, rose noiselessly,
dressed and went out. She had not moved. . . . But the door was not
closed before she sat up in bed with her face distorted. She beat her
breasts with her little fists, stifling a cry of rage and anguish.

From this moment she was a huntress. Tense, quivering, she looked about,
she sought the scent. The nails of her clenched hands hurt her; she was
burning to tear the enemy to pieces. . . . Oh, silently, gently. . . .
To tear the woman's heart out. . . . But she could not find this heart.
Where was it hidden? She beat the woods, explored with feverish
minuteness the circle of his acquaintances. With her painted, youthful
smile hiding her sharp teeth, she did not miss the least alteration of
Philippe's face in the presence of the other sex, while she watched the
hands, the eyes, the vocal inflections of every one of them, while the
hunting-dogs that she carried in her heart were constantly casting about
for the scent. . . . But the trail was always false and the animal
escaped.

The strange aberration persisted which, from the beginning, had led her
to place Annette outside the field of her suspicions. For weeks she had
forgotten her. Annette never appeared. She felt guilty and, far from
being proud, she was humiliated at the thought of Noémi because of her
secret victory, her stolen victory. She avoided any reappearance at the
Villards' house, and she would have found plenty of excuses if Noémi
had expressed any desire to see her again. But Noémi expressed nothing
of the kind; she had too much on her mind to remember Annette.

She had tried in van to convince herself that Philippe's caprice would
pass. But, far from passing, the all too evident symptoms of his
disaffection became even more marked: a cold inattention to what she
said and how she looked, to the very presence of his little wife, at
times a complete indifference--even when Noémi tried to force the fact
of her existence upon him, a bored weariness, an unconcealed disgust
that avoided any importunate contact. . . . She quivered with rage and
slighted love! . . . She could not hide from herself any longer the
seriousness of this misfortune. She became frantic. But she was careful
always to force herself not to show it. . . . Always, always to be gay,
sure of herself and of him, always to keep offering him the bait which
he would not even look at! She was eating her heart out. . . . And
against this intangible enemy there rose within her a furious hatred.
Unable as she was to lay hold of her, she could have beaten her own head
against the wall. She had watched everyone, everyone, in vain--everyone
but Annette. Annette was the last person she would have thought of.

And it was Annette who betrayed herself.

She was walking along the street when, twenty steps away, she saw Noémi
coming towards her. Noémi did not see her. She was walking with her
eyes empty, her head bent; her pretty face was pale and looked older and
careworn. She was not conscious of herself at this, moment or of
anything about her; for days she had been like a monomaniac who, with a
dejected rage, turns the grindstone of a fixed idea. Annette was shocked
at the sight of her. She might have passed close beside her without being
noticed, or have retraced her steps, but in her clumsy haste she left
the sidewalk and crossed the street. This movement broke the continuous
flow of the passing people and mechanically attracted Noémi's
attention. She recognized Annette, who was trying to avoid her, and,
following her with her eyes, she saw Annette furtively glance at her
from the other side of the street and then turn her head away. It was
like a blinding light. . . . She was the woman!

She stopped with her heart in her mouth, her nails driven into the palms
of her hands, clenching her teeth, bristling like a cat with its back
arched; there was murder in her eyes. The look of a passer-by reminded
her that she was in a world where people live by falsehood, the world
which, for once, she had left. She returned to it. But ten steps farther
on she laughed cruelly. She had caught her. . . .




XLIII


Annette had been completely upset by the sight of Noémi. Ever since she
had surrendered herself she had been tormented by remorse. Not that she
considered herself at fault for loving the man who loved her: their love
was true, it was healthy, it was strong. It had no need of excuse or
pretence. No social convention weighed in her mind against it. In the
fever of her passion she would not even admit that she had any duty
towards Noémi. She was Philippe's real wife. She could not recognize
the other one who had not been able to share in his work and his
struggles and make him happy. But all this assurance did not alter the
fact that someone else paid the price of her own happiness, that she had
destroyed the happiness of another. She had tried to believe that Noémi
was too frivolous to suffer very much and that she would not find it
very hard to give him up. But she knew this was not so, and all she
could do was to avoid thinking of Noémi. The self-centredness of the
first days of passion had made this possible.

But it was no longer possible now that she had met Noémi. Annette had
the unfortunate gift of being able to pass outside herself and enter
sympathetically, in spite of her own passions, into the passions of
others--especially into their sufferings, which a glance revealed to
her. . . .

She went home almost as much obsessed as Noémi by the anxiety that was
devouring her. She could not satisfy herself with words; she could not
fortify herself with the rights of love. Noémi, too, was in love, and
Noémi was suffering. Has the love that suffers less rights than the
love that causes the suffering? It is not a question of rights. One of
the two must suffer, she or I!

She! Annette's passion left her no choice. . . . But it was far from
pleasant.

At least this suffering should not be aggravated! It was wrong to
prolong it as they did, to let the wound grow worse without applying a
firm hand to it, operating upon it, dressing it. To dodge the frank
confession, to throw upon Noémi all the misery of discovering her
misfortune, was cowardly and cruel. From the very first day Annette had
insisted to Philippe, "I am unwilling to conceal myself." Then how had
she allowed herself to slip from day to day into this undignified
situation? . . . It was her own faint-heartedness all the time.

"We must speak," she said to Philippe.

But the moment Philippe was willing to speak she prevented him. She was
afraid of his brutal frankness. He threw away like a squeezed lemon what
he no longer loved. His old bonds annoyed him. "Come," he said, "let's
make an end of it."

And Annette replied, "No, no, not to-day." She saw the suffering he was
going to cause. Gracious heavens! How painful a thing it was to destroy
a heart!

Philippe had plenty of other things to think about! His days were filled
by an implacable warfare against public opinion and a press that was
aroused against him. This was no time for Annette to bother him with her
own troubles. He was engaged in a perilous campaign. He had taken the
initiative in a league for birth-control. He abhorred the shameless
hypocrisy of the ruling bourgeoisie who, without the slightest interest
in improving the hygiene or alleviating the poverty of the
working-classes, were only interested in increasing their numbers, so
that there would be plenty of fodder for factory and cannon. So far as
they are concerned, they are careful not to threaten their prosperity
and complicate their life by having too many children themselves. But
they are not at all disturbed if a badly regulated birth-rate
perpetuates poverty, sickness and slavery among the common people. They
make a national and religious duty of this. Philippe was well aware of
the fury he would arouse, but no danger had ever stopped him. He rushed
straight into them, though they were greater than he expected.

He had made himself hated by a multitude: first by his colleagues, the
pontiffs, whose vanity, doctrines and interests were wounded, then by
the rivals he supplanted and even some of his own adherents, to whom he
had not hesitated to tell the unvarnished truth. For he was not the man
to exchange easy compliments with people who praised him, and gratitude
was the least of his faults. He took what was due to him and he gave
only what he thought was deserved--which was not very much. Solange
alone excepted, the title of benefactor did not greatly impress him. No
favoritism! So he could only expect to be attacked hard and defended
weakly. He embarrassed the manœuvres of the profiteers of the ideal.
Every time some noble, philanthropic, filibustering scheme was
organized, they could be sure that he would place himself in opposition
to it. He took a scandalous pleasure in punching the noses of the
virtuous at their sly tricks. In this way he had earned in respectable
quarters, the (_sotto voce_) reputation of a bad character, a destroyer,
an anarchist. These whispers had not yet ventured as far as the public
ear--the monstrous ear of _Pasquino_, the slanderous press. They were
awaiting the right moment. _Eccolo_! The beautiful occasion had
come! . . . It was an explosion of patriotic anger. All the papers took
part in it. The echo of the public indignation reached Parliament, where
immortal words were pronounced vindicating the right of the poor to a
plentiful family. A few exalted souls proposed a law that would deal
rigorously with all propaganda that tended directly or indirectly to
reduce the population. The exaggerations of a free-and-easy press, in
which the egoism of the pleasure-lover took precedence over all
humanitarian reasons, furnished arguments to discredit the cause.
Philippe found his adherents among the enemies of society. To every
volley he replied straightforwardly himself in one of the great
newspapers. But there was danger that this tribune would fail him, for
letters of protest flooded the paper. He gave lectures; he spoke at
riotous meetings. His vehemence equalled that of his opponents. They
were on the watch for some imprudent utterance that would enable them to
overpower him. But this formidable wrestler remained the master of his
passions and did not allow himself to be carried an inch beyond what he
wanted to say. He achieved an enormous notoriety; he was all the rage
with some and an object of scorn and hatred to others. He found it easy
to breathe in the dust of the combat.

In the midst of this tempest of what account was Noémi?




XLIV


Noémi hastened homewards. She was remembering Philippe's first meeting
with Annette, when she had been present--her own stupidity and their
treachery. She was furious. Scarcely had she found herself between the
walls of her apartment than she gave way to her rage. It was like a
water-spout. In the twinkling of an eye everything was laid waste.
Anyone who saw her, weeping, convulsed, would have had difficulty in
recognizing her, with her pretty face distorted with anger, biting and
tearing her handkerchief, making havoc of the papers on her husband's
writing-table, avenging her suffering on the little dog that ran to her
to be petted and the paroquet she was ready to strangle. . . . But she
had taken care to lock herself in. The rôle of Fury should certainly be
played in private. It was not beautifying. It made her look hard, old
and worn out. But to see herself in the mirror, without witnesses, ugly
and wicked, did not displease her; it almost gave her comfort. This,
too, was a form of vengeance. She began to pity herself and her face,
and, distracted from her violence by this compassion, she rolled on the
carpet and sobbed loudly. . . . This could not last long, for Philippe
would be coming in; she must hurry, take double mouthfuls, weep quickly,
weep for all she was worth. . . . She continued to sob in great gusts,
but the worst part of the storm was already over. The little dog
returned, unresentfully, and licked her ear. She hugged him, moaning,
and sitting on the carpet petted one of his feet and fell silent. She
was thinking. Suddenly, with her mind made up, she rose to her feet,
fastened up the hair that had fallen over her eyes, picked up the
objects that were strewn about the room, rearranged the scattered
papers, carefully composed her face and her dress. Then she waited.

Philippe found her calm and appreciative. At first she tried the
simplest weapons. In the course of their talk she innocently let fall a
few offensive words about her detested rival. In a sweet voice she said
two or three atrocious things about Annette--about her outward
appearance, of course. The moral question was secondary; even when the
spirit is what one loves, it is the body that makes love. Noémi was
expert in finding in a woman's beauty the things that make her seem
ugly, things which, once they have been seen, cannot be forgotten. This
time she surpassed herself. To poison the image of the rival in the eyes
of a lover is an inspiring task. . . . Philippe never flinched.

Then she changed her tactics. She defended Annette against various bits
of gossip; she praised her virtues. (Eulogies have no consequences!) She
tried to make him talk, to make him take off his mask, to open battle
with her on the field where she was awaiting him. But Philippe remained
as indifferent to the good things she said as to the evil.

She brought into action all her amorous allurements. She tried to arouse
Philippe's jealousy; she threatened, laughingly, to pay him back if he
ever deceived her and to pay him double. He pleaded a business
engagement and got up to go.

Then anger seized her again. She cried out that she knew everything,
that he was Annette's lover. She threatened him, upbraided him, besought
him, talked about killing herself. He shrugged his shoulders and,
turning his back, walked to the door without a word. She ran after him,
caught him by the arms, forced him to turn around and, with her face
against his, in an altered voice, said, "Philippe! . . . You don't love
me any longer. . . ."

He looked her in the eyes and said, "No!" Then he went out.

If Noémi had been distracted, she now became possessed. For hours her
head whirled with insane fury. She thought of every absurd, ferocious
means of avenging herself. To kill Philippe. To kill Annette. To kill
herself. To dishonor Philippe. To defame Annette. To make Annette suffer.
To throw vitriol over Annette. . . . What joy to disfigure her! . . .
To strike at her through her honor. To strike at her through her
child. To write, send anonymous letters. . . . Feverishly she scribbled
a few lines, tore them up, began again, tore them up again. . . . She
was just as ready to set fire to the house.

