*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79693 ***




                           STRAIT IS THE GATE

                          (_La Porte Étroite_)

                     _Translated from the French of_

                               ANDRÉ GIDE

                           _by Dorothy Bussy_


                    TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF
                   CANADA, LTD., AT ST. MARTIN’S HOUSE
                                  1924


                 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


                                   TO
                                M. A. G.




I


Some people might have made a book out of it; but the story I am going
to tell is one which it took all my strength to live and over which I
spent all my virtue. So I shall set down my recollections quite simply,
and if in places they are ragged I shall have recourse to no invention
and neither patch nor connect them; any effort I might make to dress
them up would take away from the last pleasure I hope to get in telling
them.

I lost my father before I was twelve years old. As there was nothing
to keep my mother at Le Havre, where my father had had a practice as
a doctor, she decided to go to Paris where she thought I should be
better able to finish my education. She took a small apartment near
the Luxembourg and Miss Ashburton came to live with us. Miss Flora
Ashburton, who had no relations of her own, had begun by being my
mother’s governess; she afterwards became her companion and later on
her friend. I spent my childhood in the society of these two women whom
I remember as equally gentle and equally sad and always dressed in
mourning. One day--it was a good long time, I think, after my father’s
death--my mother changed the black ribbon in her morning cap for a
mauve one.

“Oh, mamma!” I cried. “That colour doesn’t suit you at all.” The next
morning the black ribbon was back again.

My health was delicate. My mother and Miss Ashburton had only one
thought--to keep me from ailing. If I have not become an idler as a
result of their solicitude it must really be that my love of work is
ingrained. At the very beginning of the fine weather they both used to
persuade themselves that it was time for me to leave town, that I was
growing pale. About the middle of June we would start for Fongueusemare
in the neighbourhood of Le Havre, where we used to spend the summer
every year at my uncle Bucolin’s.

Standing in a garden which is neither very large nor very fine, and
which has nothing special to distinguish it from a number of other
Normandy gardens, the Bucolins’ house, a white two-storied building,
resembles a great many country houses of the century before last. A
score of large windows look east on to the front of the garden; as many
more on to the back; there are none at the sides. The windows have
small panes; some of them, which have been recently replaced, seem too
light in colour among the old ones, which look green and dull beside
them. Certain others have flaws in the glass which our parents used to
call “bubbles”; a tree seen through them becomes distorted; when the
postman passes he suddenly develops a hump.

The garden is rectangular and is enclosed by a wall. The part which
lies in front of the house consists of a fairly large, shady lawn with
a gravel path all round it. On this side the wall is lower and allows a
view of the farmyard and buildings which lie round the garden. The farm
is bordered according to the custom of the country, by an avenue of
beeches.

Behind the house on the west side the garden spreads more spaciously.
A walk gay with flowers runs along the south espalier wall and is
protected from the sea winds by a thick screen of Portugal laurel
and a few trees. Another walk running along the north wall disappears
under a mass of branches. My cousins used to call it the “dark walk”
and would not venture along it after twilight. These two paths lead to
the kitchen-garden, which continues the flower-garden on a lower level,
and which you reach by a small flight of steps. Then, at the bottom
of the kitchen-garden, a little gate with a secret fastening leads,
on the other side of the wall, to a coppice in which the beach avenue
terminates right and left. As one stands on the door-step of the west
front one can look over the top of this clump of trees to the plateau
beyond with its admirable clothing of crops. On the horizon, at no
great distance, can be seen the church of a little village and, when
the air is still, the smoke rising from half-a-dozen houses.

Every fine summer evening after dinner we used to go down to the “lower
garden.” We went out by the little secret gate and walked as far as
a bench in the avenue from which there was a view over the country;
there, near the thatched roof of a deserted marl-pit, my uncle, my
mother and Miss Ashburton would sit down; before us the little valley
filled with mist, and over the distant woods we watched the sky turn
golden. Afterwards we would linger for a while at the lower end of
the garden where it had already grown dark. When we came in we found
my aunt in the drawing-room. She hardly ever went out with us. For us
children the evening ended here; but very often we were still reading
in our rooms when we heard our elders go up to bed.

Almost every hour of the day which we did not spend in the garden we
spent in the “school-room,” my uncle’s study, in which some school
desks had been placed for us. My cousin Robert and I worked side by
side--behind us were Juliette and Alissa. Alissa was two years older
than I, and Juliette one year younger; Robert was the youngest of us
four.

I am not writing here an account of my early recollections, but only of
those which refer to my story. It really begins, I may say, in the year
of my father’s death. Perhaps my sensibility--over-stimulated as it had
been by our bereavement and if not by my own grief at any rate by the
sight of my mother’s--predisposed me at this time to new emotions. I
had matured precociously, so that when we went back to Fongueusemare
that year, Juliette and Robert seemed to me all the younger by
comparison, but when I saw Alissa I understood on a sudden that we two
had ceased to be children.

Yes, it was certainly the year of my father’s death; my recollection
is confirmed by a conversation which, I remember, took place between
my mother and Miss Ashburton immediately after our arrival. I had
come unexpectedly into the room where my mother and her friend were
talking together; the subject of their talk was my aunt. My mother was
indignant that she had not gone into mourning or had gone out again
so soon. (To tell the truth it was as impossible for me to imagine
Aunt Bucolin dressed in black as my mother in colours). The day of our
arrival Lucile Bucolin, as far as I can remember, was wearing a muslin
gown. Miss Ashburton, conciliatory as ever, was trying to calm my
mother.

“After all,” she argued timidly, “white is mourning too.”

“And do you call that red shawl she has round her shoulders mourning
too? Flora, I am ashamed of you,” cried my mother.

It was only during the holidays that I saw my aunt and no doubt the
warm summer weather was the reason of her wearing the transparent,
low-necked bodices in which I always remember her; but still more than
the brilliant colour of the scarves which she used to throw over her
bare shoulders, it was my aunt’s low necks that shocked my mother.

Lucile Bucolin was very beautiful. I still have by me a little portrait
of her, in which I can see her as she then was, looking so young that
she might have been taken for the elder sister of her daughters,
sitting sideways in an attitude which was habitual to her, her head
leaning on her left hand, her little finger curved rather affectedly
towards her lip. A large meshed net confines the masses of her curly
hair, which fall half-uncoiled upon her neck. In the opening of her
bodice a locket of Italian mosaic hangs from a loosely tied black
velvet neck ribbon. Her black velvet sash, with its wide floating bow,
her broad-brimmed soft straw hat which is dangling from the back of her
chair--everything adds to the childishness of her appearance. Her right
hand hangs by her side, holding a shut book.

Lucile Bucolin came from a West Indian family; she had either never
known her parents or lost them very early. My mother told me later that
when she was left an orphan, or, possibly even deserted, she was taken
in by Pasteur Vautier and his wife, who at that time had no children
of their own. They left Martinique soon after, taking her with them
to Le Havre, where the Bucolins were settled. The Vautiers and the
Bucolins used to see a good deal of each other. My uncle was at that
time employed in a bank abroad, and it was only three years later,
when he came home to stay with his people, that he saw little Lucile.
He fell in love with her and at once asked her to marry him, to the
great grief of his parents and of my mother. Lucile was then sixteen
years old. In the meantime Madame Vautier had had two children; she was
beginning to be anxious as to the influence their adopted sister--whose
character was developing more and more oddly every month--might have
over them; the household, moreover, was in straitened circumstances. My
mother told me all this in order to explain why the Vautiers accepted
her brother’s proposal so gladly. What I suppose for my own part is,
that Miss Lucile was becoming terribly embarrassing. I am well enough
acquainted with Le Havre society to imagine the kind of reception
that a girl of such fascinations would meet with. Pasteur Vautier,
whom I knew later on, was a gentle creature, at once circumspect and
ingenuous, incapable of coping with intrigue and quite defenceless
against evil--the worthy man must have been at the end of his tether.
I can say nothing of Madame Vautier; she died in giving birth to a
fourth child who was about my own age and who afterwards became my
friend.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Lucile Bucolin took very little share in our life; she did not come
downstairs from her room till after the mid-day meal was over, and then
immediately stretched herself on the sofa or in a hammock and remained
there till evening, when she would rise, no less languid than before.
She used sometimes to raise a handkerchief to her forehead as if wiping
away some imaginary moisture, though her skin was a perfection of
smooth purity; this handkerchief of hers filled me with wonder because
of its fineness and its scent, which seemed more like the perfume of
a fruit than of a flower; sometimes she would draw from her waist a
minute mirror with a sliding silver lid, which hung with various other
objects from her watch-chain; she would look at herself, wet her finger
at her lips and then moisten the corner of her eyes. She used often to
hold a book, but it was almost always shut; a tortoise-shell bookmarker
was stuck between its pages. If you came near her she did not turn from
the contemplation of her dreams to look at you. Often from her careless
or tired hand, from the back of the sofa or from a fold of her dress,
her handkerchief would drop to the ground, or her book, or a flower,
may be, or the bookmarker. One day when I picked up her book--this is
a childish memory I am telling you--I blushed to see it was a book of
poetry.

In the evening after dinner Lucile Bucolin did not join our family
party at the table, but sat down to the piano, where she took a kind
of placid pleasure in playing one or other of Chopin’s slow mazurkas;
sometimes she would break off in the middle of a bar and pause,
suspended motionless on a chord.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I used to experience a peculiar discomfort when I was with my aunt; it
was a feeling of uneasiness, of disturbance, mingled with a kind of
admiration and a kind of terror. Perhaps some obscure instinct set me
against her; and then I felt that she despised Flora Ashburton and my
mother, and that Miss Ashburton was afraid of her, and that my mother
disliked her.

Lucile Bucolin, I wish I no longer bore you malice; I wish I could
forget for a moment how much harm you did ... at any rate, I will try
to speak of you without anger.

                   *       *       *       *       *

One day of that summer--or perhaps of the following, for as the place
where the scene was laid never changed, my memories sometimes overlap
and become confused--one day I went into the drawing-room to fetch a
book; she was there. I was on the point of going away again when she
called me back--she, who as a rule never seemed to see me.

“Why do you run away so fast, Jerome? Are you afraid of me?”

With a beating heart I drew near, forced myself to smile, put out my
hand. She took my hand with one of hers and with the other stroked my
cheek.

“How badly your mother dresses you, you poor little thing!” she said.

At that time I used to wear a sort of sailor suit with a large collar,
which my aunt began pulling about.

“Sailor collars are worn much more open,” said she, undoing a button
of my shirt. “There, see if that doesn’t look better!” and taking out
her little mirror, she drew my face down to hers, passed her bare arm
around my neck, put her hand into my shirt, asked me laughingly if I
was ticklish--went on--further.... I started so violently that my shirt
tore across and with a flaming face I fled, as she called after me.

“Oh! the little stupid!”

I rushed away to the other end of the kitchen-garden, and there
I dipped my handkerchief into a little tank, put it to my
forehead--washed, scrubbed--my cheeks, my neck, every part of me the
woman had touched.

                   *       *       *       *       *

There were certain days on which Lucile Bucolin had one of her
“attacks.” They would come on suddenly and the whole house was turned
upside down. Miss Ashburton made haste to get the children out of the
way and distract their attention; but it was impossible to stifle or to
prevent their hearing the dreadful screams which came from the bedroom
or the drawing-room. My uncle lost his head; we heard him rushing along
the passages, fetching towels and eau de Cologne and ether; in the
evening at table, where my aunt was not yet able to appear, he looked
anxious and aged.

When the attack was more or less over, Lucile Bucolin used to send for
her children--that is for Robert and Juliette--never for Alissa. On
those melancholy days Alissa would shut herself up in her room where
her father sometimes joined her, for he used often to talk to Alissa.

My aunt’s attacks made a great impression upon the servants. One
evening when the attack had been particularly acute and I was being
kept in my mother’s room, where what was going on in the drawing-room
was less noticeable, we heard the cook running along the passages
calling out:

“Sir, sir, come quick! My poor lady is dying.”

My uncle had gone up to Alissa’s room; my mother went out to meet him
on his way down. A quarter of an hour later I heard them talking below
the windows of the room where I had remained, and my mother’s voice
reached me.

“Do you know what I think, my dear? The whole thing is play-acting.”
And she repeated the word several times over, emphasising every
syllable, “_play-acting_.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

This was towards the end of the holidays and two years after our
bereavement. I was not to see my aunt much oftener. The unhappy event
which shattered our family life was preceded by a little incident which
occurred a short time before the final catastrophe and turned the
uncertain and complex feeling I had hitherto experienced for Lucile
Bucolin into pure hatred. But before relating this I must first speak
of my cousin.