But she did not do so. Calming herself gradually, she collected her
strength and the true genius of a woman in love came into play.

She saw plainly that she could do nothing with Philippe directly. He
would pay her for this some day! . . . But for the moment he was
inaccessible. Consequently, she must deal with Annette. . . . She went
to see Annette.

She did not know what she was going to do. She was ready for anything.
She had taken her revolver in her hand-bag. On the way she rehearsed in
her mind scenes that she later discarded. For her instinct led her to
foresee Annette's replies and correct her plan in accordance with them.
Even at the last moment she changed everything. A flood of rage rose in
her as she climbed the stairs, panting, almost running; and through the
material of the bag she clenched the weapon in her fist. But when the
door opened and she found herself before Annette, she understood at a
glance. . . . One gesture, one word of violence, would exasperate
Annette, and she would be all the more implacable in following her
passion.

All trace of Noémi's anger instantly disappeared. And red, as if she
were out of breath from having climbed the stairs too quickly, she flung
herself, laughing, on Annette's neck. Surprised at this outburst,
annoyed by this embrace, Annette kept her reserved manner. The other,
once in the apartment, walked unceremoniously into the bedroom and
rapidly assured herself that Philippe was not there. Then she sat down
on the arm of the chair and addressed little, tender words to Annette,
who stood stiffly beside her. As she talked she even passed one arm
about Annette's waist and played with her collar. Suddenly she
burst into tears. . . . At first Annette thought she was still
pretending. . . . But, no! This was serious; these were real
tears. . . .

"Noémi, what is the matter with you?"

With her face pressed against Annette's breast, she did not answer; she
continued to weep. Annette, bending over this great grief, tried to calm
her. Finally Noémi raised her head and moaned through her sobs: "Give
him back to me."

"Who?" asked Annette, startled.

"You know!"

"But . . ."

"You know, you know! I know you love him and I know he loves you. . . .
Why did you take him away from me?"

More tears. Annette, with stricken heart, heard Noémi plaintively
recall the confidence, the affection, she had shown her, and she could
not answer, for she was reproaching herself; and these sad reproaches,
which had no violence in them, struck her heart. But when Noémi said
bitterly that Annette had abused her friendship to deceive her, she
tried to clear herself, saying that love had come in spite of her and
had overpowered her. There was nothing pleasant for Noémi in these
confessions, and she endeavored to turn them aside; she pretended to
help Annette to justify herself and seemed to believe that Philippe was
chiefly to blame. She spoke of him in the most outrageous way to assuage
her own bitterness and make him odious or at least suspect in Annette's
eyes. But the latter rose to his defence. She would not allow anyone to
accuse Philippe of being the aggressor. He had been frank. She, she
alone, had committed the error of not permitting him to confess. Then
Noémi, filled with hatred, redoubled her accusations. Annette opposed
her. The dispute grew bitter. One would have said that, of the two,
Annette was Philippe's real wife. And Noémi seemed suddenly to become
aware of this. She lost all her discretion and cried out in a new rage,
"I forbid you to speak to him! I forbid you! He is mine."

Annette, shrugging her shoulders, said, "He belongs neither to you nor
to me. He belongs to himself."

"He is mine," Noémi repeated passionately. "I shall keep him." She was
claiming her rights.

"There are no rights in love," said Annette, harshly.

"He is mine," Noémi cried again. "I shall keep him."

"I am his," Annette replied. "You have kept nothing."

The two women glared at each other with hatred in their eyes, Annette
steeled in egoism and hardness, Noémi burning to strike Annette. She
hated every inch of her, from her head to her feet. She wanted to insult
her ugliness, lash her with the cruellest words, the most irreparable
words. It would have been such a satisfaction. But she stopped short;
she would have lost too much!

Stooping down quickly to pick up the bag that had fallen at her feet,
she pulled out the revolver and turned it . . . against whom? . . . She
did not know yet. . . . Against herself! . . . At first it was a feint,
but when Annette flung herself upon her to seize her arm what had been
pretence became real. The two women struggled; Noémi fell upon her
knees with Annette bending over her. It was not easy to restrain the
desperate little creature. She really meant to kill herself now. . . .
Although, if the weapon had touched Annette's bosom, with what delight
she would have fired at her. . . . But Annette struck her hand aside,
the gun went off, the bullet lodged in the wall. And Noémi never knew
which of the two she had aimed at. . . .

She had dropped the weapon and she struggled no more. The nervous
reaction had set in. She fell now, sobbing and prostrated, at Annette's
feet: she was in hysterics. From the first Annette had suspected
intuitively that Noémi was acting a part . . . up to a certain point.
(But does one ever know just to what point?) And she had been dully
irritated by this nonsense about suicide. . . . But how could she doubt
the suffering of this poor little broken thing? She struggled to remain
hard, to turn away, but she could not; she was ashamed of her suspicions
and, with her heart full of pity, she knelt down by Noémi, lifted up
her head, tried to console her, saying maternally, "My child. . . .
Come, come! . . ."

She took her in her strong arms and raised her up. She felt this young
body, shaken by sobs, abandoning itself, defenceless, and she thought,
"Is it possible that I am the one who causes this suffering?"

Another voice said to her, "Would you not buy your love at the cost of
any amount of suffering?"

"My own suffering, yes."

"Your own and other people's. Why should the others be privileged?"

She looked at Noémi as she held her, half-fainting. . . . So light! . . .
A bird! . . . It seemed to her that she was her daughter and, without
quite meaning to do so, she pressed her in her arms. Noémi opened her
eyes and Annette thought, "If she were in my place would she spare me?"

But Noémi turned towards her a broken look. Annette laid her in her
_chaise longue_, and, standing beside her, placed her hand on her head.
(Noémi shivered at the hateful contact, but she did not show it.) She
asked her, as if she were addressing a weeping child, "So you love him
very much?"

"I love nothing but him."

"I, too, love him."

Noémi gave a jealous start. "Oh," she said harshly, "but I am young.
You, you" (she hesitated), "you have had your life, you can get on
without him."

Annette repeated to herself, bitterly, the words she had not uttered:
"It is because I shall soon be old that I cling to this last hour of
youth, this supreme light, and will not give it up. . . . Ah! If I had
the treasure of youth before me as you have!"

But she added, sadly, "I should make a mess of it a second time, I
suppose."

Noémi had seen Annette's face darken and she was afraid she had
imperilled the frail advantages she had just gained. She said hastily,
"I know quite well that he loves you, that you are beautiful"--("Liar!"
thought Annette)--"that you are superior to me in many things that he
likes. I cannot even hate you because, in spite of everything, I love
you"--("Liar! Liar!" repeated Annette)--"The match is not equal. It
isn't fair! No . . . I am only a poor, weeping woman. I don't amount to
anything. I know it. . . . But I love him, I love him, I can't live
without him. What do you think will become of me if you take him away?
Why did he love me once if it was only to abandon me? I can't endure
it. He is my whole life. Everything else is nothing to me."

There was nothing false in her tone now, and Annette pitied her again.
She was insensible to the rights Noémi invoked over her husband; she
did not believe in the rights of one being over another, in these
contracts of mutual proprietorship that people sign for life. But she
was distressed by these tricks of cruel nature who, when she separates
two hearts that have loved each other, never removes love from both
hearts at once--no, but rather takes pains that one of the two shall
cease to love before the other, so that the most loving is always
sacrificed. And it was hateful to her to further the schemes of the
great torturer. "Life belongs to the strongest. Yes, love does not
hesitate. To attain its end it tramples everything else under foot. Woe
to the weak! . . . But why is it that I can't say this? I should like
to, but the words stick in my throat, I cannot. It revolts me. Is it
because I do not love enough? I am old, as she says. I belong in the
ranks of the weak. . . . No! No! No! It's a trick! . . . By what right
does she come and step between happiness and me? I will not give up to
her my bit of happiness! . . . Her tears, what are her tears to
me? . . . I will trample on her!"

But as she looked angrily at Noémi lying there, Noémi, who was
watching her through her tears, took the hand, the arm that hung down by
the back of the chair, pressed it against her cheek and begged, "Let me
keep him!"

Annette tried to free herself. Noémi held her fast. Rising in her
chair, she slid her two hands up Annette's arm, forcing her to bend over
and look at her. "Let me keep him!"

Annette snatched herself away from the fingers that gripped her. She
rebelled. "No! No! I will not. He needs me."

"He needs nothing but himself," said Noémi, bitterly. "He loves nothing
but himself. He finds his pleasure in you as he once found it in me. He
will leave you as he left me. He is not attached to anything."

She judged him hardly and profoundly. Annette was struck by her
intelligence. With what acuteness, born of bitterness and suffering, had
he been read to the depths by this little creature who seemed so
frivolous and heedless! Some of her terrible observations corresponded
only too well with the apprehensions that her own experiences had
awakened in Annette. "And yet you love him?" she said.

"I love him. He does not need me. It is I who need him. . . . Ah! Do you
suppose I don't suffer in needing a man who has no need of me, a man who
despises me, whom I despise? . . . I do despise him! I despise him! But
I can't live without him. . . . Why did I ever know him? It was I who
wanted him. I wanted him, I caught him. . . . And I am the one who is
caught. If only, if only I had never known him! Ah, but I can't wish
that! . . . I haven't the strength. I am too much in love. He holds me
completely. I hate him. I hate love. Why, why does one love?"

She stopped, exhausted, with her hunted eyes wandering, seeking to the
right, to the left, a way of escape. They bowed their heads, these two
women, enslaved under the yoke of the savage force.

Noémi took up her refrain in a dull, heavy tone, "Let me keep him."

Annette felt a will as tenacious and adhesive as a devilfish clinging to
her limbs with its arms covered with suckers. She snatched herself away
from it again and cried, "I will not."

There was a flash of anger in Noémi's eyes and her fingers clenched.
Then in a soft, plaintive voice, she said, "Love him! Let him love you!
But don't take him away from me. Let us both keep him, you and I."

Annette made a gesture of repulsion.

Noémi's fury flashed up again. "Do you think it doesn't disgust me? You
disgust me. I detest you. But I don't want to lose him."

Annette moved away from Noémi and said, "I do not detest you. You are
suffering and I am suffering. But it is base to divide in love. I am
willing to be the victim. I am willing to be the executioner. I am not
willing to be base. To save what I love I am not willing to surrender
half of it. I give everything. I want everything. Or I want nothing."

Noémi, clenching her teeth, cried from the depths of her heart.
"Nothing!" (For even while she was offering to yield a share, she
counted on regaining everything.)

Then, with a bound, she rose from her chair, ran to Annette as she stood
there, and, falling on her knees, clasped her legs. "Forgive me! I don't
know, I don't know what I am asking. I don't know what I want. But I am
unhappy. I cannot endure it. . . . What am I to do? Tell me! Help me!"

"Help you! I!" said Annette.

"You. To whom can I go for help? I am alone. Alone with that man who is
not interested in you, even when he loves you, in whom you cannot put
any trust. . . . And, before he came, a mother who was interested in
nothing but herself, in her pleasures. . . . No one to advise me. ... I
haven't a single friend. . . . When I saw you I thought you would be
one. And you have been my worst enemy. . . . Why have you done me this
injury?"

Annette was overwhelmed. "My poor child, it wasn't my fault. I didn't
wish it. . . ."

Noémi seized upon this compassionate word, "Your child, you said. . . .
Yes, be a mother, an older sister to me! Don't hurt me! Advise me. Tell
me what I should do. I don't want to lose him. . . . Tell me, tell
me. . . . I will do anything you say. . . ."

She was speaking only half falsely. She was so accustomed to shamming
what she felt that she felt what she shammed. And her love, her grief,
her need of Annette, her hope of touching her, were certainly real. Even
this confidence she showed in her--the last card she had to play. She
played it with a passion of despair. And even as she unbosomed herself,
she did not lose sight of the disquietude that Annette's face could not
conceal. Annette was weakening. Noémi's self-abandonment disarmed her.
She no longer had the strength to reply. She was not deceived, however.
The sugary tone of some of her adversary's inflections threw light on
the latter's duplicity. She let her talk. She read her depths. She was
thinking, "What shall I do? Sacrifice myself? What a sell! I will not. I
don't like this woman. She lies, she hates me. But she is suffering."
And she stroked the head of the kneeling enemy, who continued to groan
and watch her, following her vacillating will as if it were her prey,
with a shiver of fear, of acute breathless half-sanguinary joy, and who,
at the right moments, pressing to her lips those hands that she would
gladly have bitten, repeated, tirelessly, "Let me keep him!"

Annette, with lowered brows, wanted to drive her away. She saw in those
eyes trickery and grief, falsehood and love, a desperate hope. She
smiled with weariness, pity and disgust for herself, for them both--for
everything; and, turning aside her head, she said in a moment of
weakness, "Keep him!"

No sooner had she said it than she wished to take it back. But
Noémi bounded to her feet and embraced Annette with frantic
protestations. . . . (She had never hated her so much! At last she
had her! . . . Had her?) Annette was already saying, "No, no! . . ."

Noémi pretended not to hear. She called her darling, her best friend.
She vowed eternal gratitude, eternal love. She laughed and cried. But
she did not waste her time in vain effusions. She wanted to know what
Annette would do to get rid of Philippe.

Annette rebelled. "I said nothing."

"You did say it. You did say it. You promised me. . . ."

"A word that escaped me. . . . You dragged it from me by surprise."

"No, you can't take it back. You said 'Keep him.' You said it, Annette.
Tell me that you said it! You can't deny it. . . ."

"Leave me, leave me," said Annette, exhausted. "Don't torment me. I
can't. I can't."

She sat down, crushed, while Noémi, standing beside her, continued to
harass her. Their rôles had changed. Annette refused to give him up;
her love had taken root in her. Noémi did not care about this. Annette
could keep her love if she did not keep Philippe. She wanted Annette to
break with him at once, without waiting. And she could suggest ways of
breaking with him; her head was full of them. She urged her, cajoled
her, begged her, tried to force her, embraced her, deafened her with her
flow of words; she appealed to her generous heart, besought, adjured,
demanded, dictated the replies. . . .

Annette, rigid and frozen, would not say another word. She did not even
try to stop this torrent. Her lips were tightly pressed together, her
eyes dull. . . . At last Noémi became silent in the face of this
immobility. She took her hands--they were cold and damp. "Answer,
answer!" she said.

Without looking at her, Annette murmured, "Leave me." (Her voice was so
low that Noémi read it on her lips rather than heard it.)

"You want me to go away?" she replied.

Annette nodded.

"I am going, but you have promised?"

Annette repeated wearily, "Leave me, leave me. . . . I need to be
alone. . . ."

Noémi hastily rearranged her hair before the mirror. Then, turning
towards the door, she said, "Good-bye, you have promised. . . ."

Annette made a final gesture of protest, "No, I have promised nothing."

Noémi felt herself again flooded with anger. After all this effort! But
her instinct told her that she must not move too quickly or stretch the
cord too tight. . . . All the same, the blow had its effect. She left.

She had seen the weakness of the enemy. She would trample on her.




XLV


Annette remained for some time motionless in the spot where Noémi had
left her. She was exhausted after this long scene. She would have
resisted better if the attack had not surprised her at a moment when she
was already shaken by the double wear and tear of passion and incessant
work, the uninterrupted fever aroused in her stormy soul by her
participation in Philippe's struggles, the repressed remorse, the
anguish that was concealed beneath her exhaustion of mind and body. This
weakness gave Noémi her strength. She found the field prepared and an
ally in her adversary.

Noémi herself played little part in Annette's anxieties. She cared
little for her as a woman. As a rival she did not care about her at all.
She considered her false, perfidious, heartless, and with jealous
injustice she now denied what she had at first enjoyed, her charm.
Everything about her seemed factitious except her grief. Besides, it
mattered very little whether it was Noémi or someone else. . . . "She
is a living creature who suffers, and I, I cause this suffering. . . ."
And a strange pity preyed upon Annette's heart.

This tendency had developed, during the last few years, from the sight
of so much misery, from her connection with those two deaths, Odette's
and Ruth's. She had been mysteriously shaken by them. A weakness. She
called it unhealthy and perhaps it was so. One could not live if one had
to pause over the sufferings of the world. All happiness is nourished on
the unhappiness of someone else. Life devours life, as larvæ devour the
living prey in which they are laid. And everyone drinks the blood of
all. . . . Annette had once drunk it without thinking of it, and this
blood brought warmth and joy to her body. While she was young she had
never thought of the victims. From the moment when she had said to
herself, as she thought of them, "I must be hard," she had begun to
weaken. She felt this; she could only be hard intermittently now. She
was growing old. Ten years earlier she would not have had a moment's
hesitation because of the harm she was doing Noémi. "My happiness is my
right. Woe to anyone who touches it! . . ." She would have had no need
to seek for pretexts. Now, in order to snatch from life her share of
happiness, she had to find other reasons than her happiness. She was no
longer sufficient unto herself. She had found the strength to brush
aside, without scruple, the other less fortunate competitors in the hunt
for bread. This bread was her son's; she was upheld by the animal
instinct that makes a creature bristle to defend its young and feed them
on the flesh of its fellow-animals. But the other animal instinct, the
love of self--taking and keeping for oneself--was dying down and only
asserted itself now by fits and starts. Maternity, by usurping the place
of this other instinct, had partially destroyed it.

In the present crisis her son was no help to her. Far from it! He was
one anxiety and remorse the more. Annette could not lie to herself, her
passion took no account of her son. She felt guilty towards him, and she
had taken pains to hide everything from him. She knew the child. In the
past she had observed the jealousy that led him to drive his claws into
those whom she loved. She did not blame him for this. She was glad that
he wanted to be the only one to love her. . . . But to-day she was
defending her treasure--against whom? Against her treasure! Passion
against passion. She did not wish to sacrifice either of the two. And as
both of them were jealous, obstinate, domineering, she had to hide from
each the secret of the other. Had she succeeded? Marc detested the
"other fellow." He knew nothing--of that she was sure--but although he
did not know, had not his instinct told him? She was ashamed to conceal
herself and she was even more ashamed that he might suspect. . . . No,
he suspected nothing; it was for other reasons that he hated
Philippe. . . .

As for Philippe himself, he did not do Marc the honor of thinking about
him at all. In marrying Annette he would have been quite willing to take
two or three brats into the bargain. It made no difference to him either
in his feelings or financially; there was no need to be grateful to him
for it. He did not dislike Marc; he thought him fairly bright, rather
lazy, not very keen; he might have subjected him to a sharp discipline,
but he felt no need to concern himself with the child, and he made this
plain. He had a way of talking of him, a rough humor that wounded
Annette to the quick. Accustomed to the coarse things of life, he had no
idea of the consideration that a proud, sensitive nature demands, of the
things that offend its sense of decency. In the bluntest, rudest terms
he would give the boy, in his mother's presence, harsh warnings and
medical advice that made both the child and the mother blush. The mother
more than the child. Philippe's theory was that nothing must be
concealed from the boy. This was also Annette's theory. And Marc's as
well. But there are ways of putting things! Annette suffered in her very
flesh. Marc, who was humiliated, stored up the bitterest resentment.
Between him and Philippe there never could be anything but
misunderstanding. Their two temperaments were too different. Annette
could foresee the clashes, the endless discords. A terrible thought for
her, the passionate lover and mother!

There was no one to whom she could turn for help in making up her mind.
She had to decide alone, egoistically. Well, didn't she have the right
to think of herself too? A right is nothing if one does not maintain it.
Was she maintaining hers? . . . Yes, at moments, like a lioness, when
she saw youth, happiness, life about to be swallowed up. . . .
Happiness? . . . There was no question of happiness in a union with a
man like Philippe! Something less or something more, incomparably more
for a woman like Annette: a full, bold, intelligent life, not a life of
repose slumbering in its security, but great winds, storms, action,
struggles--with the world--with him--a life of trouble and fatigue--but
together--life--a life worthy of being lived, with death at the end,
when one was worn out and happy to leave the hard, fertile days behind,
happy to have had them. . . . That was glorious!! But one must have the
strength. . . . She had it, enough to carry the burden, once it was well
adjusted, with her head up, to the end. But in order to adjust it she
had to be helped and even forced a little. Philippe must place the
burden on her head, impose it on her. He must say, "Carry it! For me!
You are necessary to me. . . ." With these words she could surmount all
her remorse. . . . Was she necessary to Philippe? He had said so during
the first days when he had wanted to win her. He no longer said it, and
Annette would have liked to hear it again and again, to be convinced.
She saw him full of himself, used to working alone, fighting alone,
extricating himself alone, putting all his pride into it; he would have
felt humiliated if he had had to seek help. So she said to herself,
"What am I good for?" It is the bounty of love not only to give us faith
in someone else but to give us back faith in ourself. May it be
charitable to us!

This was a feeling that Philippe seldom entertained. Like most of his
kind, this great doctor of the body paid little attention to maladies of
the soul. He never gave a thought to the doubts that preyed upon this
woman whose body lay by his side. He should not have left her the time
to question herself. . . . Make an end of it, marry her! . . . Annette
would whisper to him softly, "Let's go away together, so that I can
never take myself back!"

But Philippe was no longer in a hurry. He was passionate, yes, but he
had many other passions that were of far more importance to him: his
ideas, his struggles, the controversy that was absorbing him at the
moment when Annette would have liked him to think of nothing but
herself. He had no intention of stirring up a conjugal scandal and
hampering himself with a noisy divorce-case before he had emerged from
the fire of the present battle. He had made up his mind to keep his
promises. But later! Annette must have patience. It was easy enough for
him to be patient. He enjoyed her. He was quite willing to leave things
as they were. He flattered himself that he could impose the same
forbearance upon Noémi. He flattered himself too much! He did not wish
to see how intolerable this waiting was to the two women. . . .

"Naturally," thought Annette, "a man--a man worthy for us to love--will
never love us as much as his ideas, his science, his art, his politics.
A naïve egoism that thinks it is disinterested because it incarnates
itself in ideas. The egoism of the brain, more murderous than that of
the heart. How many hearts have been broken by it!"

She was not surprised at this, for she knew life; but it hurt her. If it
had only been a question of suffering she would have accepted it,
however, perhaps even with that secret enjoyment of self-sacrifice which
is familiar to women and which they willingly consider the price of
love. But not to the point of sacrificing her self-respect and her son's
honor in a humiliating situation. It hurt her that Philippe did not feel
this. Of course he was not sensitive. She knew what he thought of women
and love. He could not help thinking as he did; he had been shaped by
his education and his rough experiences, and it was for this that she
loved him. But she had flattered herself with the hope that she would
change him. Instead, she perceived that day by day she was losing her
power over him. And worst of all, over herself. Annette felt herself
invaded by the demon of sensuality; day by day she became less the
mistress of her will, more enslaved.

The duel of passion only preserves its nobility as long as there is
equality between the combatants. When one is conquered the other abuses
his victory and the vanquished becomes debased. Annette was at that
poignant moment which precedes and determines defeat. She knew it: her
strength would not sustain her any longer. Philippe knew this also, and
his attitude showed it. It made no difference that he cared just as
much--perhaps more, for Annette; he showed less consideration for her
and he made brutal use of what belonged to him. He treated her like a
conquered province. With all his days absorbed in his regular and
passionate life of toil and his nights by Noémi (for he wished to keep
up appearances), he saw Annette only during brief and burning
encounters. No intimacy of the heart. He maintained, cynically, that she
had the best of it all.