That Alissa Bucolin was pretty, I was incapable yet of perceiving;
I was drawn and held to her by a charm other than mere beauty. No
doubt she was very like her mother; but the expression of her eyes was
so different that it was not till later that I became aware of this
likeness. I cannot describe faces; the features escape me and even the
colour of the eyes; I can only recall the expression of her smile--a
smile that was already almost sad--and the line of her eyebrows,
which were so extraordinarily far from her eyes, raised above the
eye in a great circle. I have never seen any like them anywhere ...
stay, though! there is a Florentine statuette of the time of Dante;
and I like to fancy that Beatrice as a child had eyebrows wide-arched
like hers. They gave her look, her whole being, an expression of
enquiry which was at once anxious and confident--yes, of passionate
enquiry. She was all question and expectation. You shall hear how this
questioning took possession of me, became my life.

And yet Juliette might have been considered more beautiful; the
brilliancy of joy and health was upon her; but this beauty of hers
beside her sister’s grace seemed something external, something which
lay open to the whole world at the first glance. As for Robert, there
was nothing particular to distinguish him. He was merely a boy of
about my own age; I used to play with him and Juliette; with Alissa I
used to talk. She mixed very little in our games; as far back as I can
remember, I see her serious, gently smiling, reflective. What did we
talk about? What can two children talk about? I will try to tell you in
a moment, but let me first finish what I have to say about my aunt, so
as to have done with her.

Two years after my father’s death, my mother and I spent the Easter
holidays at Le Havre. We did not stay with the Bucolins, who had
comparatively little room in their town house, but with an elder sister
of my mother’s, whose house was larger. Aunt Plantier, whom I rarely
had the opportunity of seeing, had long since been left a widow; I
hardly knew her children, who were much older than I was and very
unlike me.

The Plantiers’ house was not actually in the town, but half way up the
small hill called the “Côte,” which overlooks it. The Bucolins lived in
the business quarter; a steep short cut led in a few minutes from one
house to the other. I used to run up and down it several times a day.

On that particular day I had had lunch at my uncle’s. After the meal
was over he went out, and I accompanied him as far as his office and
then returned home to the Plantiers’ to fetch my mother. There I
heard that she had gone out with my aunt and would not be back till
dinnertime. I immediately went down again to the town where I was very
rarely free to go by myself, and found my way to the port which was
dreary that day with a sea-fog; I loitered on the quays for an hour or
so, and then suddenly I was seized with the desire to go back and take
Alissa by surprise, though indeed I had only just left her. I ran back
through the town and rang at the Bucolins’ door. I was just darting
upstairs when the maid who had let me in stopped me.

“Don’t go up, Master Jerome. Don’t go up! Mistress is having an attack.”

But I brushed past her. It was not my aunt I had come to see....
Alissa’s room was on the third floor. On the first there were the
drawing-room and the dining-room; on the second, my aunt’s room, from
which voices were coming. The door past which I had to go was open and
a flood of light came from the room and fell on the landing; afraid
of being seen, I hesitated a moment and drew back into the dark; this
is what I beheld to my unspeakable amazement: my aunt was lying on a
sofa in the middle of the room; the curtains were drawn, and it was
illuminated by the cheerful light of two candelabras full of candles;
Robert and Juliette were at her feet and behind her was a strange young
man in a lieutenant’s uniform. The presence of the two children seems
to me to-day monstrous; at that time in my innocence I thought it
reassuring rather than otherwise. They were laughing and looking at the
stranger, who was saying in a piping voice:

“Bucolin! Bucolin!... If I had a pet lamb I should certainly call it
Bucolin.”

My aunt herself burst out laughing. I saw her hold out a cigarette for
the young man to light, smoke a few whiffs of it and then let it fall
to the floor. He rushed forward to pick it up, made as if he had caught
his feet in a scarf, tripped and fell on his knees before my aunt.
Thanks to this ridiculous performance, I was able to slip by without
being noticed.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I found myself outside Alissa’s door. For a moment I waited. Bursts
of laughter and voices came up from the floor below; perhaps they
drowned the sound of my knock, for I heard no answer. I pushed the
door and it opened silently. The room was so dark that I did not at
once distinguish Alissa; she was on her knees by the bedside; through
the window behind her came the last glimmer of expiring daylight. She
turned as I came near, but without getting up, and murmured:

“Oh, Jerome, why have you come back?”

I bent down to kiss her; her face was bathed in tears....

My whole life was decided by that moment; even to this day I cannot
recall it without a pang of anguish. Doubtless I understood very
imperfectly the cause of Alissa’s wretchedness, but I felt intensely
that that wretchedness was far too strong for her little quivering
soul, for her fragile body, shaken with sobs.

I remained standing beside her, while she remained on her knees. I
could express nothing of the unfamiliar transport of my breast, but
I pressed her head against my heart, and I pressed my lips to her
forehead, while my whole soul came flooding through them. Drunken with
love, with pity, with an indistinguishable mixture of enthusiasm, of
self-sacrifice, of virtue, I appealed to God with all my strength--I
offered myself up to Him, unable to conceive that existence could have
any other object than to shelter this child from fear, from evil, from
life. I knelt down at last, my whole being full of prayer. I gathered
her to me; vaguely I heard her say:

“Jerome! They didn’t see you, did they? Oh! go away quickly. They
mustn’t see you.”

Then, lower still:

“Jerome, don’t tell anyone. Poor papa doesn’t know about it....”

                   *       *       *       *       *

I told my mother nothing therefore; but the interminable whisperings
that went on between her and Aunt Plantier, the mysterious,
preoccupied, distressed looks of the two women, the “Run along, my
dear!” with which they would get rid of me whenever I came within
earshot of their confabulations, all went to show that they were not
wholly unsuspicious of the Bucolin family secret.

We had no sooner returned to Paris than a telegram recalled my mother
to Le Havre. My aunt had run away.

“With anyone?” I asked Miss Ashburton, with whom my mother had left me.

“My dear, you must ask your mother. I can’t tell you anything,” said
our dear old friend, whom this event had filled with consternation.

Two days later she and I set out to rejoin my mother. It was a
Saturday. I should see my cousins the next day at church and that
was the one idea that filled my mind; for in my childish thoughts I
attached great importance to this sanctification of our meeting. After
all, I cared very little for my aunt and made it a point of honour not
to question my mother.

                   *       *       *       *       *

There were not many people that morning in the little chapel. Pasteur
Vautier, no doubt intentionally, had chosen as his text Christ’s words:
“_Strive to enter in at the strait gate._”

Alissa was sitting a few seats in front of me. I saw her face in
profile; I gazed at her so intently and with such self-oblivion that it
seemed as though it were through her, that I heard the words I listened
to with such passionate eagerness. My uncle was sitting beside my
mother, crying.

The pastor first read the whole text: “_Enter ye in at the strait gate:
for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction,
and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate, and
narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find
it._”

Then, under the different headings of his subject he spoke first of the
broad way.... With a mind rapt and as in a dream, I saw my aunt’s room;
I saw her lying on the sofa, laughing; I saw the brilliant officer,
laughing too ... and the very idea of laughter and of joy became an
offence and an outrage, became, as it were, the hateful exaggeration of
sin!

“_And many there be which go in thereat_,” went on the pastor; then
he painted, and I saw, a gaily dressed, laughing multitude, advancing
in joyous troops, whom I felt I could not and would not join, because
every step I took with them, would lead me further and further from
Alissa. Then the pastor took up again the first words of his text, and
I saw that strait gate through which we must strive to enter. I fancied
it, in the dream in which I was plunged, as a sort of press into which
I passed with effort and with an extremity of pain, that yet had in it
as well, a foretaste of heavenly felicity. And again this gate became
the door of Alissa’s room; in order to enter in at it, I squeezed
myself--I emptied myself of all that I contained of selfishness....
“_Because strait is the gate which leadeth unto life_,” went on Pasteur
Vautier; and beyond all maceration, beyond all sorrow, I imagined--I
had the presentiment of another joy, pure, seraphic, mystic, for which
my soul was already athirst. I imagined this joy like the song of a
violin, at once strident and tender, like the pointed fierceness of a
flame, in which Alissa’s heart and mine were consumed. We advanced
together, clothed in those white robes of which the Apocalypse speaks,
holding each other by the hand, looking forward to the same goal....
What if these childish dreams should call up a smile? I repeat them as
they came, without alteration. Their apparent confusion lies only in
the use of words and imperfect images, to convey a feeling that was
perfectly definite.

“_And few there be that find it_,” ended the pastor. He explained
how to find the strait gate.... “_Few there be_”--I would be one of
those....

At the end of the sermon I had reached such a pitch of moral tension
that, without attempting to see my cousin, as soon as the service was
over, I fled--out of pride, already desiring to put my resolutions (for
I had made resolutions) to the test, and thinking that I should so best
deserve her.




II


This austere teaching found my soul ready prepared and naturally
predisposed to duty. My father’s and mother’s example, added
to the puritanical discipline to which they had submitted the
earliest impulses of my heart, inclined me still more towards what
I used to hear called “virtue.” Self-control was as natural to me
as self-indulgence to others, and this severity to which I was
subjected, far from being irksome to me, was soothing. It was not so
much happiness which I sought in the future, as the infinite effort
to attain it, and in my mind I already confounded happiness with
virtue. No doubt, like all boys of fourteen, I was still unformed
and pliable, but my love for Alissa soon urged me further and more
deliberately along the road on which I had started. A sudden inward
illumination made me acquainted with myself. I saw myself as a
brooding, half-fledged, wistful creature, somewhat careless of others,
somewhat unenterprising, and with no ambitions save for such victories
as are to be gained over self. I was fond of my books and cared
only for the games which need reflection or effort. I did not much
frequent the society of my schoolfellows and when I did take part in
their amusements, it was only out of affection or good nature. I made
friends, however, with Abel Vautier who, the following year, joined me
in Paris and was in my form at school. He was an agreeable, indolent
boy, for whom I had more liking than esteem, but at any rate he was
someone with whom I could talk about Fongueusemare and Le Havre, where
my thoughts were continually flying.

As for my cousin Robert Bucolin, who had been sent to the same school,
he was two forms below us and I saw him only on Sundays. If he had not
been the brother of my cousins, whom, however, he was very unlike, I
should have taken no pleasure in his society.

I was at that time entirely engrossed by my love, and it was in its
light alone that these two friendships had any importance for me.
Alissa was the pearl of great price of which the Gospel spoke, and I
was like him who went and sold all that he had to buy it. Child as I
still was, am I wrong in talking of love, and in giving this name to
the feeling I had for my cousin? Nothing that I experienced later seems
to me worthier of that name--and moreover, when I became old enough to
suffer from the more definite qualms of the flesh, my feeling did not
greatly change in character; I never sought more directly to possess
her whom, as a child, I had sought only to deserve. Work, efforts,
pious acts, I offered them all up, mystically, to Alissa, and, indeed,
invented a refinement of virtue by which I often left her in ignorance
of what I had done only for her sake. In this way I became intoxicated,
as it were, with the fumes of modesty, and accustomed myself, alas!
regardless of my own comfort, to feel no satisfaction in anything that
did not cost me an effort.

Was I alone to feel the spur of emulation? I do not think that Alissa
was touched by it, or that she did anything for my sake or for me,
though all my efforts were only for her. Everything in her unaffected
and artless soul was of the most natural beauty. Her virtue seemed like
relaxation, so much there was in it of ease and grace. The gravity
of her look was made charming by her childlike smile; I recall that
gently and tenderly enquiring look, as she raised her eyes, and can
understand how my uncle, in his distress, sought support and counsel
and comfort from his elder daughter. In the summer that followed I
often saw him talking to her. His grief had greatly aged him; he spoke
little at meals, or sometimes displayed a kind of forced gaiety which
was more painful than his silence. He remained smoking in his study
until the hour of the evening when Alissa would go to fetch him. He had
to be persuaded to go out; she led him off to the garden like a child.
Together they would go down the flower-walk towards the place at the
head of the steps leading down to the kitchen-garden, where we had put
out a few chairs.

One evening, I was lingering out of doors reading, and as I lay on the
grass in the shade of one of the big copper beeches, separated from the
flower-walk only by the laurel hedge, which prevented me from being
seen but not from hearing, Alissa’s and my uncle’s voices reached me.
They had no doubt been talking of Robert; then I heard my name uttered
by Alissa, and I was just beginning to make out their words, when my
uncle exclaimed:

“He! Oh, he will always be fond of work.”

An involuntary listener, my first impulse was to go away, or at any
rate to make some movement to show them that I was there; but what
was I to do? Cough? Call out “I am here; I can hear you”? It was much
more awkwardness and shyness than curiosity to hear more which kept me
quiet. And besides, they were only passing by and I heard what they
said only very indistinctly. But they came on slowly; Alissa no doubt,
as was her habit, with a light basket on her arm, was cutting off the
heads of faded flowers and picking up from under the espaliers the
unripe fruit, which the frequent sea-mists used so often to bring down.
I heard her clear voice:

“Papa, was Uncle Palissier a remarkable man?”