She wanted to tear herself away from this degradation in which her
senses were accomplices, but every day they became more imperious. Once,
when she wished to flee from their tyranny, they refused to obey with a
violence that dismayed her. A woman of such fervent energy who, after
having severely disciplined and repressed her passions for ten years,
opens the door of their cage at the most fiery moment of the stormy
summer, runs the risk of being destroyed.

Annette could only retrieve herself by forcing Philippe to respect the
wife she wished to be--the companion "_rei humanœ atque divinœ_"--the
equal. She asked Philippe, she besought him in anguish, to give her up
till the time came when they could love and marry openly. Philippe
refused: he was as unwilling to be hampered in his passions as in his
public life. He was unwilling either to do without Annette or to marry
her at a time that did not suit him. He pretended to consider Annette's
attempt to leave him as a rather degrading manœuvre to attach him to
her. And this although he knew very well what a whole-hearted gift she
had made of herself! She was insulted by the outrageous suspicion--and
she gave herself again with a despairing passion and disgust.

As for himself, he would see nothing of all this. He came back,
demanding his own selfish rights as a lover, never realizing that,
although she consented to them, every one of these carnal victories left
a wound in his partner.

Annette was degraded in her own eyes. She ceased to give herself; she
prostituted herself to love. Unless she flung herself off the slope down
which her mad body was sliding, she was lost. . . .

One afternoon she fled. She went to Sylvie's and asked her to let her
child stay with her for a few days, pleading as an excuse that she had
to go away. Sylvie asked for no explanation; one glance was enough. This
woman, whose curiosity was so often indiscreet, and who was unable in so
many ways to understand her sister's ideas, had an instinct for love and
its tragic tricks. In the days of the old intimacy with Annette, she had
never confided to her the secrets of her own love affairs, and she did
not expect Annette to open herself to her. She knew that every woman has
a right to her hours of silence, her great hours, and that at such times
no one can help her. One must save oneself alone or perish alone. She
offered her sister the shelter of a little house she owned in the
suburbs, near Jouy-en-Josas. Annette was touched, and she kissed her and
accepted. In this little rustic house, on the edge of the woods, she
shut herself up for a fortnight. She had not even told Marc where she
was going. Her retreat was known only to Sylvie.

Scarcely had she left Paris and its enchanted circle than she perceived
the excesses of the past few weeks and passed judgment on them. She was
terrified by them. She, this mad creature, this miserable slave drunk
with her own servitude! Passion, the destroyer of the soul! . . . Its
clasp loosened. She breathed again, this evening, she saw and felt once
more the fields, the woods, the calm of the earth. For two months an
opaque red veil had concealed the living world from her. Even those
closest to her, her son, had come to seem far away. . . . But when she
reached the house in the fields, the veil was torn away in the rays of
the setting sun. She heard the bells, the birds, the voices of the
peasants; she wept with relief. . . . In the middle of the night,
however--she had fallen asleep exhausted--she awoke suddenly with a pang
of anguish. She felt about her throat the coils of the serpent.

She spent her days in a succession of humiliating tortures, bland
impulses, moments of sudden, keen, absolute clairvoyance that pierced
the great deception. She had a perpetual feeling of insecurity. Even
though she was prepared and armed, a mere nothing would have caused her
to give way. She prolonged her absence.

She was not without danger of imperilling her situation. In this sudden
eclipse, she was losing her lessons. The little clientele that she had
gathered with so much trouble was passing into other hands. Sylvie
forwarded letters and information to her sister, but she added nothing
but good news about the child's health. She avoided giving her any
advice. Annette alone was to judge.

Annette knew full well that she ought to return, but she still
lingered. . . . It was in vain that she stayed on; she could not
prevent her thoughts from returning to Philippe. What was he
doing? Wasn't he hunting for her? . . . From him nothing had
come. She dreaded any news, and she sought for it. She dismissed
him from her mind, she thought she had freed herself. But he had
not given her up and suddenly he rose before her.

One evening she was wandering, idle, full of haunting thoughts, under
the arbor that skirted the low wall of the garden, when, between the
branches, she saw an automobile coming towards her in the distance down
the white road. And she thought, "It's he!" . . . She stepped back out
of sight. The car drove past along the wall to the end of the little
yard. Annette, with her heart tightening, listened to its roaring, heard
it slow down. Thirty paces farther on the road forked and the car
stopped. Annette, behind the screen of leaves, ventured to glance, out
and saw the back of the man who was hesitating, turning round, exploring
the horizon. She recognized him. Terror seized her. She ran and flung
herself behind a hedge of box and sank down upon the ground, her nails
scratching the earth; she lowered her head and the blood flooded her
cheeks as she thought, "He is going to take me again!" She wanted to say
"No" and her blood cried "Yes!" She felt the dry turf crumbling under
her fingers, and, with her face buried in the boxwood, she tried to stop
the roaring of the blood in her ears so that she could listen to the
steps on the other side of the wall. She heard the car starting off
again. She ran to the corner of the garden on the road and cried,
"Philippe!"

The car disappeared at the turn.

The next day Annette went back to Paris. Did she know what she wanted or
what she was going to do? Sylvie looked at her pityingly and said to
herself, "It's no better." But she did not question her.

Annette, full of gratitude, remained seated without speaking, her body
broken with fatigue, in a corner of her sister's room, seeking peace in
this warm presence. Sylvie came and went, leaving her to recover herself
in the silence. At last Annette got up to go home. As she was about to
leave, Sylvie, placing her hands on either side of her forehead, looked
at her a long time, shook her head and said, "If you can't do otherwise,
submit; don't struggle any longer. It will pass. Everything passes, the
good, the bad and we ourselves. . . . How little it all matters!"

But to Annette it mattered a great deal. The question was not merely
between Philippe and herself. It was between her and herself. To return
to Philippe and confess herself conquered by him would have given her a
bitter pleasure. But what terrified her was a deeper, more intimately
personal defeat that would have no witness but herself. She carried her
mortal adversary within her. Never once, for many years, had she failed
to realize this, though from pride and prudence perhaps she had pleased
herself by not thinking of it. This gulf of desire and sensual delight
that a former life (her father's?) had dug within her. . . . Everything
that gave her strength and pride of life, her will, her healthy soul,
the free, pure breath that bathed her lungs, everything was being sucked
down into it. _Mors antmœ_. . . . And Annette, whose reason did not
seem to believe in the soul, did not wish her soul to die.

Carried back to Paris, where Philippe was, like a captive on some
Assyrian bas-relief, with a rope about her neck, she did not look for
Philippe. She avoided him.

Philippe, as much possessed by Annette as Annette was by him, had come
and knocked at her door in her absence. He was indignant over this
sudden departure. He would not admit that she could escape him. He tried
to find her address. He had Sylvie's and he went to see her. The first
glance was a declaration of war. Sylvie had understood. Armed with a
bitter defiance, she sized Philippe up with her own eyes and not with
those of Annette--a man who would be dangerous as an enemy and more
dangerous as a lover, the kind of man who destroys what he loves. She
knew that sort and she would never have anything to do with them. To
Philippe's peremptory questions regarding Annette's whereabouts, she
replied coldly that she knew nothing about them, taking pains that he
should see that she knew everything. Philippe made an effort to conceal
his annoyance. He tried to wheedle her. Sylvie remained stolid. He went
away in a rage.

He wasted no time in beating the bushes for her, and it never entered
his head to cover himself with dust travelling in a car to
Jouy-en-Josas. He did not even look for Annette. He had no intention of
sacrificing his days in a vain pursuit. He was sure she would come back.
But that she should fail him, that she should allow herself to upset him
at such a moment as this, was more than he could forgive; and his
resentment, no less than a furious need of diversion, flung him back
upon his wife. It was a provisional reconciliation and humiliating
enough to this woman who was only a substitute. For it was only for want
of something better; he was waiting for the other one.

But Noémi was not going to be proud when her advantage opposed it. She
did not waste her time. The ordeal had revealed to her former
mistakes. She had realized that to hold a man it is not enough to make
him love you. You must flatter his pride and his whims. Philippe was
astonished at the interest she showed in his present campaign,
astonished that she had even taken the trouble to find out about it. He
suspected her motives, but whether Noémi's interest was real or not, it
was very agreeable to him. It pleased him to discover Noémi's
intelligence. She no longer concealed it. It was through this that
Annette had ousted her. She made use of these weapons and improved on
them. Unlike Annette, she did not trouble to go to the bottom of the
dispute. She left this to her husband and master. She limited her rôle
to suggesting the most skilful tactics for assuring him the victory.
Philippe admired her ingenuity.

At this moment the controversy was at the most violent stage. Noémi,
overcoming the repugnance and boredom that she felt at these quarrels
between men, perceived that she must fling herself resolutely into the
arena. She set to work upholding, with the wittiest effrontery, in
drawing-rooms, the daring arguments her husband had launched. Her grace,
her humor, her laughing enthusiasm, her impishness, her passionate
earnestness, caused some slight scandal and a great deal of amusement.
She won over to her side a number of young women who were delighted to
show how free they were from social prejudices. The skilful Noémi took
pains not to break with appearances. Even while she gave them the most
disrespectful raps, she contrived to procure indulgence for herself in
the camp of morality and respectable people. She gravely maintained that
the right of the poor to have no children had its counterpart in the
duty of the rich to supply the State and Society with them. It required
self-possession to say this and not lose her assurance, for during seven
years of married life she had never found the time to fulfil this duty
herself. But she was heroic. She discovered this now.




XLVI


Philippe was not slow in discovering that Annette had come back. He
tried to find her in her apartment at the hours when he knew she was
alone. But Annette distrusted herself. He found the door shut. In spite
of his resentment and his distractions, his passion had not weakened.
Annette's resistance exasperated him. He was not the man to let himself
be dismissed.

Annette caught sight of him a few steps away in the street. She turned
pale, but she did not try to escape from him. They approached each
other. He said, with decision, "You are going home. I am going with
you."

"No," she replied.

Together they entered a small square that backed upon a church. A dusty
tree barely concealed them from the stream of passers-by in the street.
They had to restrain themselves.

"You are afraid of me."

"No," she said, "of myself."

Philippe was burning with passion and resentment. But when his hard
glance encountered Annette's, which did not avoid him, he perceived the
suffering that she was firmly controlling. His anger melted, and in a
softened voice he asked, "Why did you run away?"

"Because you are killing me."

"Don't you know what it is to love?"

"I do know, and that is why I ran away. I am afraid of hating you."

"Well, hate me, if you like. Hating is a way of loving."

"Not for me," she said. "I can't endure it."

"You are not so weak that you can't endure both the good and evil of a
complete love."

"I am not so weak, Philippe. I want a complete love. Body and soul. I
don't want merely half."

"The soul is all nonsense," he said.

"Then to what purpose have you devoted all your energy? For what have
you sacrificed yourself, ever since you were born, if not to your Idea?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Delusion!" he said.

"You live by it. I have mine too. Don't kill it."

"What do you want?"

"I want us to avoid seeing each other till the day when we decide
whether we are to unite our lives or not."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want, I don't want to hide any longer. I don't want any
more sharing. I don't want it, I don't want it."

But she did not utter her deepest reason. ("If I gave in once more, I
should soon cease to have the will to desire anything else. I should no
longer belong to myself. I should be a toy that is broken after it has
been spoiled.")

But he was incapable of understanding this instinctive revolt against
one's enslavement to one's deadly desires. He could see in it nothing
but defiance and a feminine trick to get the best of him. If he did not
put this into words, he did not by any means conceal his feeling. When
Annette perceived this, she made an impetuous movement to leave him.
Philippe, trembling with impatience and the effort he was making not to
betray it to the eyes of passers-by, seized Annette's arm, pressed it
and said in a furious voice which he tried to muffle, "As for me, I will
not, will not give you up. I will see you. Be still! Don't answer. . . .
We can't talk here. . . . I shall come and see you this evening."

"No, no!" she said.

"I shall come," he said. "I cannot live without you. Nor can you live
without me."

"I can," she said, rebelliously.

"You lie!"

They struggled, without moving, in low, violent voices, lashing each
other's souls. They measured each other with their eyes. Philippe's gave
way. "Annette!" he besought her.

But her cheeks still burned with the brutal lie he had given her, the
shame of thinking that she really had lied. She stiffened, freed herself
from the hand that held her, and went away.

In the evening Philippe came. She had spent the whole day in terror of
this moment, in terror lest she might not have the strength to keep her
door shut. For she did not want to face again this pitiless passion. She
was convinced of the impossibility of living with this torch fastened to
her breast. She must tear it away while the strength still remained to
her. Did enough still remain? She loved him, she loved the flame that
was consuming her. The next day she would love the shame and the outrage
to which she had submitted. She blushed to admit it to herself, but even
in her revolt against him that morning there had been an element of
sensual delight.

She recognized his steps as they came up the stairs. She heard him ring
and did not move from her chair. He rang again and knocked. Annette,
with her arms hanging and her shoulders flung back, kept repeating to
herself, "No! No!"

Even had she wished to rise and open the door her breath would have
failed her.

She heard nothing more. Had he gone away? She was on her feet before she
had even thought of it. She slipped with tottering, noiseless steps to
the door. A board in the floor creaked. Annette stopped. Some seconds
passed. . . . Nothing stirred. But she was aware of Philippe's presence
watching behind the door. And Philippe knew that Annette was listening
on the other side. There was a heavy silence. They were spying on each
other. . . . Philippe's voice, close to the door, said, "Annette, you
are there. Open!"

Annette, leaning against the wall, felt her heart give way. She did not
answer.

"I know you are there. Don't try to hide! Annette, open! I must speak to
you."

He lowered his voice so as not to be heard on the stairway, but a flood
of mingled passions was rising in him. He was on the point of shaking
the door.

"I must see you. . . . Whether you wish it or not, I mean to come
in. . . ."

Silence.

"Annette, I hurt you this morning. Forgive me! . . . I want you. What do
you want me to do? Tell me. I will do it. . . ."

Silence. Silence.

Philippe clenched his fists. He could have strangled her. With his mouth
against the door, he growled, "You are mine. You haven't the right to
take yourself back.

"Think hard!" he said. "If you don't open, it is finished for ever.

"Annette, my Annette!" he said.

"Coward!" he said furiously. "You are afraid to see me. You are only
strong behind a closed door."

"Why do you torture me?" said a voice behind the door.

Philippe was silent.

"My friend," the tired voice went on, "you are killing me."

Philippe was touched, but his wounded pride was unwilling to show it.
"What do you want?" he said.

"Mercy!" she answered.

The tone of her voice touched him, but he did not understand. "What do
you need?"

"Leave me!" she said.

His anger sprang up again. "You are driving me away?"

"I am begging you for peace. Peace! . . . Leave me alone for a few
weeks."

"You don't love me any longer?"

"I am defending my love."

"Against whom? Against what?"

"Against you."

"Madness! . . . You will open to me."

"No!"

"I demand it. I want you."

"I am not your prey."

Quivering, she held herself straight and proud. Her eyes defied him
through the door. Though he could not see them, these eyes pierced him.
"Good-bye!" he cried to her.

She heard him go away, and her blood froze. He would never forgive.




XLVII


He did not forgive. Philippe did not return.

Annette kept repeating to herself, "It had to be, it had to be. . . ."

But she could not accept it. She longed to see Philippe once more, to
make him understand, gently--why had he been so furious?--that she was
not leaving him, that she was jealously defending her love, their love,
their common pride which he was destroying with unconscious brutality.
She wanted them both to have a chance to collect themselves, to recover
themselves amid the torrent of passion that was rolling them along with
its mud and foam, so that they might consider things and make up their
minds with perfect liberty. If he finally chose her, let it be in a
fashion compatible with his wife's and his own self-respect.

But Philippe would never forgive a woman he loved who had raised a
barrier against his will. If he had belonged to another social class he
would have violated her. Confined as he was in the cage of his own,
obliged to handle with tact this world he wished to master, his wounded
passion turned into an exasperated denial of itself. Losing the woman,
he destroyed the feeling he had for her. This, as he knew, would strike
her to the heart. For his instinct told him that, in spite of
everything, Annette loved him.

After three months of burning solitude, of a bitter and tormented
self-communion, of hope, renunciation, pride, servility of soul, inner
reproaches, after three months of hopeless, sterile waiting, Annette
learned one day from the delighted Solange of the happiness that had
fulfilled the longings of the Villard household. Noémi was about to
have a child.




XLVIII


Annette would have liked to take refuge with her child and hide her
unhappy head under the wing of the love which, they say, never fails
one--that of the son for the mother. Alas, it fails like all the others.
Annette could not look to Marc for a sign of tenderness or even
interest. Never had the young boy seemed colder, more indifferent, more
unfeeling. He saw nothing of the torments that ravaged his mother. To be
sure, she did her best to conceal them from him. But she concealed them
so badly! He might have seen them in her eyes, hollow as they were with
sleeplessness, in her pale face, in her thin hands, in her whole body,
which was wasted by cruel passion. He saw nothing. He did not even look.
He was concerned with nothing but himself, and what took place in him he
kept to himself. He saw her only at meal-times, when he never said a
word; the efforts Annette made to talk only made him more obstinate in
his silence. She could scarcely induce him to say good-morning and
good-night at the beginning and the end of the day, for he had made up
his mind that all such things were mere affectation, and he only agreed
to them--and that not every day--for the sake of peace. He would
hastily offer his mother's lips a bored forehead, and when he did not go
out to school or on some affair of his own--it was not easy to get him
to tell about the latter--he shut himself up in his workroom, a
store-room, about the size of a large wardrobe, wedged in between the
dining-room and his bedroom; and it was a mistake to disturb him there.
At the table or in the sitting-room, he seemed like a stranger. Annette
said to herself bitterly, "If I died he would not even weep."

And she thought of the dream she had once conceived of the dear little
companion, blood of her blood, pressed close against her, divining,
sharing, without words, all the secrets of her heart. How lacking in
affection he was! Why was he so hard? One would have said at moments
that he was angry with her. Why? Because she loved him too much?

"Yes, that is my weakness, loving too much. People do not need it. It
bores them. . . . My son does not love me! He is only too anxious to
leave me. My son is so little my son! He feels nothing of what I feel.
He feels nothing!"


During these very days Marc's young heart was aflame with love and
poetry. He had fallen madly in love with Noémi. It was one of those
childish loves that are so absurd and all-consuming. He hardly knew what
he wanted of this woman: was it to see her, feel her, touch her, taste
her? Of course, he never dreamed of what possession meant: he was the
possessed one. Marc almost fainted when he touched the little hand that
Noémi held out to him, touched it with his lips and the tip of his
nose, the greedy puppy's nose that inhaled, in the frail flower of the
wrist, the intoxicating mystery of the feminine body. For him she was a
living fruit and flower. He was dying with desire to implant his teeth
in it--very gently--dying of terror lest he might yield. Once--oh,
shame!--he did yield. . . . What was going to happen? Red and trembling,
he expected the worst: public humiliation, indignant words, an
ignominious dismissal. But she burst out laughing, called him "puppy,"
boxed his ear, rubbed his nose once, twice, three times, over the spot
he had bitten, saying, "Beg my pardon, little wretch!"

From that moment she had amused herself playing with the young animal.
She meant no harm, she meant no good. She enjoyed exciting the young
lover. For her it was a matter of no moment. She never suspected how
serious it might be for the boy. But for him (for him who, in spite of
appearances, was the true child of Annette) it was tragic.

Since the first time he had seen her, she had been for him the forbidden
Paradise, that marvellous mirage, woman, which appears before the
awakening glance of an innocent child. The fascinating image is shaped
as much from what exists as from what does not exist, as much from what
he sees as from what he does not see, what he does not know, what he
fears and desires, what he wants and what he does not want, the
terrifying attraction that thrills the adolescent body at the ecstatic,
brutal appeal of nature. As for Noémi's features, he probably did not
see one of them just as it was. But each of her features and each of her
movements, the folds of her dress, the curls of her hair, her voice, her
perfume, and the gleam of her eyes, everything stirred in his hungry
heart and body the wild, leaping waves of joy and hope, cries of
happiness, the need of tears.

On the very day when the heart-broken Annette saw him so hard, so
hostile, so icy, when her awkward effort to learn the cause, to drag out
of him one word, one single word of affection, had brought down upon her
a cutting reply--on just that day the young boy had had his most moving
revelation of the enchanted dream. For eight days he had been living in
a state of intoxication. Noémi, whom he continued to see, without his
mother's knowing it, and who used him as a little spy who innocently
brought her word of all the movements in the enemy's camp--Noémi, whom
he had once surprised in her drawing-room, looking at herself, as she
talked, in a tiny mirror hidden in the folds of her handkerchief, had
amused herself painting his pale lips with her lipstick. He had had in
his mouth the taste of the beloved mouth. And ever since he had carried
it on the tongue that sucked it; he was impregnated with it. He saw this
pomegranate red, this ever-open mouth with the lip drawn up, too short
and too restless to meet the other lip, which was as full as a
cherry--saw it everywhere on that morning when, leaving his mother's
apartment, after rudely slamming the door, he decided to play hockey
from school and go for a walk. It blossomed in the cloud-orchard of the
beautiful July sky, in the little playful ripples of a fountain, in the
absent-minded smiles of passing women. It obsessed him.

He was walking at random, with his blond head bare to the summer wind.
But, abstracted as he was and full of his own fancies, his lynx-eyes
recognized his Aunt Sylvie, in the distance, coming towards him on the
other sidewalk. He hastily turned off into a side street. The last thing
he wanted was to meet her. Not that he was afraid of being caught
playing truant: she would have been much more likely to laugh at that.
But when he had a secret, with her--it was not like this with his
mother!--he never felt safe. Of secrets of this kind, his instinct told
him, Aunt Sylvie was an expert reader.

She had not seen him. He breathed freely again. He could enjoy his love
the whole morning. And as he strolled along--his love did not prevent
him from halting before the shop-windows to look at a necktie, a trifle
of some kind, an illustrated paper--his steps led him unawares straight
to his goal. He was like those pigeons in Paris that fly every morning
over the great piles of dusty houses seeking the green gardens and cool
old trees. The boy was seeking them too. He felt the need of their
rustling shade.

He went down the Mont Sainte-Geneviève and, leaving the old, crowded
streets, found himself in the clear, calm spaces of the Jardin des
Plantes before he was aware that this was the spot to which he had
wished to come.

There were few people here at this hour. A handful of scattered
strollers. Paris hummed like a hive in the distance. The blue vibration
of a beautiful summer morning. He picked out a bench that was hidden at
the foot of a group of trees, and he closed his eyes on his treasure. He
pressed his long, feverish, adolescent hands against his breast as if he
wished to shelter his heart from rash eyes. What was he hiding, what
thing so precious that he scarcely dared to think of it? A remark Noémi
had thoughtlessly uttered, a remark of which he had made a world. . . .
The last time he had seen her she had thrown him a chance smile. She had
been scarcely aware of the boy's presence, for her attention was
absorbed in the great things that had happened (the reconquest of
Philippe, the humiliation of Annette, the final victory! . . . "But one
never knows! Nothing is certain. Let us be satisfied with to-day! . . .")
She sighed from fatigue, relaxation, pleasure. Marc asked her why.
Amused by the boy's alarmed, ingenuous gaze, she said, with another
great sigh, to puzzle him, "It's a secret."

"What secret?"

A malicious thought darted through her mind and Noémi replied, "I can't
tell you. You must guess."

Trembling with emotion, he said, "I don't know. Tell me."

She lowered her lids over her languorous eyes. "No, no, no!"

Blushing, stammering, he was afraid to understand.