My uncle’s voice was low and indistinct; I could not make out his
answer. Alissa insisted:

“Very remarkable, do you think?”

Again an inaudible answer and again Alissa’s voice:

“Jerome is clever, isn’t he?”

How could I help straining to hear? But no! I could make out nothing.
She went on:

“Do you think he will become a remarkable man?”

Here my uncle raised his voice:

“First, my dear, I should like to understand what you mean by
‘remarkable.’ One can be very remarkable without its showing--at any
rate in the eyes of men--very remarkable in the eyes of God.”

“Yes, that is what I mean,” said Alissa.

“And then, one can’t tell yet. He’s too young. Yes, certainly, he’s
very promising, but that’s not enough for success.”

“What more must there be?”

“Oh, my child! I can hardly tell. There must be confidence, support,
love--”

“What do you mean by support?” interrupted Alissa.

“The affection and esteem that have been lacking to me,” answered my
uncle, sadly; and then their voices finally died away.

When I said my prayers that evening, I felt remorse for my
unintentional eavesdropping and resolved to confess it to my cousin.
Perhaps this time there _was_ a mixture of curiosity in my resolution.

At my first words the next day, she said:

“But, Jerome, it’s very wrong to listen like that. You ought to have
told us you were there or else to have gone away.”

“Really, I didn’t listen--I just overheard you without meaning to. And
you were only passing by-”

“We were walking slowly.”

“Yes, but I hardly heard anything. I stopped hearing almost at once.
What did uncle answer when you asked him what was necessary for
success?”

“Jerome,” she said, laughing, “you heard perfectly well. You are just
making me repeat it for your amusement.”

“I really heard only the beginning--when he spoke of confidence and
love.”

“He said, afterwards, that a great many other things were necessary.”

“And you, what did you answer?”

She suddenly became very serious.

“When he spoke of support in life, I answered that you had your mother.”

“Oh, Alissa, you know I shan’t always have her--And then, it’s not the
same thing--”

She bent her head:

“That’s what he said too.”

I took her hand, trembling.

“Whatever I hope to become later is for you.”

“But, Jerome, I may leave you too.”

My soul went into my words:

“_I_ shall never leave _you_.”

She raised her shoulders slightly:

“Aren’t you strong enough to walk alone? We must each of us find God by
ourselves.”

“But you must show me the way.”

“Why do you want any other guide but Christ? Do you think we are ever
nearer to each other than when each of us forgets the other, as we pray
to God?”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “that He may unite us. That is what I ask Him
morning and evening.”

“Don’t you understand what communion in God means?”

“With my whole heart I understand. It means being rapturously united in
the worship of the same thing. I think it is just because I want to be
united to you, that I worship what I know you worship too.”

“Then your worship is not pure.”

“Don’t ask too much of me. I shouldn’t care for Heaven if you were not
there too.”

She put her finger on her lips and answered with some solemnity:

“_Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness._”

As I put down our words I feel that they will seem very unchildlike to
those who do not realise the deliberate seriousness with which some
children talk to each other. What am I to do? Try to excuse them? No!
no more than I will colour them to make them look more natural.

We had procured the Gospels in the Vulgate and knew long passages of
them by heart. Alissa had learnt Latin with me, under the plea of
helping her brother, but really, I think, in order to follow me in my
reading. And indeed, I could hardly bring myself to take pleasure in
any study in which I knew she would not keep me company. If this was
sometimes a hindrance to me, it was not, as might be supposed, because
it hampered the growth of my mind; on the contrary, it was she who
seemed to be everywhere and easily ahead of me. But the course my mind
pursued was always shaped with reference to her, and what preoccupied
us at that time, what we called “thought,” was often merely the pretext
for some more subtle communion, merely the disguise of feeling, merely
the covering of love.

                   *       *       *       *       *

My mother may at first, perhaps, have been anxious about a feeling
whose depth she had not as yet gauged. But now that she felt her
strength ebbing, she loved to gather us together in the same maternal
embrace. The heart disease from which she had long been suffering began
to be more and more troublesome. In the course of a particularly
severe attack she sent for me:

“My poor boy,” she said, “I’m getting very old. Some day I shall leave
you suddenly.”

She stopped; her breathing was very difficult. Then I broke out,
irresistibly, with what it seemed to me she was expecting me to say:

“Mamma ... you know I want to marry Alissa.” And my sentence was no
doubt the continuation of her secret thoughts, for she went on at once:

“Yes, that is what I want to speak to you about, my Jerome.”

“Mamma,” said I, sobbing, “you do think she loves me, don’t you?”

“Yes, my child.” And several times she repeated tenderly: “Yes, my
child.” She spoke with difficulty. She added: “You must leave it to the
Lord.” Then as I was stooping over her, she put her hand on my head and
said:

“May God keep you, my children! May God keep you both!” Then she fell
into a doze, from which I did not try to rouse her.

This conversation was never resumed. The next morning my mother felt
better. I went back to school and silence closed again over this
semi-confidence. In any case, what more could I have learnt? That
Alissa loved me I could not for a moment doubt. And, even if I could,
doubt would for ever have vanished from my heart at the time of the
melancholy event which occurred soon after.

My mother passed away very quietly one evening when Miss Ashburton and
I were with her. The final attack which carried her off had not at
first seemed worse than the preceding ones; it was only towards the
end that it became alarming and we had no time to send for any of our
relations. It was with our old friend that I watched the first night
beside my dear mother’s body. I loved my mother deeply, and wondered
that in spite of my tears I should feel so little sadness. If I wept it
was out of pity for Miss Ashburton, whose friend--so many years younger
than herself--had thus been taken by God before her. But the secret
thought that this bereavement would hasten an understanding with my
cousin greatly predominated over my grief.

My uncle arrived the next morning. He handed me a letter from his
daughter, who did not come till the day after with Aunt Plantier.

“... Jerome, my friend, my brother” (she wrote), “... how grieved I
am not to have been able to speak those few words to her before her
death, which would have given her that great happiness she desired.
May she forgive me now! And may God alone guide us both henceforward!
Good-bye, my poor friend.

“I am, more tenderly than ever,

                                                          “Your Alissa.”

What could be the meaning of this letter? What were those words that
she was grieved not to have uttered--what could they be but those
with which she would have plighted our future? I was still so young,
however, that I dared not ask her for her hand at once. And besides,
what need had I of her promise? Were we not already as good as engaged?
Our love was no secret from our relations; my uncle was no more opposed
to it than my mother had been; on the contrary, he treated me already
as a son.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I spent the Easter holidays, which began a few days later, at Le Havre,
sleeping at Aunt Plantier’s and taking nearly all my meals at Uncle
Bucolin’s.

My Aunt Félicie Plantier was the best of women, but neither my cousins
nor I were on very intimate terms with her. She was in a continual
state of breathless bustle; her gestures were ungentle and her voice
unmusical; she harried us with caresses and at odd moments of the day,
when the need for effusion seized her, she would suddenly overwhelm us
with the floods of her affection. Uncle Bucolin was very fond of her,
but merely from the tone of his voice when he spoke to her, it was easy
to understand how greatly he had preferred my mother.

“My poor boy,” she began one evening, “I don’t know what you are
meaning to do this summer, but I will wait to hear your plans before
settling my own; if I can be useful to you--”

“I have not thought much about it yet,” I answered. “Perhaps I shall
travel.”

She went on:

“You know that both here and at Fongueusemare you will always be
welcome. You will be doing your uncle and Juliette a pleasure by going
to them ...”

“Alissa, you mean.”

“Of course. I beg your pardon.... Would you believe it? I thought it
was Juliette you were in love with! Until a month ago--when your uncle
told me--you know I’m very fond of you all, but I don’t know you very
well; I’ve seen so little of you.... And then I’m not very observant; I
have no time to mind other people’s business. I always saw you playing
with Juliette--I thought to myself, she’s so pretty, so gay--”

“Yes, I like playing with her still, but it’s Alissa I love.”

“All right, all right! It’s your affair. As for me, I hardly know her
at all, so to speak. She talks less than her sister. I suppose as
you’ve chosen her you must have good reasons for it.”

“But, Aunt, I didn’t choose to love her, and I’ve never thought what
reasons I had for--”

“Don’t be cross, Jerome. I didn’t mean anything. Now, you’ve made me
forget what I wanted to say. Oh, yes! I suppose, of course, it’ll all
end with your marrying; but it wouldn’t be quite proper for you to
become engaged just yet because of your mourning--and then you’re still
very young. I thought, now that your mother isn’t there, your staying
at Fongueusemare mightn’t be considered quite the thing.”

“But, Aunt, that’s just why I spoke of travelling.”

“Oh, well, my dear, I thought that my presence there might make things
easier and I’ve arranged to keep part of the summer free.”

“If I asked Miss Ashburton she would certainly come with pleasure.”

“Yes, I know she’s coming already. But that’s not enough! I will come
too. Oh! I don’t pretend I shall take your poor mother’s place,”
she added, suddenly bursting into sobs, “but I can look after the
housekeeping--and--well--you and your uncle and Alissa needn’t feel
uncomfortable.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Aunt Félicie was mistaken as to the efficacy of her presence. To tell
the truth we were only uncomfortable because of her. In accordance with
her announcement, she settled herself at Fongueusemare at the beginning
of July, and Miss Ashburton and I joined her there soon after.

Under the pretence of helping Alissa to look after it, she filled the
house, which had always been so peaceful, with a continual hubbub.
The zeal with which she set about being agreeable to us and “making
things easier,” as she called it, was so overdone that Alissa and I
were nearly always constrained and practically speechless when she was
by. She must have thought us very cold.... And even if we had not been
silent, would she have been able to understand the nature of our love?
Juliette’s character, on the other hand, fitted in well enough with
this exuberance; and perhaps my affection for my aunt was tinged with a
certain resentment at seeing her show such a marked preference for the
younger of her nieces.

                   *       *       *       *       *

One morning after the arrival of the post, she sent for me:

“My poor Jerome,” she said, “I’m absolutely heart-broken; my daughter
is ill and wants me; I shall be obliged to leave you....”

Puffed up with idle scruples, I went to find my uncle, not knowing
whether I should dare to stay on at Fongueusemare after my aunt’s
departure. But at my first words:

“What,” he cried, “will my poor sister think of next to complicate what
is so very natural? Why should you leave us, Jerome? Aren’t you already
almost my child?”

My aunt had barely stayed a fortnight at Fongueusemare. As soon as she
was gone the house was able to sink back again into peace. There dwelt
in it once more a serenity that was very like happiness. My mourning
had not cast a shadow on our love, but had made it weightier. And in
the monotonous course of the life which then began, as if in some place
of high resonance, each slightest stirring of our hearts was audible.

Some days after my aunt’s departure I remember we were discussing her
one evening at table:

“What a commotion!” said we. “Is it possible that the stir of life
should leave her soul so little respite? Fair image of love, what
becomes of your reflection here?”... For we remembered Goethe’s saying
about Madame de Stein: “It would be beautiful to see the world
reflected in that soul.” And we then and there established a kind of
hierarchy, putting the contemplative faculties in the highest place. My
uncle, who up to then had been silent, reproved us, smiling sadly:

“My children,” said he, “God will recognise His image even though
broken. Let us beware of judging men from a single moment of their
lives. Everything which you dislike in my poor sister is the result
of circumstances, with which I am too well acquainted to be able to
criticise her as severely as you do. There is not a single pleasing
quality of youth which may not deteriorate in old age. What you call
‘commotion’ in Félicie, was at first nothing but charming high spirits,
spontaneity, impulsiveness and grace. We were not very different,
I assure you, from what you are to-day. I was rather like you,
Jerome--more so, perhaps, than I imagine. Félicie greatly resembled
Juliette as she now is--yes, even physically--and I catch a likeness to
her by starts,” he added, turning to his daughter, “in certain sounds
of your voice; she had your smile--and that trick, which she soon lost,
of sitting sometimes, like you, without doing anything, her elbows in
front of her and her forehead pressed against the locked fingers of her
hands.”

Miss Ashburton turned towards me and said almost in a whisper:

“It is your mother that Alissa is like.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

The summer that year was splendid. The whole world seemed steeped in
azure. Our fervour triumphed over evil--over death; the shades gave way
before us. Every morning I was awakened by my joy; I rose at dawn and
sprang to meet the coming day.... When I dream of that time, it comes
back to me all fresh with dew. Juliette, an earlier riser than her
sister, whose habit it was to sit up very late at nights, used to come
out into the garden with me. She was the messenger between her sister
and me; I talked to her interminably of our love, and she never seemed
tired of listening. I told her what I dared not tell Alissa, with whom
excess of love made me constrained and shy. Alissa seemed to lend
herself to this child’s play and to be delighted that I should talk so
happily to her sister, ignoring or feigning to ignore, that in reality
we talked only of her.

Oh, lovely shifts of love, of love’s very excess, by what hidden ways
you led us, from laughter to tears, from the most artless joy to the
exactions of virtue!

The summer sped by so pure, so smooth, that of its swift-slipping days
scarce anything remains in my memory. Its only events were talks and
readings.

“I have had a melancholy dream,” said Alissa to me on one of the last
mornings of the holidays. “I was alive and you were dead. No, I didn’t
see you die. It was merely--that you were dead. It was horrible; it was
so impossible, that I managed to get it granted for you to be simply
absent. We were parted and I felt that there was a way of getting to
you; I tried to find out how, and I made such an effort to succeed that
it woke me up.

“This morning I think I was under the impression of my dream; it seemed
as if it were still going on. I felt as if I were still parted from
you--going to be parted from you for a long, long time--” and she added
very low: “all my life--and that all our lives we should have to make a
great effort ...”

“Why?”

“Each of us a great effort to come together again.”

I did not take these words seriously, or perhaps I was afraid to take
them seriously. With a beating heart, and in a sudden fit of courage, I
said to her, as though protesting:

“Well, as for me, this morning I dreamt that I was going to marry
you--so surely, that nothing, nothing would be able to part us, except
death.”

“Do you think that death is able to part?” asked she.

“I mean--”

“I think that death, on the contrary, is able to bring together--yes,
bring together what has been parted in life.”

The whole of this conversation sank into us so deeply that I can still
hear the very intonation of the words we used. And yet I did not
realise all their gravity until later.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The summer sped by. Already nearly all the fields lay bare, with their
wider spaces more emptied of hope. The evening before--no, two evenings
before my departure, I went out with Juliette and we wandered down to
the shrubbery at the end of the lower garden.

“What were you repeating yesterday to Alissa?” she asked.

“When do you mean?”

“When you stayed behind us on the quarry bench.”

“Oh! Some verses of Baudelaire’s, I think.”

“What were they? Won’t you say them to me?”

  “‘_Bientôt nous plongerons dans les froides ténèbres_,’”

I began rather ungraciously; but no sooner had I started than she
interrupted me and took up the lines in a changed and trembling voice:

  “‘_Adieu! vive clarté de nos étés trop courts!_’”

“What! you know them?” I cried, extremely astonished. “I thought you
didn’t care for poetry....”

“Why? Because you never repeat me any?” said she, laughing, though
in rather a forced way. “Sometimes you seem to think I’m perfectly
idiotic.”

“It’s quite possible to be very intelligent and not care for poetry.
I’ve never heard you repeat any or ask me to repeat you any.”

“Because that’s Alissa’s business.” She was silent for a few minutes
and then asked abruptly:

“You’re going away the day after to-morrow?”

“Yes, I must.”

“What are you going to do this winter?”

“It’s my first year at the Ecole Normale.”

“When do you think of marrying Alissa?”

“Not before I’ve done my military service. And indeed, not before I
have a better idea of what I mean to do afterwards.”

“Don’t you know yet?”

“I don’t want to know yet. Too many things appeal to me. I want to put
off for as long as I can having to choose and settle down to only one
thing.”

“Is it reluctance to settle down that makes you put off getting engaged
too?”

I shrugged my shoulders without answering. She insisted:

“Then, what are you waiting for? Why don’t you get engaged at once?”

“Why should we get engaged? Isn’t it enough to know that we do and
shall belong to each other, without proclaiming it to the world? Since
I choose to devote my whole life to her, do you think it would be
nobler to bind my love by promises? Not I! Vows seem to me to be an
insult to love. I should only want to be engaged if I distrusted her.”

“It isn’t Alissa that I distrust--”

We were walking slowly. We had reached that part of the garden where,
in former days, I had unintentionally overheard the conversation
between Alissa and her father. It suddenly occurred to be that perhaps
Alissa, whom I had seen go out into the garden, was sitting at the head
of the steps, and that she would be able to overhear us in the same
manner; the possibility of making her listen to words which I dared not
say to her openly, tempted me; I was amused by the artifice and raising
my voice:

“Oh!” I exclaimed with the somewhat stilted vehemence of youth, and too
much engrossed by my own words to hear in Juliette’s all that she left
unsaid: “Oh, if only we could lean over the soul we love and see as in
a mirror, the image we cast there!--read in another as in ourselves,
better than in ourselves! What tranquillity there would be in our
tenderness--what purity in our love!”

I had the conceit to take Juliette’s emotion for an effect of my very
indifferent flight of eloquence. She suddenly hid her face on my
shoulder:

“Jerome! Jerome! I wish I could be sure you would make her happy! If
she were to suffer through you as well, I think I should detest you!”

“Why, Juliette,” I cried, embracing her and raising her head, “I should
detest myself. If you only knew! Why, it’s only that I may begin life
better with her, that I don’t want to settle on my career yet! Why,
it is upon her that I hang my whole future. Why, I want none of the
things that I might be without her--”

“And what does she say when you speak to her so?”

“I never speak to her so! Never; and that’s another reason why we’re
not engaged yet; there is never any question of marriage between us,
nor of what we shall do hereafter. Oh, Juliette! life with her seems to
me so lovely that I dare not--do you understand--I dare not speak to
her about it.”

“You want happiness to come on her as a surprise.”

“No! that’s not it. But I’m frightened--of frightening her. Do you see?
I’m afraid that the immense happiness, which I foresee, may frighten
her. One day I asked her whether she wanted to travel. She said that
she wanted nothing, that it was enough for her to know that foreign
countries existed, and that they were beautiful, and that other people
were able to go to them--”

“And you, Jerome, do you want to travel?”

“Yes, everywhere! All life seems to me like a long journey--with her,
through books and people and countries. Have you ever thought of the
meaning of the words ‘weighing anchor’?”

“Yes, I often think of them,” she murmured. But barely listening to
her, and letting her words drop to earth, like poor, hurt birds, I went
on:

“To start one night; to wake up in the dazzling brilliancy of morning;
to feel oneself together and alone on the uncertain waves--”

“To arrive in a port, which one has seen on the map as a child; where
everything is strange--I imagine you on the gangway, leaving the boat
with Alissa leaning on your arm.”

“We should hurry off to the post,” added I, laughing, “to get the
letter which Juliette would have written to us--”

“From Fongueusemare, where she would have stayed behind, and which you
would remember as--oh, so tiny, and so sad, and so far away--”

Were those her words exactly? I cannot be sure for, I repeat, I was so
full of my love that, beside it, I was scarcely aware of any expression
but its own.

We were drawing near the steps, and were just going to turn back, when
Alissa suddenly appeared from out of the shade. She was so pale that
Juliette uttered an exclamation.

“Yes, I don’t feel very well,” Alissa stammered hastily. “The air is
rather chilly. I think I had better go in.” And leaving us there and
then, she went hurriedly back towards the house.

“She overheard what we were saying,” cried Juliette, as soon as she was
a little way off.

“But we didn’t say anything which could have vexed her. On the
contrary--”

“Oh! Let me alone,” said she, and darted off in pursuit of her sister.

                   *       *       *       *       *

That night I could not sleep. Alissa had come down to dinner, but
had retired immediately afterwards, complaining of a headache. What
had she heard of our conversation? I anxiously went over in my mind
everything we had said. Then I thought that perhaps I had been wrong
to walk so close to Juliette and to let my arm slip round her; but it
was the habit of childhood and many a time Alissa had seen us walking
so. Ah! blind wretch that I was, groping after my own errors, not to
have thought for a moment that Juliette’s words, to which I had paid
so little attention, and which I remembered so ill, might perhaps have
been better understood by Alissa. No matter! Led astray by my anxiety,
terrified at the idea that Alissa might distrust me, and imagining no
other peril, I resolved, in spite of what I had said to Juliette, and
influenced, perhaps, by what she had said to me--I resolved to overcome
my scruples and apprehensions and to betroth myself the following day.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was the eve of my departure. Her sadness, I thought, might be
ascribed to that. She seemed to avoid me. The day passed without my
being able to see her alone. The fear of being obliged to leave before
speaking to her sent me to her room a little before dinner. She was
putting on a coral necklace, and, her arms raised to fasten it, she was
bending forward, with her back turned to the door, looking at herself
over her shoulder, in a mirror between two lighted candles. It was in
the mirror that she first caught sight of me, and she continued to look
at me in it for some moments without turning round.

“Why,” said she, “wasn’t the door shut?”

“I knocked, but you didn’t answer. Alissa, you know I’m going
to-morrow?”

She answered nothing, but laid down the necklace, which she could not
succeed in fastening. The word “engagement” seemed to me too bare,
too brutal; I used I know not what periphrasis in its stead. As soon
as Alissa understood what I meant, I thought I saw her sway and lean
against the mantelpiece for support--but I myself was trembling so
much that in my fearfulness I avoided looking at her.

I was near her, and without raising my eyes, I took her hand; she did
not free herself, but bending down her face a little and raising my
hand a little, she put her lips on it and murmured, as she half leant
against me:

“No, Jerome, no; don’t, please, let us be engaged.”

My heart was beating so fast, that I think she felt it, and she
repeated, more tenderly:

“No, not yet--”

And as I asked her:

“Why?”

“It’s I that ought to ask you why,” she said, “why change?”

I did not dare speak to her of yesterday’s conversation, but no doubt
she felt I was thinking of it, and as if in answer to my thought, said,
as she looked at me earnestly:

“You are wrong, dear. I do not need so much happiness. Are we not happy
enough as we are?”

She tried in vain to smile.

“No, since I have to leave you.”

“Listen, Jerome, I can’t speak to you this evening--don’t let’s
spoil our last minutes. No, no, I’m as fond of you as ever; don’t be
afraid. I’ll write to you; I’ll explain. I promise I’ll write to
you--to-morrow--as soon as you have gone. Leave me now! See, here I am
crying. You must go.”

She pushed me away, tore me gently from her--and that was our good-bye;
for that evening I was not able to speak to her again, and the next
morning, when it was time for me to leave, she shut herself up in her
room. I saw her at her window, waving good-bye to me as she watched my
carriage drive off.




III


I had hardly seen Abel Vautier that year; he had enlisted without
waiting to be called up, whilst I, in the meantime, had been reading
for my degree. I was two years younger than Abel, and had put off my
military service until after leaving the Ecole Normale, where we were
both of us to go for our first term that year.

We met again with pleasure. After leaving the army, he had spent more
than a month travelling. I was afraid of finding him changed; but he
had merely acquired more confidence without losing any of his charm.
We spent the afternoon before the opening day of the term in the
Luxembourg gardens; unable to restrain myself from confiding in him,
I spoke to him at length about my love for Alissa, which, for that
matter, he knew of already. During the last year he had acquired some
experience of women, and, in consequence, put on rather a conceited and
patronising manner, which, however, did not offend me. He laughed at me
for not having finally managed to clinch the matter, as he expressed
it, giving forth as an axiom, that a woman should never be given time
to go back on herself. I let him talk, but thought to myself that his
excellent arguments were not applicable either to her or to me, and
simply showed that he did not understand us.

The day after our arrival I received the following letter:

  “My dear Jerome,

  “I have been thinking a great deal about your suggestion.” (My
  suggestion! What a way of speaking of our engagement!) “I am afraid
  I am too old for you. Perhaps you don’t think so now, because you
  have had no opportunity yet of seeing anything of other women. But
  I keep thinking of what I should suffer later on, if after I had
  given myself to you, I were to find out that you were no longer
  able to care for me. You will be very indignant, no doubt, as you
  read this; I think I hear you protesting; it’s not that I doubt
  your love--I simply ask you to wait a little longer until you are
  rather better acquainted with life.

  “Please understand that I am speaking only of you--as for myself, I
  feel sure that I shall never cease to love you.

                                                             “Alissa.”

Cease to love each other! Could there be any question of such a thing?
I was more astonished than grieved, but so greatly disturbed, that I
hurried off to show the letter to Abel.