To keep up the game, she assumed a mysterious air and said, "Would you
like to have it?"

In his emotion he was ready to cry, "No!"

"Well, not to-day. . . . I'll tell you some other time."

"When?"

"Soon."

"How soon?"

"Soon. . . . Next week, when you come to dinner."

The week had passed. This was the evening, Marc was thinking, when he
was to see her again. He was only living in the expectation of that
moment. He had lived it through twenty times in advance! He never dared
to go to the end of the scene. It was too agonizing. . . . But to linger
on the way was so sweet! On the garden-bench he gave way to his languor.
A clock struck noon. Behind a screen of trees the sand of a sunny path
crunched under the feet of a little girl who passed singing. Further on,
in an aviary, some exotic birds were chirping in a strange, agitating
language. From far away, on the Seine, came the long-drawn-out sound of
the siren of a tug. And noiselessly, without seeing him, two lovers
passed him slowly with their arms entwined as they walked, a tall, dark
girl and a pale young workman whose lips touched and who devoured each
other with their eyes. Holding his breath, the boy gazed after them till
their path turned, and as they disappeared he sobbed with happiness, the
happiness that had passed, the happiness that was coming. The happiness
that was in them, in everything that surrounded him, in this July
noon--in his own burning heart which embraced it all.

He went home in the halo of this moment of ecstasy. It was infinitely
greater than the feminine image that had aroused it. The shadow of
Noémi melted into a golden bath, and he had to make an effort to summon
it up again. Marc tried to do so, but it escaped him. He was cheating
himself, pretending to find under this happiness, which was so intense
that it was painful, in everything that filled his heart to overflowing,
the boundless hopes, the heroic resolutions, the strength and good will
that bore him up like wings as he ran upstairs, four steps at a time.
But the moment he caught sight of his mother's severe face--he was
three-quarters of an hour late for lunch--the glory faded. He fell back
beneath the sullen cloud of silence.

Annette did not try to talk to him. She had her own burden of anxieties,
and she could not share his. Her son, sitting opposite her at table,
seemed self-centred and far away. He ate ravenously. He was hungry and
eager to finish so that he could plunge back again into his daydreams.

Annette thought, "I am nothing to him but the person who gives him his
food."

She no longer had even the courage to protest. She felt abandoned.
Towards the end of the meal he became aware that he had not spoken, and
he felt vaguely remorseful. But he was afraid that if he said a word she
would begin to question him. He thrust his badly folded napkin into its
ring, rose hurriedly, and, taking care not to catch his mother's eye,
went out . . . or was going out, when, on a sudden impulse, he asked--he
was sure, for Noémi had told him, but he wanted confirmation--"It's
tonight we are dining at the Villards'?"

Annette, who was still sitting there, motionless and dejected, said,
without looking up, "We are not dining out."

Marc stopped, astonished, on the threshold. "What! They told me so!"

"Who told you?"

In his embarrassment the boy did not answer. His mother knew nothing
about his visits to Noémi. He hastened to turn aside the question with
another question, "But when are we going, then?"

Annette shrugged her shoulders. There were never going to be any more
dinners at the Villards'. Noémi had said, for fun, "Next week," as she
might have said, "In the year forty."

Marc let go of the door-knob and turned back in distress. Annette looked
at him, saw how disappointed he was, and said, "I don't know."

"What! You don't know?"

"The Villards have gone away," said Annette.

"No!" Marc cried.

She did not seem to hear him. Marc laid an impatient hand on his
mother's arm, which was stretched out over the table, and besought her,
"It isn't true?"

Annette roused herself from her torpor, rose and began to clear the
table.

"But where, where?" cried Marc, overwhelmed.

"I don't know," said Annette. She gathered up the dishes and went out.

Marc stood there, haggard, before his ruined dream. He did not
understand. This sudden departure, without a word of warning. . . .
Impossible! . . . He started to follow his mother, to drag some
explanation out of her. But, no! He stopped short. . . . No, this wasn't
true! He understood now. . . . Annette had discovered his love. She
wanted to separate them. She was lying, she was lying! Noémi had not
gone away. . . . And he hated his mother.

He slipped out of the apartment, tumbled down the stairs, walked, ran,
with a beating heart, to the Villards'. He was going to make sure that
they had not left. And as a matter of fact, they were there. The footman
said that Monsieur had just gone out; Madame was tired and was not
receiving anyone. But Marc urged that she would let him have a moment's
conversation with her. The servant returned. Madame was sorry, but it
was impossible. The boy insisted, feverishly, that he must see her just
for a moment; he had something very important to tell her. . . .
Meanwhile, he said all sorts of incoherent things, stuttering and
choking in a broken voice, making awkward gestures; he blushed, he was
on the point of weeping. The curious, mocking eyes of the impassive
footman made him lose the thread of his ideas. He was pushed towards the
door. He resisted stupidly, crying out that he forbade anyone to touch
him. The servant told him to get out, said that if he did not hold his
tongue he would telephone to the concierge and have him taken down by
force. . . . The door closed behind him. Ashamed and furious, he
remained on the threshold, unable to make up his mind to leave. And as
he leaned mechanically against the door, he saw it was not shut tight
and was yielding. He pushed it open and stepped inside again. He meant
at all costs to reach Noémi. The vestibule was empty. He knew where the
room was and slipped into the corridor. He heard Noémi's voice from
within. She was saying to the footman, "Never in the world! He bores me
to death! You did quite right in pushing him out, the little fool!"

He found himself back on the landing. He fled, he wept, he ground his
teeth, he was distracted. He sat down, choking, on one of the steps of
the staircase. He did not want people to see him crying in the street.

Wiping away his tears, he assumed an air of calm that covered his mad
grief and, without knowing where he was going, he set out for home
again. He was desperate. To die, he wanted to die! Life was no longer
posable. It was too ugly, too base, it lied, everything lied. He could
not breathe. As he crossed the Seine he thought of flinging himself into
it. But another unfortunate had been ahead of him. The banks looked as
if they were blade with flies. Thousands of women and children were
leaning over the parapet, eagerly watching as the drowned man was drawn
out. What feelings stirred them? A very few felt a sadistic thrill. A
few more felt pity. The immense majority felt the attraction of the
unusual event, idle curiosity. A good number, perhaps, looked into their
own hearts to see how a person suffers ("how I might suffer"), to see
how a person dies ("how I might die"). Marc perceived only a base
curiosity, and it horrified him. Kill himself, yes, but not in public!
He was like Annette. He had a shy, fierce pride; he could never make a
spectacle of himself before this rabble, never be mauled by their hands,
violated in his nakedness by their dirty glances. He clenched his teeth
and hurried home, hurried faster, resolved to kill himself.

In the course of the minute searches which, during his mother's
absences, he had devoted to the apartment he had found a revolver. It
was Noémi's; Annette had picked it up after she had left and placed it,
too carelessly, in a drawer. He had appropriated it and hidden it. His
mind was made up. As, with a child, an act, whenever it is possible,
immediately follows the thought, Marc meant to carry out his resolution
at once. Re-entering the apartment as noiselessly as he had gone out, he
shut himself up in his room and loaded the revolver as he had seen a
schoolmate do: the latter, who was hardly older than himself, had
carried one of these dangerous playthings in his pocket and, holding it
between his legs, in the Greek class, had explained to his attentive
neighbors how to handle it. The weapon was ready now. Marc was prepared
to fire. . . . Where should he place himself? He must not miss. There,
standing before his mirror. . . . But afterwards where would he
fall? . . . It would be better to sit here, leaning on the table, with the
mirror in front of him. He unhooked the mirror, placed it on the table,
and propped it up with a dictionary. . . . There, he could see himself
perfectly. He took the revolver and pressed it. . . . Where? Against the
temple; they say that's the best place. . . . Would it hurt very much?
He did not give a thought to his mother. His passion, his sufferings and
the preparations completely occupied him. . . . His eyes in the mirror
touched his heart. . . . Poor Marc! . . . He felt the need of
expressing, of making known before he disappeared, what he had suffered
from the world and how much he despised it. . . . The need of avenging
himself, of leaving regrets behind him, of arousing admiration. . . . He
hunted up a big sheet of school-paper, folded it across--he was in a
hurry--and wrote in his uncertain, laborious, childish script, "_I
cannot live any longer, for she has betrayed me. The whole world is
wicked. I don't love anything any longer, so I would rather die. All
women are liars. They are mean. They don't know how to love. I despise
her. When they bury me I ask them to put this paper over me: 'I die for
Noémi_.'"

At this dear name he wept; he pressed his handkerchief against his mouth
in order not to make a noise. He wiped away his tears, reread his lines,
and thought gravely, "I mustn't compromise her."

Then he tore up the sheet and began again. Almost in spite of himself he
breathlessly dashed off his despairing lines. When he reached the
sentence "_They don't know how to love_," he continued, "_I have known
and I die_." In the midst of his grief he was very much pleased with
this phrase: it almost consoled him. It disposed him to be kind to those
he was leaving behind him, and he ended generously, "_I forgive you
all_." He added his signature. A few seconds more and all would be over;
he would be delivered, and he saw in advance the fine effect it would
produce. But just as he was passing the pen once more over the childish
flourishes where the ink had failed, the door of the little room opened
suddenly behind him. He had just enough time to hide the weapon and the
papers under his arms. Annette saw only the mirror placed against the
dictionary and she thought Marc was admiring himself. She made no
comment. She seemed terribly tired and, in a low voice, as if she were
exhausted, she said she had forgotten to buy milk for dinner and that
Marc would be very kind if he would spare her the trouble of climbing up
and down the four flights by going after it. As for him, he had only one
idea, that she should not see what his arms covered. He did not wish to
move and replied roughly that he did not have the time; he was busy.
With a sad smile, Annette closed the door and went out.

He heard her slowly descending the stairs. (She had looked worn out.) He
was seized with remorse. He could not forget the expression of her face
and her tired voice. . . . He threw the revolver hastily into a drawer,
buried the _farewells to life_ under a pile of books and rushed out of
the apartment. He jostled his mother on the stairs and called to her, in
a cross voice, that he was going to do the errand. Annette came upstairs
again, her heart somewhat lightened. She was thinking that the boy was
not as contrary as he seemed. But she had been pained by his rudeness
and his harshness. Heavens, how unaffectionate he was! . . . Well, so
much the better for him! Poor child, he would suffer less from
life. . . .

When Marc came back, he had quite forgotten his intention to commit
suicide. It gave him no pleasure to find the famous Testament,
imperfectly hidden, on his table. He hastened to place it completely out
of sight in the bottom of a band-box. He dismissed the depressing
thought. He felt now how cowardly, how cruel, it would have been to his
mother, whose health worried him. But he expressed his concern clumsily;
he did not know how to ask her about it and she did not know how to
reply. Through misplaced pride he did not want to show his real
feelings; it would have seemed as if he were awkwardly performing a mere
polite duty. And she, as proud as himself, did not want to worry him,
and she turned the conversation away from it. So they both fell back
into their silence. Freed from his anxiety, Marc now felt that he had
the right to be angry with his mother because for her he had sacrificed
his suicide. . . . He was well aware that he no longer felt the least
desire for this; but he needed to avenge himself for what he had
suffered. When you cannot avenge yourself on others you do so on your
mother; she is always there, at hand, and she does not strike back.

So they remained walled-up, each one absorbed in his own grief. And
Marc, whose own sorrow had begun to weigh upon him, felt his animosity
against Annette's increasing. He was relieved when he heard the
door-bell announcing Aunt Sylvie--for he knew her ring. She had come to
take him to a performance of Isadora's, for she had suddenly gone crazy
over dancing. In spite of the duty that he felt to retain in his soul
and also on his face--especially on his face--the fatal mark of the
ordeal through which he had passed, he could not hide his joy at
escaping. He ran to dress, leaving the door open so as to lose none of
the gay talk of his aunt, who, the moment she had arrived, had launched
into a frivolous story. And Annette, who was forcing herself to smile,
though she was broken-hearted, thought, "Can this be the woman who cried
her heart out a year ago over her child's body? Has she forgotten?"