“Well, what do you mean to do?” said he, after he had read the letter,
shaking his head and screwing up his lips as he did so. I made a
despairing gesture. “At any rate, I hope you aren’t going to answer
her! If you begin arguing with a woman you’re lost. Listen to me: if
we were to sleep at Le Havre on Saturday night, we might spend Sunday
morning at Fongueusemare, and be back here in time for the lecture on
Monday morning. I haven’t seen your people since my military service.
That’s excuse enough: and a very creditable one. If Alissa sees that
it’s only an excuse, so much the better. I’ll look after Juliette
whilst you talk to her sister. Try not to play the fool. To tell you
the truth, there’s something I can’t understand in your tale; you can’t
have told me everything. Never mind! I’ll soon get to the bottom of it.
Mind you don’t let them know we’re coming; you must take your cousin
by surprise and not give her time to arm herself.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

My heart was beating fast as I pushed open the garden gate. Juliette
came running to meet us at once. Alissa, who was busy in the linen
room, made no haste to come down. We were talking to my uncle and Miss
Ashburton when at last she entered the drawing-room. If our sudden
arrival had upset her, at any rate she managed to show no signs of
it. I thought of what Abel had said, and that it was precisely with
the intention of arming herself against me, that she had been so
long before making her appearance. Juliette’s extreme animation made
her reserve seem colder still. I felt that she disapproved of my
return; at any rate she tried to show disapprobation in her manner,
and I dared not imagine that behind this disapprobation there might
be hidden another and a livelier feeling. Seated at some distance
apart from us, in a corner near the window, she seemed absorbed in a
piece of embroidery, the stitches of which she was counting below her
breath. Abel talked--fortunately! for, as for me, I felt incapable of
saying a word, and if it had not been for the tales he told of his
year’s service and his travels, this meeting would have had a dismal
beginning. My uncle himself seemed unusually thoughtful.

Immediately after lunch, Juliette took me aside and drew me into the
garden:

“What do you think?” said she, when we were alone, “I’ve had an offer
of marriage! Aunt Félicie wrote to papa yesterday to tell him she had
had a proposal for me from a Nîmes vine-grower; a person who is very
satisfactory in every way, she says; he met me out at some parties last
spring and fell in love with me.”

“And did this individual make any impression on you?” I questioned with
an instinctive feeling of hostility towards the suitor.

“Yes, I think I remember him. A kind of cheery Don Quixote--not
cultivated--very ugly--very vulgar--rather ridiculous; Aunt Félicie
couldn’t keep her countenance before him.”

“Has he any--chance?” I asked, mockingly.

“Oh, Jerome! How can you? A man who’s in business!... If you’d seen him
you wouldn’t ask.”

“And has my uncle answered?”

“He answered what I did--that I was too young to marry. Unfortunately,”
she added, laughing, “Aunt foresaw that objection; in a postscript she
says that Monsieur Edouard Teissières--that’s his name--is willing to
wait, that he has simply declared himself so soon in order to be put
‘on the ranks.’ It’s absurd, but what am I to do? All the same, I can’t
tell him he’s too ugly.”

“No, but you can say that you don’t want to marry a vine-grower.”

She shrugged her shoulders:

“That’s a kind of reason Aunt’s mind is incapable of taking in. But
let’s talk of something else. Has Alissa written to you?”

She spoke with extreme volubility and seemed in great agitation. I
handed her Alissa’s letter, which she read, blushing deeply. I seemed
to discern a note of anger in her voice as she asked me.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Now that I am here, I feel as if it would
have been easier to write, and I blame myself for coming. Can you
understand what she means?”

“I understand she wants to leave you free.”

“Free! What do I care for freedom? And can you understand why she
writes to me so?”

She answered “No!” so shortly that, without at all divining the truth,
I at least felt persuaded from that moment that Juliette probably knew
something about it. Then, abruptly turning back as we came to a bend
in the path: “Let me be now,” she said. “You haven’t come here to talk
to me. We have been together a great deal too long.”

She fled off to the house, and a moment later I heard her at the piano.

When I went back to the drawing-room she was talking to Abel, who had
joined her there; she went on playing as she talked, though carelessly,
and as if she were vaguely improvising. I left them. I went into the
garden and wandered about some time, looking for Alissa.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She was at the bottom of the orchard, picking the first chrysanthemums
at the foot of a low wall. The smell of the flowers mingled with that
of the dead leaves in the beach copse and the air was saturated with
autumn. The sun did no more now than just warm the espaliers, but the
sky was orientally pure. Her face was framed, hidden nearly, in the
depths of a big Dutch peasant’s cap which Abel had brought back from
his travels and which she had at once put on. She did not turn as I
drew near, but I saw by the slight tremor which she could not repress,
that she had recognised my step; and I began at once to fortify myself
against her reproaches and the severity which I felt her look was
going to impose upon me. But when, as I came closer and, as if afraid,
began to slacken my pace, she, although still she did not turn but
kept her head lowered as a sulky child might do, stretched out to me
from behind her back her hand full of flowers, and seemed to beckon
me on. And as, on the contrary, at sight of this gesture I came to a
standstill in a spirit of playfulness, she turned round at last and
took a few steps towards me, raising her face; and I saw that it was
all full of smiles. The brightness of her look made everything seem on
a sudden simple again and easy, so that without an effort and with an
unaltered voice, I began:

“It was your letter that brought me back.”

“I thought so,” said she, and then softening the sharpness of her
rebuke by the inflexion of her voice: “and that is what vexed me. Why
didn’t you like what I said? It was very simple, though.” (And indeed,
sadness and difficulty seemed now nothing but imagination, seemed now
to exist only in my mind.) “We were happy so; I told you we were; why
be astonished at my refusing when you ask me to change?”

And indeed I felt happy with her, so perfectly happy, that the one
desire of my mind was that it should differ in nothing from hers, and
already I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her
thus, hand in hand, along a sun-warmed, flower-bordered path.

“If you prefer it,” said I gravely, renouncing at one stroke every
other hope, and giving myself up to the perfect happiness of the
present, “... if you prefer it, we will not be engaged. When I got your
letter, I did in fact realise that I was happy and that my happiness
was going to cease. Oh! give me back the happiness that I had; I can’t
do without it. I love you well enough to wait for you all my life, but
that you should cease to love me or that you should doubt my love, that
thought, Alissa, is unbearable to me.”

“Alas! Jerome, I cannot doubt it.”

And her voice, as she said this, was at once calm and sad; but the
smile which illuminated her remained so serenely beautiful that I was
ashamed of my fears and protestations; it seemed to me then, that from
them alone came that touch of sadness which I felt lurking in her
voice. Without any transition, I began speaking of my plans and of
the new life, from which I was expecting to derive so much benefit.
The Ecole Normale was not at that time what it has since become; its
somewhat rigorous discipline, irksome only to young men of an indolent
or refractory disposition, was helpful to those whose minds were bent
on study. I was glad that this almost monastic way of life should
preserve me from the world, which at best attracted me but little;
the knowledge that Alissa feared it for me would have been enough to
make it appear hateful. Miss Ashburton had kept on the apartment she
had shared with my mother in Paris. As Abel and I knew hardly anyone
in Paris, we should spend some hours of every Sunday with her; every
Sunday I should write to Alissa and keep her informed of every detail
of my life.

We were now sitting on the edge of an open garden frame through which
were sprawling huge stalks of cucumber plants the last fruits of
which had been gathered. Alissa listened to me, questioned me. I had
never before felt her tenderness more solicitous, her affection more
pressing. Fear, care, the slightest stir of emotion even, evaporated in
her smile, melted away in this delightful intimacy, like the mist in
the perfect blueness of the sky.

Then when Juliette and Abel came out to join us, we spent the rest
of the day on a bench in the beech copse, reading aloud Swinburne’s
_Triumph of Time_, each of us taking a verse by turns. Evening drew in.

When the time came for us to be going, Alissa kissed me good-bye, and
then half playfully, but still with that elder sister air, which was
perhaps called for by my thoughtlessness, and which she was fond of
assuming, “Come,” said she, “promise me you won’t be so romantic for
the future.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

“Well, are you engaged?” asked Abel, as soon as we were again alone
together.

“My dear fellow, there’s no question of that now,” I answered, adding
at once in a tone that cut short any further questioning, “and a
very good thing too. I have never been happier in my life than I am
to-night.”

“Nor I either!” he cried; then, abruptly flinging his arms round me:
“I’ve got something wonderful to tell you, something extraordinary!
Jerome, I’m madly in love with Juliette! I suspected as much as long
ago as last year; but I’ve seen life since then, and I didn’t want to
tell you anything about it until I’d met your cousins again. Now it’s
all up with me! It’s for life.

  ‘_J’aime, que dis-je aimer--j’idolâtre Juliette!_’

I’ve thought for a long time past that I had a kind of brother-in-law’s
affection for you.”

Then, laughing and joking, he embraced me again and again, flinging
himself about like a child, on the cushions of the railway carriage
that was taking us to Paris. I was absolutely astounded by his
announcement; and the slight strain of literary affectation which I
felt in it, jarred on me not a little; but how was it possible to hold
out against such vehemence and such rapture?

“Well, what? Have you proposed to her?” I managed to ask between two
bursts of excitement.

“No, no, certainly not!” cried he; “I don’t want to skip the most
charming part of the story.

  ‘_Le meilleur moment des amours
  N’est pas quand on dit: je t’aime...._’

Come now, you aren’t going to reproach me with that, are you? You--such
a past master of slowness yourself!”

“Well, at any rate,” I said, slightly irritated, “do you think that she
...?”

“Didn’t you notice her embarrassment when she saw me again? And
the whole time of our visit, her agitation, and her blushes and
her volubility! No, you noticed nothing, of course! Because you’re
completely taken up with Alissa. And how she questioned me! How she
drank in my words! Her intelligence has tremendously developed since
last year. I don’t know where you got it that she doesn’t like reading;
you always imagine that Alissa’s the only person who can do anything!
My dear boy, it’s astonishing what she knows. Can you guess what we
were amusing ourselves by doing before dinner? Repeating one of Dante’s
Canzoni! We each of us said a line, and when I went wrong she corrected
me. You know, the one that begins:

  ‘_Amor che nella mente mi ragiona._’

You didn’t tell me that she had learnt Italian.”

“I didn’t know it myself,” said I, rather astonished.

“What? When we began the Canzone, she told me it was you who had shown
it to her.”

“She must have heard me read it to her sister one day when she was
sitting with us, doing her needlework, as she often does; but I’m
blessed if she ever let on that she understood.”

“Really! You and Alissa are amazing with your egoism. You are so much
absorbed in your own love, that you can’t spare a glance for the
admirable flowering of an intelligence and a soul like hers! I don’t
want to flatter myself, but all the same it was high time that I
appeared on the scene. No, no! I’m not angry with you, as you see,”
said he, embracing me again. “Only promise me--not a word of any of
this to Alissa. I want to conduct my affairs by myself. Juliette is
caught, that’s certain, and fast enough for me to venture to leave her
till next holidays. I think I shan’t even write to her between this and
then. But we will spend the Christmas vacations at Le Havre, and then--”

“And then?”

“Well, Alissa will suddenly learn our engagement. I mean to push it
through smartly. And do you know what will happen? Why! I shall get you
Alissa’s consent by force of our example. You can’t pull it off for
yourself, but we shall persuade her that we can’t get married before
you....”

So he went on, drowning me in an inexhaustible flow of words, which
did not stop even on the train’s arrival in Paris, even on our getting
back to Normale, for though we walked all the way from the station
to the school, he insisted, in spite of the lateness of the hour, on
accompanying me to my room, where we went on talking till morning.

Abel’s enthusiasm made short work of the present and the future. He
already saw and described our double wedding; imagined and painted
everybody’s surprise and joy; became enamoured of the beauty of our
story, of our friendship, of the part he was to play in my love affair.
Far from being proof against so flattering a warmth, I felt myself
pervaded by it, and gently succumbed to the allurement of his fanciful
suggestions. Thanks to our love, courage and ambition swelled in us;
we were hardly to have left the Ecole Normale when our double marriage
(the ceremony to be performed by Pasteur Vautier) would take place and
we should all four start on our wedding journey; then we were each to
embark on some monumental work, with our wives as collaborators. Abel,
for whom the school-master’s profession had no attractions, and who
thought he was born to be a writer, would rapidly earn the fortune of
which he stood in need, by a few successful plays. As for me, more
attracted by learning itself than by the thought of any gain that might
accrue from it, my plan was to devote myself to the study of religious
philosophy, of which I purposed writing the history--but what avails it
now to recall so many hopes?

The next day we plunged into our work.




IV


The time till the Christmas holidays was so short that my faith,
quickened as it had been by my last conversation with Alissa, never
for a moment wavered. As I had resolved, I wrote to her at length
every Sunday; during the rest of the week I kept apart from my
fellow-students, and frequented hardly anyone but Abel; I lived with
the thought of Alissa, and covered my favourite books with notes meant
for her eye, subordinating the interest I sought in them myself to the
interest which they might have for her. Her letters caused me some
uneasiness; and though she answered mine pretty regularly, her keenness
to keep up with me seemed, I thought, to come more from anxiety to
encourage my work than from her own spontaneous inclination; and it
even seemed to me that, while on my part reflections, discussions,
criticisms were only means towards expressing my thoughts, she, on the
contrary, took advantage of all these things to conceal hers. Sometimes
I wondered whether she were not actually taking pleasure in this as
in a kind of game. No matter! I was firmly resolved to complain of
nothing, and I let no trace of anxiety transpire in my letters.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Towards the end of December, then, Abel and I left for Le Havre.