She did not envy this elasticity. But her son's laugh, as he answered
Sylvie's sallies from the other room, evidenced an equal gift of
forgetfulness. Annette, who was pained by this apparent heartlessness,
did not know that she too possessed this cruel and marvellous gift. When
Marc reappeared, beaming, ready to start, she could not command her face
enough to conceal her harsh disapproval. Marc was more hurt by this than
he would have been by out-and-out censure. He avenged himself by
exaggerating his gaiety. He became almost noisy and seemed in such a
hurry to get away that he forgot to say good-bye to his mother. He
thought of it after he had gone out. Should he go back? Let her worry!
He pouted. It comforted him to leave behind him that reproachful face,
that sadness, the depressing atmosphere he felt in the house, and the
disturbing traces of the day's troubles. . . . That immense day! . . . A
whole world! . . . Several lifetimes in a few hours, the peak of joy and
the depths of despair. . . He ought to have been crushed under such a
load of emotions, but it weighed no more on the elastic adolescent than
a bird weighs on a branch. The bird flies away, the branch swings back
and sways in the wind. They had flown away, the joys and sorrows of the
day that was past! Only a dream remained of them. To enjoy the new joys
and the new sorrows, he hastened to efface it.

But Annette, who had no means of knowing what was passing through his
head, Annette, who, like him, was a passionate soul, attributed
everything to herself; and, as she listened to his laughter receding
down the stairs, she was struck to the heart by his joy at leaving her.
She thought he hated her, for her passion always exaggerated things in
every way. . . . She was a burden on him, yes, that was quite clear. He
longed to be free from her. When she was dead he would be happier. . . .
Happier! . . . She would be happier too. It stabbed her through and
through, this absurd thought that her son, her child, might desire her
death. . . . (Absurd? Who can tell? In his innermost heart, in a
moment's madness, what child has not desired his mother's death?) . . .
The terror of this intuition, striking Annette at this moment when she
was holding on to life with one weak hand, was a mortal blow to her.

All day she had been devastated by the furious return of her passion.
Now that her decision had been made and carried out, the irreparable
deed consummated, now that she had deliberately done her duty, she no
longer had the strength to resist the attack of the enemy within. And
the enemy had rushed upon her like a torrent.

She was a party to it. She had opened the gates to it. When all is lost,
one has at least the right to enjoy one's despair! My suffering concerns
only myself. Let me feel the whole of it. Bleed, bleed, my heart! Let me
stab you by forcing you to see again all you have lost! Philippe. . . .
He was there before her. . . . The evocation was so strong that she saw
him, spoke to him, touched him. . . . He, everything that she loved in
him, the attraction of that which resembles and that which is opposed to
us, the antagonistic union, burning with the double fire of love and
combat, the embrace and the struggle: they are the same thing. And this
illusory embrace had such a carnal violence that the possessed soul,
possessed by love, bent like Leda beneath the swan. The flood of passion
ebbed despairingly. Then came those agonies that are part of the life of
every woman who is made for love and to whom her share of love has been
refused--agonies that come at this time of life when, if a love dies,
she thinks that love itself is dying. On this night Annette, alone in
her room, abandoned by her son, with her passion mutilated, suffered
tortures in the destitution of her heart, and the haunting belief that
love was lost forever, that life was lost without love, gripped her by
the throat. It did not give her a moment's respite. She drove it away;
it returned. Annette tried in vain to fill her mind with other things.
She picked up her work, tossed it aside, got up, sat down. With her head
on the table, she wrung her hands. The fixed idea maddened her. She had
reached that point of suffering when to escape from herself a woman is
ready for the worst aberrations. Annette felt that she was on the verge
of madness, and she was aware, in her delirium, of a savage impulse, the
frightful desire to go down into the street and to debase herself in her
fury, destroy her body and her tortured heart, prostitute herself to the
first man she met. When she became aware of this bestial thought, she
cried out in horror; and as a result of this horror the infamous idea
would not relax its grip. Then, like her son, she thought of killing
herself. She could no longer control her obsession. . . .

She rose and went towards the door, but to reach it she had to pass
close to the open window; she decided that, once there, she would fling
herself out! . . . A strange instinct of purity that wished to save her
soul from pollution! That illusory soul! Her reason was not duped by the
conventional morality. But her instinct was stronger and it saw more
clearly. . . . Entirely occupied by her double obsession--the door and
the window--she did not see what was close to her. Walking towards the
window, she struck herself violently in the stomach against the sharp
corner of the sideboard. The pain was so severe that she could not
breathe. Doubled over, with her hands on the wounded spot, she felt a
keen, revengeful joy that her stomach had been struck. She would have
liked to break to pieces in her body the blind and drunken master, the
tiger-god. . . . Then the reaction came. She sank down on a low chair
that fitted in between the sideboard and the window, and her strength
failed her. Her hands were icy, her face beaded with perspiration; the
beating of her disordered heart wavered. Ready to slip into the abyss,
she had only one thought, "Quicker, quicker! . . ."

She fainted.




XLIX


When she opened her eyes again--(When was it? After a few seconds? . . .
A gulf . . . )--her head was thrown back as if on a block, her neck was
lying against the window-sill, her body wedged into the narrow angle of
the wall. She opened her eyes and over the dark roofs, in the July
night, she saw the stars. . . . One of them pierced her with its divine
gaze.

Silence, unprecedented, vast as a plain. . . . Yet the wagons were
rolling by in the street below; the glasses on the sideboard vibrated.
She heard nothing. . . . Suspended between earth and sky. . . . "_A
noiseless fight_." . . . "_She was not entirely awake_. . . ."

She put off the moment. She was afraid of finding again what she had
left behind--the horrible lassitude, the torment, the snare of love:
love, maternity, implacable egoism, that of nature who cares so little
for my troubles, who only watches till I awaken so as to break my
heart. . . . Never to wake again! . . .

She became conscious, none the less. And she saw that the enemy was no
longer there. Her despair had vanished. . . . Vanished? No, it was still
there, but it was no longer in her. She saw it outside. She heard its
rustle. . . . Magic. . . . A terrible music disclosing unknown
spaces. . . . Paralyzed, Annette heard, as if some invisible hand were
conjuring it up in the room, the sound of sobbing, the Fatum of a Chopin
prelude. Her heart was flooded with a joy she had never before experienced.
It had nothing but the name in common with the poor joy of everyday life
which is afraid of pain, which only exists because it denies pain,
denies that immense joy which is also pain. . . . Annette listened with
closed eyes. The voice stopped. There was an expectant silence. And
suddenly from the torn soul a wild cry of deliverance flew upward as if
on wings. As a diamond leaves its track on a piece of glass, it streaked
across the vault of the night. In her exhaustion, as she lay on her hard
pillow, Annette, on the threshold of this night of sorrow, gave birth to
a new soul. . . .

The silent cry whirled far away and disappeared in the abyss of thought.
Annette remained silent and motionless. A long time. . . . At last she
rose, her neck aching, her limbs stiff. But her soul was delivered. An
irresistible force pushed her towards the table. She did not know what
she was going to do. Her heart was in her throat. She could not keep it
all to herself. She took up her pen and, in a whirlwind of passion,
without metre, in a rough and jerky rhythm, in a single torrent, she
poured out the flood of pain. . . .


You have come, your hand holds me,--I kiss your hand.
In love, in fear,--I kiss your hand.

Love, you have come to destroy me. I know it well.
My knees tremble. Come, destroy!--I kiss your hand.

You eat the fruit and fling it away: bite my heart, it is yours!
Blest be the wound your teeth make!--I kiss your hand.

You want me--all; but, possessing all, you will possess nothing.
You leave nothing but ruins.--I kiss your hand.

To-morrow your hand, caressing me, will kill me.
Even as I kiss it, I await the mortal stroke of your hand.

Kill me! Strike! In doing me evil, you will do me good.
You deliver me, destroyer.--I kiss your hand.

Every blow that makes me bleed breaks a bond.
You tear away the chains with the flesh.--I kiss your hand.

You break the prison of my body, murderer,
And through the breach my life escapes.--I kiss your hand.

I am the broken soil from which rises the grain
Of the sorrow that you sowed.--I kiss your hand.

Sow the sacred sorrow! May all the sorrow of the world
Come to ripeness in my breast.--I kiss your hand, I kiss your
hand. . . .


Tempest, sea-waves crashing against the rocks, a soul laden with spray,
flashing with lightning, a surf foaming with passions and tears dashed
up towards the sky. . . .

And at the last cry of the wild birds the soul fell back suddenly. And
Annette, exhausted, flung herself on her bed and slept.




L


When morning came, nothing remained of the sorrows of the night but a
light snow that melted in the sun. . . . _Cosi la neve al sol si
disigilla_. . . . And the aching peace of a body that has fought and
knows it has conquered.

She felt satiated, satiated with her grief. Grief is like passion. To
deliver oneself from it, one has to glut oneself with it. But few people
have the hardihood to do this. They feed the snarling dog with crumbs
from their table. The only people who conquer grief are those who dare
to embrace its excess, who say to it, "I take you to myself. You shall
bring forth children through me. . . ." That powerful embrace of the
creative soul, as brutal and fertile as actual possession. . . .

On the table Annette found what she had written. She tore it up. These
disordered words had become as unbearable to her as the feelings they
expressed. She did not want to disturb the sense of well-being that
pervaded her. She had a feeling of relief, as if a knot, a link of the
chain, had just been broken. . . . And in a flash she had a vision of
the chain of servitudes from which, one by one, the soul slowly frees
itself through a series of existences, its own and those of others (they
are all the same). . . . And she asked herself: "Why, why these eternal
attachments, these eternal ruptures? Towards what liberation does desire
drive us in its sanguinary progress?"

It was only for a moment. Why worry about what is going to happen? It
will pass, just like what has already happened. We know quite well that,
no matter what happens, we shall make our way through. As the saying
goes, that old heroic utterance of prayer and defiance: "May God only
not lay upon our shoulders heavier burdens than we can bear!"

She had borne hers, that of a day. Well, one day at a time! . . . She
was eased in heart and body. . . . To strive, _to seek_, NOT _to find,
and not to yield_. . . . "It's all right. It's all right. . . . I
haven't wasted my time. . . . Leave the rest to to-morrow!"

She rose. She was naked, and from over the roofs the morning sun bathed
her body and the room. . . . She was happy. . . . Yes, in spite of
everything!

Everything about her was just as it had been yesterday: the sky, the
earth, the past and the future. But everything that had crushed her
yesterday was radiant to-day.

Marc had come home very late in the evening. He had enjoyed himself
without his mother, and now he felt remorse at having left her alone and
made her sit up for him. For he knew that Annette would not go to bed
until he had returned, and he had expected an icy reception. Although he
was in the wrong he assumed as he went upstairs--if only for that
reason--an attitude of defiance. With an insolent smile on his lips,
although at bottom he was not sure of himself, he picked up the key from
under the doormat and opened the door. Hanging up his coat in the
vestibule, he listened. Silence. Nothing stirred. Noiselessly, he
tiptoed into his room and went to bed. He felt relieved. Serious matters
could wait until to-morrow! But before he was entirely undressed he was
seized with anxiety. This stillness was not natural. . . . Like his
mother he had a vivid imagination and one that was easily disturbed. . . .
What had happened? . . . He was a thousand miles from suspecting the
deadly storms that had raged that night in the room adjoining his own.
His mother was inexplicable and disturbing to him. He never knew what
she was thinking. Seized with alarm, in his nightshirt and bare feet, he
went and pressed his ear to Annette's door. He was reassured. She was
there. She was asleep; her breathing was loud and uneven. He pushed open
the door, fearing that she was ill, and stole up to the bed. By the
light from the street he saw her, stretched out flat on her back, with
her hair over her cheeks, with that tragic face which, in nights of old,
had stirred the curiosity of her companion Sylvie. Her breast rose and
fell heavily, harshly, violently, with difficulty. Marc was seized with
fear and pity for all the weariness and suffering he divined in this
body. Bending over the pillow, in a low, trembling voice, he murmured
"Mamma."

As if she had heard the call from far away in her sleep, she made an
effort to free herself and groaned. The child drew back, frightened. She
relapsed into her immobility. Marc went back to bed. The thoughtlessness
of his age, the fatigue of the day, got the better of his anxiety. He
slept without waking until morning.

When he got up, the fancies and fears of the past evening returned. He
was surprised that his mother was not yet visible. As a rule, she came
into his room to kiss him and say good-morning while he was in bed. She
had not come in this morning. But he heard her coming and going in the
neighboring room. He opened the door. Kneeling on the floor, she was
dusting the furniture and did not turn round. Marc said good-morning to
her. She turned her smiling eyes on him and said, "Good-morning, my
dear." Then she went on with her work, paying no more attention to him.

He expected she would ask him about his evening. He detested these
questions, but when she did not ask them he was vexed. She went into her
room, put it in order and finished dressing. It was time for her
classes; she was getting ready to go out He saw her looking at herself
in the mirror, with dark circles about her eyes, her face still showing
lines of fatigue, but with a light in her eyes! Her mouth was smiling.
He was astonished at the sight. He had expected to find her sad and he
was even ready to pity her in his heart; this disturbed his plans. The
little man's logic was upset by it.

But Annette had her own logic. "The heart has its reasons" which a sense
higher than reason understands. Annette had ceased to worry about what
others might think. She knew now that you must not ask others to
understand you. If they love you, it is with their eyes closed. They
don't close them often! . . . "Let them be as they wish to be! Whatever
they are, I love them. I cannot live without loving them. And if they
don't love me I have enough love in my heart both for myself and for
them."

She smiled into the mirror with a smile that came from far deeper depths
than her eyes, smiled at the fire of which they were a spark, at eternal
Love. She let her arms fall from her head, turned towards her son, saw
the child's troubled face, remembered his evening out, took hold of the
tip of his chin, and, letting the syllables drop, said gaily, "You were
dancing? I'm so glad! And now you must sing!"

She laughed as she saw his amazed expression, caressed him with her
eyes, kissed him on his nose and, picking up her bag from the table,
went out, saying, "Good-bye, my little cricket!"

In the vestibule he heard her whistling a careless tune. (It was a
talent he envied her even while he despised it, for she whistled much
better than he.)

He was indignant! This indecent gaiety after all the evening's
anxiety. . . . She had escaped him. He denounced the eternal
caprices of women, their lack of seriousness, as he had heard
others do . . . "_la donna mobile_."

He was about to go out when a piece of paper in the scrap-basket caught
his attention. At a distance the sharp, prying eyes of the rapacious
child unthinkingly deciphered a few words on a fragment of the sheet. He
stopped short. . . . These words. . . . His mother's writing! He picked
them up, read them feverishly, at random at first, one at a time. These
flaming words! . . . As they were torn into bits, the emotion they called
up, interrupted in the midst of its flight, was all the more
fascinating. . . . He gathered them together, rummaged in the basket for
the smallest fragments, took them all and patiently pieced them
together. His hands trembled at the secret he had captured by surprise.
When he had assembled all the pieces and was able to grasp the poem as a
whole, he was completely taken aback. He did not understand it very
well, but the wild fervor of this solitary song revealed to him unknown
depths of passion and grief that exalted and dismayed him. Was it
possible that these stormy cries had come from his mother's breast? . . .
No, no, it wasn't possible! He wouldn't have it. He told himself that
she had copied them from a book. . . . But from what book? He couldn't
ask her. . . . And yet, suppose it wasn't taken from a book . . . ? The
tears came, the need of crying out his emotion, his love, a longing to
throw himself into his mother's arms, at her feet, to open his heart to
her, to read her own . . . And he couldn't do it. . . .


When his mother came home at noon for lunch, the boy, who had spent the
whole morning reading and copying the torn fragments and had thrust them
in an envelope into his breast, said nothing to her. Sitting at his
table, he even refrained from rising and turning his head towards her
when she entered. The more burning was his desire to know, the stiffer
was the constraint that led him to conceal his anxiety under a mask of
insensibility. If, after all, these tragic words were not Annette's!
Doubt returned to him at the sight of his mother's tranquil face. . . .
But the other, the upsetting doubt, persisted all the same. . . .
Supposing they were hers? . . . This woman, my mother? . . . Facing her
at table, he did not dare look at her. . . . But when her back was
turned and she moved about the room, looking for something, carrying a
plate, he stared at her eagerly with questioning eyes that asked: "Who
are you?"

He could not define his troubled, fascinated, uneasy impression. But
Annette, full of her new life, noticed nothing.




LI


In the afternoon they went out, each about his own business. Marc
watched his mother in the distance. He was torn by conflicting feelings:
he admired her, he was irritated by her. . . . Women were too much for
him! Women, every woman. At times they were so close, at other times so
very far away! A strange race. . . . Nothing about them is like
ourselves. One never knows what is going on in them, why they laugh, why
they cry. He scorned them, he despised them, he needed them, he pined
for them! He was angry with them just because of this obsession. He
could have bitten the neck of that woman who was walking by as he had
bitten Noémi's wrist--as he would have liked to bite it--till the blood
flowed! At this sudden memory his startled heart gave a leap. He
stopped, turned pale and spat with disgust.

He crossed the Luxembourg Gardens, where the young men were playing. He
looked at them enviously. The best part of him, his secret desires, went
out towards manly activity, without love, without women--sport, heroic
games. But he was weakly: an unjust fate, his illness as a child, had
placed him in a position of inferiority in the race of his own
generation. And his sedentary life, his books, his dreams, the
companionship of women, the two sisters, had poisoned him with this
venom of love, transmitted by his mother, his aunt, his grandfather, by
all the blood of the Rivières. How he would have liked to spill that
blood, to open his veins! Ah, how he envied those young men with their
beautiful limbs, empty of thought, full of light!

All the riches that were his he despised. He could think of nothing but
those of which he was deprived, the games and contests of harmonious
bodies. And in his injustice he did not see that other contest which his
mother was waging so close to him. . . .

She walked on. The summer was pouring its splendid waves over the city.
The blue gaze of the sky bathed the tops of the houses. . . . How good
it would have been to be far away from the city in the fields! . . . But
that was more than she could ask for: Annette did not have the means to
leave Paris. No doubt Marc would be able to go off for a few weeks with
his aunt to some beach in Normandy. But Annette would not go; her pride
would not allow her to be a charge on her sister. Besides, ever since
the days when she had seen them with her father, she had felt an
aversion for summer-resorts, with all their bored people, those
flirtations of the idle and the curious. She would stay at home alone.
She did not mind this. She carried within herself the sea and the sky,
the sunsets behind the hills, the milky fogs, the fields stretching out
under the shroud of moonlight, the calm death of the nights. In the
August afternoon, breathing the warm air, amid the uproar of the streets
and the flood of human beings, Annette crossed Paris with the quick,
sure step, the light, rhythmical step of other days, noting everything
as she passed and yet very far away. . . . In the great, dusty street,
shaken by the wheels of the heavy autobusses, she was wandering in her
thought under the vaults of the forest in that Burgundian countryside
where she had spent her happy childhood, and her nostrils caught the
odor of bark and moss. She was walking over the fallen autumn leaves. A
rain-laden wind swept through the stripped branches, brushing her cheek
with its damp wing; a bird's song flowed magically through the silence;
the rain-laden wind passed her. . . . Through these woods the young
Annette passed also with her weeping lover, and there was the hawthorne
hedge, there were the bees about the abandoned house. . . . Joys and
sorrows. . . . So far away! She smiled at her own youthful image to
which suffering was still so new. . . . "Wait, my poor Annette, you are
only at the beginning. . . ."

"Do you regret nothing?"

"Nothing!"

"Neither what you have done nor what you have failed to do?"

"Nothing, deceitful spirit! Were you trying to spy out my regrets? You
will find that your labor is lost! I accept everything, everything I
have had and everything I have not had, my whole lot, wise and foolish.
Everything has been as it should have been, the wise and the foolish.
One makes mistakes: that is life. But it is never quite a mistake to
have loved. Although age is overtaking me, my heart, at least, has no
wrinkles. And although it has suffered, it is happy to have loved." And
her grateful mind turned, with a smile, to those whom she had loved.

There was much tenderness in this smile and not a little French irony.
Touched as she was at the thought of them, Annette perceived, curiously
enough, the ridiculous side of all these torments, her own and those of
others . . . that pitiful fever of desire and waiting! For what was she
waiting? An end of love, for herself. For the others, too, in their
turn!

She saw the others, her son, with his burning hands, quivering to grasp
the uncertain future; Philippe, dissatisfied with the commonplace food
that society offered his devouring hunger; Sylvie, trying to forget and
looking to the future that would fill the gaping emptiness of her heart;
the multitude of ordinary people yawning over the boredom of their life;
and youth, restless youth, wandering and waiting. . . . For what was it
waiting? Towards what were its hands stretched out?

Liberated from herself, she looked at all these burden-bearers, saw that
herd, that mob in the streets, hastening, running, each ignoring every
one else, each as if pursued by the sheep-dogs, and, under the apparent
disorder, the sovereign rhythm--all believing they directed themselves,
all directed. . . . Towards what? Whither was he leading them, the
invisible shepherd? . . . The good shepherd? . . . No! Beyond good and
evil. . . .

She gave her lessons as usual, patient and attentive, listening kindly,
explaining clearly, making no mistakes. Even as she spoke, the dream
continued to envelop her. Whoever has formed the habit finds it easy to
live two lives at a time, one on a level with the ground, with other
men, the other in the depths of the dream that is bathed by the inner
sun. One neglects neither of them. One reads them both with a glance as
a musician's eye reads a score. Life is a symphony: each moment of life
sings in several parts. The reverberation of this warm harmony brought
the color to Annette's face. Her pupils to-day were astonished at her
youthful air, and they conceived for her one of those strong attachments
which the young feel for their elders, the Heralds of life, and which
they dare not confess. Annette knew nothing of the wake of love that her
passing left that day in the hearts of those who were near her.

She came home towards evening in the same aerial state. With her light
heart, she felt as if she were moving on air. She could not have
explained it. The powerful enigma of a woman enveloped in her own
radiance, in a joy without apparent reason, even in the face of reason!
Everything that surrounds her, the whole external world is, at these
moments, only a theme for the free improvisations of the passionate
fantasy of her dreams.

She threaded her way, in the streets, through anxious groups of people.
The newsboys were running about shouting the news which the passers-by
were discussing. She saw and heard nothing. From a passing tram someone
shouted something to her; she recalled who it was a moment
later--Sylvie's husband. Without hearing what he said she had replied
with a gay wave of her hand. . . . How excited everyone was! . . . Once
more she had the brief sense of a dizzy current which, like the whirling
spirals of star-dust, was rushing through a crevice in the vault into
the abyss that drew it down. . . . What abyss? . . .

She climbed up to her apartment. Marc was awaiting her on the threshold,
his eyes shining, and behind him, Sylvie, very much excited. They were
eager to tell her the news. . . . What was it? Both spoke at once; each
of them wanted to be the first. . . .

"But what on earth are you trying to tell me?" she said, laughing.

She distinguished one word, "War."

"War? What war?" But she was not surprised. . . . The abyss. . . . "So
it was you? For a long time I have felt your breath drawing us
down. . . ."

Their exclamations went on. To please them she roused herself--a
little--from her somnambulistic state. . . . "War? Well, so be it! War,
peace, it's all life, all part of the game. . . . I'll take my
share! . . ."

She was a good player, the enchanted soul!

"I challenge God!"




THE END