I was to stay with Aunt Plantier. She was not in when I arrived, but I
had hardly time to settle into my room when a servant came to tell me
that she was waiting for me in the drawing-room.

She had no sooner finished enquiring after my health, my surroundings,
my studies, than, without more ado, she gave way to her affectionate
curiosity:

“You haven’t told me yet, my dear, whether you were pleased with your
stay at Fongueusemare? Were you able to advance matters at all?”

I had to put up with my aunt’s good-natured tactlessness, however
painful it might be to hear her speak so summarily of feelings for
which the purest and gentlest words would still have seemed too
brutal; yet her tone was so simple and so cordial that it would
have been senseless to take offence. Nevertheless, I could not help
objecting a little.

“Didn’t you say last spring that you thought an engagement would be
premature?”

“Yes, I know; one always says that to begin with,” she started off
again, seizing one of my hands, which she pressed with emotion between
both of hers. “Besides, on account of your studies and your military
service, you won’t be able to marry for several years, I know.
Moreover, personally I don’t approve of long engagements. They’re
trying for young girls, though sometimes it’s very touching to see ...
for that matter it’s not necessary to make the engagement public ...
only then one can give people to understand--oh! very discreetly--that
there’s no further need to be on the look-out; and besides, it
authorises your correspondence, your intimacy; and, moreover, if anyone
else came forward--and it might very well happen,” she insinuated with
a knowing smile, “one is able just to hint that ... no, it’s not worth
while. You know there’s been an offer for Juliette! She has attracted a
great deal of attention this winter. She’s still rather young, which
is what she answered; but the young man suggested waiting; he’s not
exactly a young man, either ... in short, he’s a very good match, a
very reliable person. Well! you’ll see him to-morrow; he’s going to be
at my Christmas Tree. You’ll tell me what you think of him.”

“I’m afraid, Aunt Félicie, that it’s labour lost on his part, and that
Juliette has someone else in her mind,” said I, making a great effort
not to mention Abel straight off.

“Hum?” said Aunt Félicie, enquiringly, and putting her head on one side
with an incredulous look. “You surprise me! Why should she not have
told me anything about it?”

I bit my lips to prevent myself from saying anything more.

“Oh, well! we shall soon see. Juliette hasn’t been very well lately,”
she went on. “... but we aren’t speaking of her for the moment. Ah!
Alissa is very charming too. Come now, did you or did you not make your
declaration?”

Although rebelling with my whole heart against the word “declaration,”
which seemed to me so inappropriate and crude, I was incapable of
replying by a falsehood to this direct question; I answered, “Yes,” in
some confusion, and felt my face flame as I did so.

“And what did she say?”

I bent my head; I should have liked not to answer. In still greater
confusion and as though in spite of myself, I said, “She refused to be
engaged.”

“Well! the child was quite right,” said my aunt. “You have plenty of
time before you, Heaven knows....”

“Oh! Aunt! that’s enough now,” I said, trying in vain to stop her.

“Besides, I’m not surprised; I always thought your cousin more sensible
than you....”

I do not know what came over me at this point; my nerves were no doubt
exasperated by this cross-examination, for it seemed to me that on a
sudden my heart burst; like a child, I buried my face in my kind aunt’s
lap and cried out, sobbing:

“No, Aunt, no! You don’t understand. She didn’t ask me to wait--”

“What! Did she refuse you?” said she, in a tone of the kindest
commiseration, raising my head with her hand.

“No--no--not exactly.” I shook my head sadly.

“Are you afraid she doesn’t love you any longer?”

“Oh, no! I’m not afraid of that.”

“My poor boy, if you want me to understand, you must explain a little
more clearly.”

I was ashamed and vexed to have given way to my emotion; my aunt was
doubtless incapable of understanding the reasons of my uncertainty; but
if some special motive lay behind Alissa’s refusal, Aunt Félicie, by
questioning her gently, might perhaps help me to discover it. She soon
reached the same conclusion for herself.

“Listen,” she went on, “Alissa is coming to-morrow morning to help me
decorate the Christmas tree; I shall soon see what is at the bottom
of it all; I will let you know at lunch time, and I’m sure you’ll see
there’s nothing to be alarmed about.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

I went to dine at the Bucolins’. Juliette, who had, it is true, been
unwell for the last few days, seemed to me changed; her eyes had a
_farouche_, an almost hard, expression, which made her more different
than ever from her sister. I was not able to speak to either of them
alone that evening; neither did I wish to, and as my uncle seemed tired
I left soon after dinner.

                   *       *       *       *       *

At the Christmas tree which Aunt Plantier gave every year, there was
always a large gathering of children, relations and friends. It was
set up in an inner hall, which contained the staircase and out of which
opened the entrance hall, the drawing-room and the glass doors of a
kind of winter-garden, where a buffet had been spread. The decoration
of the tree was not finished, and on the morning of the party, which
was the day after my arrival, Alissa, as my aunt had told me she would,
came round pretty early in order to help her hang the branches of the
tree with ornaments, lights, fruits, sweets and toys. I should have
very much enjoyed sharing this task with her myself, but I had to let
Aunt Félicie speak to her. I went out, therefore, without seeing her,
and spent the whole morning in trying to while away the anxious hours.

I first went to the Bucolins’, as I wanted to see Juliette. But I heard
that Abel had been before me, and as I was afraid of interrupting a
crucial conversation, I left at once; then I wandered about the quays
and streets till lunch time.

“Great silly!” cried my aunt, when I saw her. “It’s really inexcusable
to make yourself so unhappy for nothing! There’s not a single word of
sense in anything you said to me yesterday. Oh! I didn’t beat about the
bush. I sent Miss Ashburton away as she was tiring herself out helping
us, and as soon as I was alone with Alissa I asked her straight out
why she hadn’t accepted you last summer. Do you suppose she minded?
She wasn’t embarrassed for a single moment, and answered quite calmly
that she didn’t want to marry before her sister. If you had asked her
frankly, she would have said the same thing to you; a fine thing to
make such a fuss about, isn’t it? You see, my dear, there’s nothing
like frankness. Poor Alissa! She spoke to me about her father, too,
whom she can’t leave. Oh! we had a long talk. Dear child. She’s very
sensible; she told me she wasn’t perfectly sure yet that she was the
right person for you; that she was afraid she was too old, and thought
that somebody of Juliette’s age ...”

My aunt went on, but I no longer listened; there was only one thing
that mattered--Alissa refused to marry before her sister. But was not
Abel there? After all, in his egregious conceit he was right; he was
going to pull off, as he said, both our marriages at one blow.

I hid from my aunt, as best I could, the agitation into which this
revelation, simple as it was, had plunged me, and showed her nothing
but a delight, which she thought very natural, and with which she was
all the more gratified as it seemed that it was through her that I had
obtained it; but directly after luncheon I left her with some excuse or
other, and hurried off to find Abel.

“Ah! what did I tell you?” said he, embracing me, as soon as I had
confided my good news to him. “My dear fellow, I can tell you already
that the conversation I had with Juliette this morning almost settled
it, though we talked of hardly anything but you. But she seemed
tired--nervous--I was afraid of agitating her by going too far, of
over-exciting her if I stayed too long. But after what you tell me, I
hesitate no longer! I snatch up my hat, dear boy, my stick, and I’m
off. Come with me as far as the Bucolins’ to hang on to my coat-tails,
for fear I should fly away on the road; I feel lighter than Euphorion!
When Juliette knows that it’s only because of her that her sister has
refused you--when I make my offer on the spot--Ah! my boy, I can see my
father this evening beside the Christmas tree, praising the Lord and
weeping with joy, as he extends his hands over the two couples kneeling
at his feet; Miss Ashburton will flutter off in a sigh; Aunt Plantier
will dissolve into her bodice, and the fiery tree will sing the glory
of God and clap its hands, like the mountains in the Scriptures.”

It was towards evening that the Christmas tree was to be lighted, and
that the party of children, relations and friends was to assemble. Not
knowing what to do with myself, sick with anxiety and impatience, after
I had left Abel I started on a long walk over the cliffs, so as to get
over the time of waiting as best I could--lost my way, and altogether
managed so cleverly, that when I got back to Aunt Plantier’s the party
was already in full swing.

As soon as I got into the hall, I caught sight of Alissa; she seemed
to be waiting for me, and came towards me at once. She was wearing
round her neck, in the opening of her bodice, a little, old, amethyst
cross, which I had given her in memory of my mother, but which I had
never seen her wear before. Her features were drawn, and the look of
suffering on her face smote my heart.

“Why are you so late?” she said rapidly and breathlessly. “I wanted to
speak to you.”

“I lost my way on the cliffs.... But you’re ill.... Oh, Alissa! what is
the matter?”

She stood before me a moment, as though she were struck dumb, her
lips trembling. So sickening a dread took hold of me that I dared not
question her. She put her hand on my neck, as though to pull my face
towards her; I saw she wanted to speak, but at that moment some guests
came in; disheartened, she let her hand drop....

“It is too late,” she murmured. Then, seeing my eyes fill with tears,
she added in reply to my enquiring look--as though such a derisory
explanation could suffice to tranquillise me!--

“No ... don’t be alarmed: I’ve only a headache, the children make such
a noise ... I had to take refuge here ... it’s time to go back to them
now.”

She left me abruptly. Some people coming in separated me from her. I
thought I should be able to rejoin her in the drawing-room. I caught
sight of her at the other end of the room, surrounded by a troop of
children whose games she was organising; between her and me there were
a number of people whom I knew, and whom I should not have been able
to venture past without running the risk of being stopped. I felt
incapable of civilities, of conversation; perhaps if I edged along the
wall ... I tried.

Just as I was going to pass in front of the large glass doors which led
into the garden, I felt my arm seized. Juliette was there, half hidden
in the embrasure, behind the folds of the curtain.

“Let’s go into the conservatory,” she said, hastily. “I want to speak
to you. Go on by yourself; I’ll meet you there directly.” Then, half
opening the door for a moment, she slipped into the garden.

What had happened? I wished I could see Abel. What had he said? What
had he done? Returning to the hall, I made my way to the conservatory,
where Juliette was waiting for me.

Her face was flaming, her frowning brows gave her look an expression
of hardness and pain; her eyes shone as if she were feverish; even her
voice was harsh and tense. A sort of fury inspired her; notwithstanding
my anxiety I was astonished--embarrassed almost--by her beauty. We were
alone.

“Has Alissa spoken to you?” she asked at once.

“Barely two words; I came in very late.”

“You know she wants me to marry before she does?”

“Yes.”

She looked at me fixedly ...

“And do you know whom she wants me to marry?”

I did not answer.

“You!” she went on with a cry.

“Why! it’s madness!”

“Yes! isn’t it?” There was both despair and triumph in her voice. She
straightened herself, or rather flung herself backwards.

“Now I know what there remains for me to do,” she added indistinctly,
as she opened the door of the garden, which she slammed violently
behind her.

                   *       *       *       *       *

My brain and heart were in a whirl. I felt the blood throbbing in my
temples. One sole idea survived in the confusion of my spirits--to find
Abel; he, perhaps, would be able to explain the singular behaviour of
the two sisters. But I dared not go back to the drawing-room, where I
thought everyone would see my agitation. I went out. The icy air of the
garden calmed me; I stayed in it some time. Evening was falling, and
the sea-mist hid the town; there were no leaves on the trees; earth
and sky seemed one immense desolation. The sound of voices singing
rose upon the air; no doubt it was the choir of children gathered
round the Christmas tree. I went in by the entrance hall. The door of
the drawing-room and inner hall were open; in the drawing-room, which
was now deserted, I caught sight of my aunt, where she was sitting,
partly concealed by the piano, talking to Juliette. In the inner hall
the guests were thronging round the lighted tree. The children had
finished their hymn; there was a silence, and Pasteur Vautier, standing
up in front of the tree, began a sort of sermon. He never missed an
opportunity of what he called “sowing the good seed.” I felt the lights
and heat uncomfortably oppressive, and was going out. Abel was standing
beside the door; he had, no doubt, been there some time. He was looking
at me in a hostile manner, and when our eyes met he shrugged his
shoulders. I went towards him.

“Fool!” he said in a whisper; and then, abruptly, “oh, let’s go out;
I’m fed up with preaching.”

And as soon as we were outside, “You fool!” he said again, as I looked
at him anxiously, without speaking. “Why, it’s you she loves, you fool!
Couldn’t you have told me?”

I was aghast. I tried not to understand.

“No, of course not! You couldn’t even see it for yourself!” He had
seized me by the arm, and was shaking me furiously. His voice between
his clenched teeth hissed and trembled.

“Abel, I implore you,” I said after a moment’s silence, and in a voice
which trembled too, while he strode along at random, dragging me with
him. “Instead of being so angry, try to tell me what has happened. I
know nothing.”

He stopped suddenly and scrutinised my face by the dim light of a
street lamp; then, drawing me quickly to him, he put his head upon my
shoulder and murmured with a sob:

“Forgive me! I’m an idiot too, and I didn’t understand any better than
you, my poor brother!”

His tears seemed to calm him a little; he raised his head, started
walking again, and went on:

“What happened? What’s the use of going over it again? I had talked
to Juliette in the morning, as I told you. She was extraordinarily
beautiful and animated; I thought it was because of me, but it was
simply because we were talking of you.”

“Didn’t you realise it at the time?”

“No, not exactly; but now the smallest detail becomes clear.”

“Are you sure you are not making a mistake?”

“A mistake! My dear fellow, you must be blind not to see that she’s in
love with you.”

“Then Alissa ...”

“Then Alissa is sacrificing herself. She had found out her sister’s
secret and wanted to give you up to her. Really, old boy, it’s not very
difficult to understand! I wanted to speak to Juliette again; at my
first words, or rather, as soon as she began to understand me, she got
up from the sofa where she was sitting and repeated several times over,
‘I was sure of it,’ in the tone of voice of a person who was anything
but sure.”

“Oh! don’t joke about it.”

“Why not? I consider it a highly comic affair. She rushed into her
sister’s room; I overheard their voices raised excitedly in a way that
alarmed me. I hoped to see Juliette again, but after a moment it was
Alissa who came out. She had her hat on, seemed embarrassed at seeing
me, said ‘How do you do?’ to me quickly as she went out--and that’s
all.”

“Didn’t you see Juliette again?”

Abel hesitated for a little.

“Yes. After Alissa had gone, I pushed open the door of the room.
Juliette was there motionless, standing in front of the chimney-piece,
her elbows on the marble, her chin in her hands; she was staring at
herself in the glass. When she heard me she didn’t turn round, but
stamped her foot, crying, ‘Oh, leave me alone!’ so harshly that I went
away again without asking for more. That’s all.”

“And now?”

“Oh! talking to you has done me good ... And now? Well! you had better
try and cure Juliette of her love; for, either I don’t know Alissa, or
else she won’t have you before you do.”

We walked on for some time silently.

“Let’s go back,” said he at last. “The guests must have gone by now.
I’m afraid my father will be waiting for me.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

We went in. The drawing-room was, in fact, empty; and in the hall round
the tree, whose branches had been stripped and whose lights had been
nearly all extinguished, there remained only my aunt and two of her
children, Uncle Bucolin, Miss Ashburton, the pastor, my cousins, and a
rather ridiculous-looking individual, whom I had noticed talking for a
long time to my aunt, but whom I only at that moment recognised as the
suitor Juliette had spoken to me about. Taller, stronger, more highly
coloured than any of us, almost bald, of a different class, a different
world, a different race, he seemed to realise that he was a stranger
among us; he wore an immense moustache and a grizzled imperial, which
he was nervously twisting and tugging.

The entrance hall, the doors of which had been left open, was not
lighted; we had come in noiselessly, and no one noticed our presence. A
frightful foreboding shot through me.

“Stop!” said Abel, seizing me by the arm.

Then we saw the stranger draw near Juliette, and take the hand which
she abandoned to him without resistance, without giving him a glance.
Night shut down upon my heart.

“Oh, Abel! What is happening?” I whispered, as if I did not understand
yet, or hoped I did not understand aright.

“By Jove! the young one is going one better,” he said in a hissing
voice. “She doesn’t want to be outdone by her sister. The angels are
applauding in Heaven, and no mistake!”

My uncle went up to embrace Juliette, whom Miss Ashburton and my aunt
were pressing round. Pasteur Vautier drew near. I took a step forward.
Alissa caught sight of me, ran up to me in a quiver of emotion.

“Oh, Jerome! It mustn’t be. She doesn’t love him! Why, she told me so
only this very morning! Try to prevent it, Jerome! Oh! what will become
of her?”

She hung upon my shoulder with desperate entreaty. I would have given
my life to lessen her anguish.

Suddenly there came a cry from near the tree, a confused stir. We
rushed up. Juliette had fallen unconscious into my aunt’s arms. They
were all crowding round, hanging over her, so that I could hardly see
her; her face, which had turned frightfully pale, looked as though it
were being dragged backwards by the weight of her loosened hair. It
seemed, from the convulsive movements of her body, that this was no
ordinary faint.

“No, no!” said my aunt aloud, in order to reassure Uncle Bucolin, who
was getting agitated, and whom Pasteur Vautier was already consoling,
with his fore-finger pointed Heavenwards. “No, it’s nothing. The effect
of emotion. Just a nervous attack. Monsieur Teissières, please help me,
you’re so strong. We will carry her up to my room, on to my bed, on
to my bed.” Then she stooped towards the elder of her sons, whispered
something in his ear, and I saw him go off at once, no doubt to fetch a
doctor.

My aunt and the stranger were supporting Juliette’s shoulders, as she
lay, half reclining, in their arms. Alissa raised her sister’s feet and
embraced them tenderly. Abel held up her head, which would have fallen
backwards, and I saw him bend down and cover with kisses her floating
hair, as he gathered it together.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Outside the door of the room I stopped. Juliette was laid on the bed;
Alissa said a few words to M. Teissières and to Abel, which I could
not hear; she accompanied them to the door and begged us to leave her
sister to rest; she wished to remain alone with her, with no one else
but Aunt Plantier. Abel caught hold of my arm and dragged me out of
doors, into the night, and there we walked on and on for a long time,
without purpose, without courage, without reflection.




V


I seemed to have no other reason for living than my love, and to that I
clung, expecting nothing, and with my mind made up to expect nothing,
but what should come to me from Alissa.

The next morning, as I was getting ready to go and see her, my aunt
handed me the following letter which she had just received:--

  “... Juliette’s extreme restlessness did not yield to the doctor’s
  prescriptions till towards morning. I beg Jerome not to come and
  see us for some days. Juliette might recognise his footstep or his
  voice, and she is in need of the greatest quiet.

  “I am afraid Juliette’s condition will keep me here. If I do not
  manage to see Jerome before he leaves, please tell him, dear Aunt,
  that I will write to him....”

The Bucolins’ door was shut only against me. My aunt, or anyone else
that chose, was free to knock at it; and, indeed, my aunt was going
there that very morning. I might make a noise! What a feeble excuse! No
matter.

“Very well,” said I, “I won’t go.”

It cost me a great deal not to see Alissa again at once, and yet I was
afraid of seeing her; I was afraid she might hold me responsible for
her sister’s condition, and it was easier to bear not seeing her again
than seeing her vexed.

At any rate, I determined I would see Abel.

At his door, the maid gave me a note:--

  “I am leaving you this time so that you mayn’t be anxious. The
  idea of staying at Le Havre, so near Juliette, was intolerable. I
  embarked for Southampton last night, almost directly after I left
  you. I shall spend the rest of the holidays with S---- in London.
  We shall meet again at the School.”

All human help failed me at one and the same time. I did not prolong
a stay which could only prove painful to me, and went back to Paris
before the beginning of the term. It was to God that I turned my looks,
to Him “from Whom cometh down all true consolation and every good
gift.” It was to Him that I offered my trouble. I thought that Alissa,
too, was taking refuge in Him, and the thought that she was praying
encouraged and exalted my prayers.

There went by a long period of meditation and study, with no other
events but Alissa’s letters to me and mine to her. I have kept all
her letters; by their help I can, from this time onwards, check my
recollections when they become confused.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I had news of Le Havre from my aunt, and at first only from her; I
learnt through her what anxiety Juliette’s unhappy condition had caused
for the first few days. Twelve days after I had left I at last received
this letter from Alissa:--

  “Forgive me, my dear Jerome, for not having written to you sooner.
  Our poor Juliette’s state has allowed me very little time. Since
  you went away, I have hardly left her. I begged Aunt to give
  you news of us, and I suppose she has done so. So you know that
  Juliette has been better for the last three days. I already thank
  God, but I dare not feel happy yet.”

Robert also, of whom I have so far told you very little, was able
to give me news of his sisters, when he returned to Paris a few
days after me. For their sake, I spent more time with him than my
disposition would have naturally inclined me to; whenever the School of
Agriculture, where he was studying, left him free, I took him in charge
and was at great pains to amuse him.

It was through him that I learnt--what I had not dared ask either
Alissa or my aunt--that Edouard Teissières had come to enquire for
Juliette very assiduously, but when Robert had left Le Havre she had
not yet seen him. I learnt also that Juliette had kept up an obstinate
silence towards her sister, which nothing had been able to break down.

Then I learnt from my aunt a little later that Juliette insisted on
her engagement being made public, in spite of what I instinctively
felt was Alissa’s hope, that it would be broken off at once. Advice,
injunctions, entreaties, spent themselves in vain against this
determination of Juliette’s, which seemed fixed like a bar across her
brow and like a bandage over her eyes--which seemed to immure her in
silence.

Time passed. I received from Alissa--to whom, indeed, I knew not what
to write--nothing but the most elusive notes. The thick fogs of winter
wrapped me round; my study lamp and all the fervour of my love and
faith served but ill, alas! to keep the darkness and the cold from my
heart.

Time passed. Then, one morning of sudden spring, came a letter from
Alissa to my aunt, who was absent from Le Havre, a letter which my aunt
sent on to me and from which I copy out the part that throws light on
my story.

  “Admire my docility. As you advised, I have seen M. Teissières and
  talked to him at length. I confess that his behaviour has been
  perfect, and I have almost, I admit, come to the point of believing
  that the marriage may not turn out so badly as I feared at first.
  Certainly Juliette does not love him; but he seems to me every week
  to be less unworthy of her love. He speaks of the situation with
  great clear-sightedness and makes no mistake as to my sister’s
  character; but he has great faith in the efficacy of his own love,
  and flatters himself that there is nothing his constancy will not
  be able to overcome. That is to say, he is very much in love.

  “Yes! I am extremely touched to see Jerome take so much trouble
  over my brother. I imagine that he does so only out of a sense of
  duty, for Robert’s character is very different from his--perhaps,
  too, in order to please me--but doubtless he has already come to
  understand that the more arduous the duty one assumes, the more
  it educates and uplifts the soul. You will think these very lofty
  reflections, but do not laugh at your foolish niece too much, for
  it is these thoughts which give me support and which help me to try
  and look upon Juliette’s marriage as a good thing.

  “Dear aunt, your affectionate solicitude is very precious to me.
  But do not think I am unhappy; I might almost say that the contrary
  is the case, for the trial through which Juliette has just gone,
  has had its effect on me too. Those words of Scripture which I
  used to repeat without very well understanding them, have suddenly
  become clear to me: ‘Cursed be the man that trusteth in man.’ Long
  before coming across them in my Bible, I had read them on a little
  Christmas card which Jerome sent me when he was not quite twelve
  years old and when I was just fourteen. Beside the bunch of flowers
  which was painted on it, and which we then thought lovely, there
  were these lines, from a paraphrase of Corneille’s:--

    ‘Quel charme vainqueur du monde
    Vers Dieu m’élève aujourd’hui?
    Malheureux l’homme qui fonde
    Sur les hommes son appui.’

  “I confess I infinitely prefer the simple text out of Jeremiah.
  No doubt, Jerome chose the card at the time without paying much
  attention to the lines. But if I am to judge from his letters, his
  frame of mind at present is not unlike mine, and every day I thank
  God that He should have brought us both nearer to Him with one and
  the same stroke.

  “I have not forgotten our conversation, and I am not writing to him
  so much as I used to do, so as not to disturb him in his work. You
  will no doubt think that I make up for it by talking about him all
  the more; lest I should go on too long, I will end my letter at
  once. Don’t scold me too much this time.”

What reflections this letter aroused in me! I cursed my aunt’s meddling
interference (what was the conversation to which Alissa alluded, and
which was the cause of her silence?) and the clumsy good-nature which
made her send the letter on to me. It was already hard enough for me to
bear Alissa’s silence, and oh! would it not have been better a thousand
times to have left me in ignorance that she was writing to another
person what she no longer cared to say to me? Everything in the letter
irritated me: to hear her speak to my aunt so easily of our little
private affairs, as well as the naturalness of her tone, her composure,
her seriousness, her pleasantry.

“No, no, my dear fellow! Nothing in the letter irritates you, except
the fact that it isn’t addressed to you,” said Abel, who was my daily
companion; for Abel was the only person to whom I could speak, and
in my loneliness, I was constantly drawn to him afresh by weakness,
by a wistful longing for sympathy, by diffidence, and, when I was at
fault, by my belief in his advice, in spite of the difference of our
natures--or rather, because of it.

“Let us study this paper,” said he, spreading the letter out on his
writing-table.

Three nights had already passed over my vexation; for four days I had
managed to keep it to myself! I led up almost naturally to a point when
Abel said to me:

“We’ll consign the Juliette-Teissières affair to the fire of love--eh?
We know what that flame is worth. Upon my word, Teissières seems just
the kind of moth to singe his wings in it.”

“That will do!” said I, for his banter was very distasteful to me.
“Let’s go on to the rest.”

“The rest?” he said. “The rest is all for you. You haven’t much to
complain of. Not a line, not a word, that isn’t filled with the thought
of you. You may say the whole letter is addressed to you: when Aunt
Félicie sent it on to you, she merely sent it to its rightful owner;
Alissa writes to the good lady as a make-shift, in default of you. What
can Corneille’s lines (which, by the way, are by Racine) matter to your
aunt? I tell you, it’s to you she is talking; she’s saying it all to
you. You’re nothing but a simpleton if a fortnight hence your cousin
isn’t writing to you just as lengthily, as easily, as agreeably ...”

“She doesn’t seem to be taking the right road!”

“It only depends upon you for her to take it! Do you want my advice?
Don’t say a word for ever so long, of love or marriage; don’t you see
that since her sister’s misfortune, it’s _that_ she’s set against? Harp
on the fraternal string and talk to her untiringly of Robert--since you
have the patience to look after the young ass. Just go on amusing her
intelligence; all the rest will follow. Ah! if it were only I, who had
to write to her!”

“You aren’t worthy to love her.”

Nevertheless, I followed Abel’s advice; and, indeed, Alissa’s letters
soon began to get more animated; but I could not hope for any real joy
on her part, or that she would let herself go without reserve, until
Juliette’s situation, if not her happiness, was assured.

The news which Alissa gave me of her sister improved, however. Her
marriage was to take place in July; Alissa wrote to me that she
supposed that at this date Abel and I would be engaged in our studies.
I understood that she judged it better for us not to appear at the
ceremony, so we alleged some examination or other, and contented
ourselves with sending our good wishes.

About a fortnight after the marriage this is what Alissa wrote to me:--

  “My Dear Jerome,

  “Imagine my astonishment yesterday when, on opening at random the
  charming Racine you gave me, I found the four lines which are on
  your little old Christmas card that I have kept in my Bible for the
  last ten years.

    ‘Quel charme vainqueur du monde
    Vers Dieu m’élève aujourd’hui?
    Malheureux l’homme qui fonde
    Sur les hommes son appui!’

  “I had thought they came from a paraphrase of Corneille’s, and I
  admit I didn’t think much of them. But as I went on reading the
  fourth _Cantique Spirituel_, I came across some verses which are
  so beautiful, that I cannot resist copying them. No doubt you know
  them already, if I am to judge from the indiscreet initials which
  you have put in the margin of the book.” (It is true that I had
  taken the habit of sprinkling my books and Alissa’s with the first
  letter of her name, opposite all the passages which I liked and
  which I wanted her to know.) “Never mind! I write them out for my
  own pleasure. I was a little vexed at first to see that you had
  pointed out what I thought was a discovery of my own, but this
  naughty feeling soon gave way to my pleasure in thinking that you
  like them as much as I do. As I copy I feel as if I were reading
  them over with you.

    De la sagesse immortelle
    La voix tonne et nous instruit.
    “Enfants des hommes, dit-elle,
    De vos soins quel est le fruit?
    Par quelle erreur, âmes vaines,
    Du plus pur sang de vos veines
    Achetez-vous si souvent,
    Non un pain qui vous repaisse,
    Mais une ombre qui vous laisse
    Plus affamés que devant?
    Le pain que je vous propose
    Sert aux anges d’aliment:
    Dieu lui-même le compose
    De la fleur de son froment,
    C’est ce pain si délectable
    Que ne sert point à sa table
    Le monde que vous suivez.
    Je l’offre à qui veut me suivre.
    Approchez. Voulez-vous vivre?
    Prenez, mangez et vivez.”

         *       *       *

    L’âme heureusement captive
    Sous ton joug trouve la paix,
    Et s’abreuve d’une eau vive
    Que ne s’épuise jamais.
    Chacan peut boire en cette onde:
    Elle invite tout le monde;
    Mais nous courons follement
    Chercher des sources bourbeuses
    Ou des citernes trompeuses
    D’ou l’eau fuit à tout moment.

  “How beautiful! Jerome, how beautiful! Do you really think it as
  beautiful as I do? A little note in my edition says that Mme. de
  Maintenon, when she heard Mlle. d’Aumale sing this hymn, seemed
  struck with admiration, ‘dropped a few tears,’ and made her repeat
  a part of the piece over again. I know it by heart now, and never
  weary of saying it to myself. My only regret is that I haven’t
  heard you read it.

                     *       *       *       *       *

  “The news from our travellers continues to be very good. You know
  already how much Juliette enjoyed Bayonne and Biarritz in spite of
  the fearful heat. Since then they have visited Fontarrabia, stayed
  at Burgos and crossed the Pyrenees twice. Now she writes me an
  enthusiastic letter from Montserrat. They think of spending ten
  days longer at Barcelona before they return to Nîmes, where Edouard
  wants to be back before September, so as to be able to look after
  the vintage.

  “Father and I have been settled at Fongueusemare for a week now,
  and we expect Miss Ashburton and Robert in four days’ time. You
  know the poor boy has failed in his examination; not that it was
  difficult, but the examiner asked him such peculiar questions that
  it confused him; I cannot believe, after what you told me about
  his keenness for work, that he hadn’t prepared properly, but this
  examiner, it appears, takes a pleasure in putting people out.

  “As for your successes, my dear, I can hardly say that I
  congratulate you. I have so much confidence in you, Jerome!
  Whenever I think of you, my heart fills with hope. Will you be able
  to begin the work you speak about at once?

                     *       *       *       *       *

  “Nothing is changed here in the garden; but the house seems very
  empty! You will have understood--won’t you?--why I asked you not to
  come this year. I feel it is better so; I tell myself so every day,
  for it is hard to stay so long without seeing you. Sometimes I look
  for you involuntarily; I stop in the middle of what I am reading, I
  turn my head quickly ... it seems as though you were there!

                     *       *       *       *       *

  “I continue my letter. It is night; everybody is asleep; I am
  sitting up late writing to you, before the open window. The garden
  is full of scents; the air is warm. Do you remember when we were
  children, whenever we saw or heard anything very beautiful, we
  used to say to ourselves, ‘Thanks, Lord, for having created it.’
  To-night I said to myself with my whole soul, ‘Thanks, Lord, for
  having made the night so beautiful!’ And suddenly I wanted you
  there--I felt you there, close to me--with such violence that
  perhaps you felt it.

  “Yes, you were right in your letter when you said, ‘In generous
  hearts admiration is lost in gratitude.’ How many other things I
  should like to write to you. I think of the radiant land Juliette
  speaks of. I think of other lands, vaster, more radiant still,
  more desert-like. A _strange_ conviction dwells in me that one
  day--but I cannot tell how--you and I shall see together some great
  mysterious land--but ah! I cannot tell which ...”

No doubt you can easily imagine with what transports of joy I read
this letter, with what sobs of love! Other letters followed. Alissa,
it is true, thanked me for not coming to Fongueusemare; it is true she
begged me not to try and see her again this year, but she regretted
my absence, she wanted me; from page to page there sounded the same
appeal. Where did I find strength to resist it? In Abel’s advice,
no doubt, and in the fear of suddenly ruining my joy, and in an
instinctive stiffening of my will against the inclinations of my heart.

From the letters which followed I copy all that bears upon my tale:--

  “Dear Jerome,

  “My heart melts with joy as I read you. I was just going to answer
  your letter from Orvieto, when the one from Perugia and the one
  from Assisi arrived together. My mind has turned traveller; it is
  only my body that makes believe to stay behind here; in truth I
  am with you on the white roads of Umbria. I set out with you in
  the morning and watch the dawn with a fresh-created eye.... Did
  you really call me on the terrace of Cortona? I heard you. We were
  terribly thirsty on the hills above Assisi, but how good I thought
  the Franciscan’s glass of water! Oh, my friend! It is through you
  that I look at all things. How much I like what you write about St.
  Francis! Yes, what we should seek for is indeed--is it not?--an
  exaltation and not an emancipation of the mind. The latter goes
  only with an abominable pride. Our ambition should lie not in
  revolt but in service.

  “The news from Nîmes is so good, that it seems to me I have God’s
  permission to give way to joy. The only shadow this summer is my
  poor father’s condition. In spite of all my care he still keeps
  sad, or rather he relapses into sadness the moment I leave him to
  himself, and it becomes less and less easy to get him out of it.
  All the joys of nature that are about us, speak a language which
  has become foreign to him; he no longer even makes any effort to
  understand it. Miss Ashburton is well. I read your letters aloud
  to them both; each one gives us enough to talk about for three
  days, and then comes a fresh one.

  “Robert left us the day before yesterday. He is going to spend the
  rest of his holidays with his friend R----, whose father is at the
  head of a model farm. Certainly the life we lead here is not very
  amusing for him. I could only encourage him in his idea when he
  spoke of leaving.

  “... I have so much to say to you. I thirst for a talk, such
  an endless talk! Sometimes I can find no words, no distinct
  ideas--this evening I am writing as in a dream--and all I realise
  is an almost oppressive sense of infinite riches to bestow and to
  receive.

  “How did we manage to be silent during so many long months? No
  doubt we were hibernating. Oh! may that frightful winter of
  our silence be for ever past! Now that I have found you again,
  life, thought, our souls--everything seems beautiful, adorable,
  inexhaustibly fertile.”

                                                       12th September.

  “I have got your letter from Pisa. The weather is splendid here,
  too. Never before have I thought Normandy so beautiful. The day
  before yesterday I took an enormously long walk, going across
  country at random. When I came in I was not so much tired as
  excited, almost intoxicated with sun and joy. How beautiful the
  hay-stacks were in the burning sun! There was no need to imagine
  myself in Italy for me to think everything I saw wonderful.

                     *       *       *       *       *

  “Yes, dear friend, it is as you say, an exhortation to joy which
  I hear and understand in Nature’s ‘mingled hymn.’ I hear it in
  every bird’s song; I breathe it in the scent of every flower, and
  I have reached the point of conceiving adoration as the only form
  of prayer, repeating over and over again with St. Francis: ‘My God!
  My God! _e non altro_’--and nothing else--my heart filled with
  _inexpressible_ love.

                     *       *       *       *       *

  “Don’t be afraid, though, of my becoming an ignoramus. I have been
  reading a great deal lately; with the help of a few rainy days I
  have, as it were, folded my adoration up into my books. Finished
  Malebranche and begun at once on Leibnitz’ _Letters to Clarke_.
  Then, as a rest, read Shelley’s _Cenci_--without pleasure; read
  _The Sensitive Plant_ too. I shall make you very indignant, but I
  would give nearly all Shelley and all Byron for Keats’s four odes,
  which we read together last summer; just as I would give all Hugo
  for a few of Baudelaire’s sonnets. The words ‘great poet’ have no
  meaning--what is important is to be a _pure_ poet. Oh, my brother!
  thank you for having taught me to understand and love these things.

                     *       *       *       *       *

  “No, don’t cut short your journey for the sake of a few days’
  meeting. Seriously, it is better that we should not see each other
  again just yet. Believe me, if you were with me I could not think
  of you more. I should be sorry to give you pain, but I have come to
  the point of no longer wanting your presence--now. Shall I confess?
  If I knew you were coming this evening I should fly away.

  “Oh! don’t ask me to explain this feeling, please. I only know that
  I think of you unceasingly (which ought to be enough for _your_
  happiness) and that I am happy so.”

A short time after this last letter, and immediately after my return
from Italy, I was called up for my military service and sent to Nancy.
I did not know a living soul there, but I was glad to be alone, for
it was thus more clearly apparent to my lover’s pride and to Alissa
herself, that her letters were my only refuge, and that the thought of
her was, as Ronsard would have said, “my only entelechy.”

To tell the truth I bore the pretty severe discipline to which we were
subjected, very cheerily. I stiffened myself to endurance, and in my
letters to Alissa complained only of absence. We even found in this
long separation a trial worthy of our valour. “You who never complain,”
wrote Alissa; “you whom I cannot imagine faltering.” What would I not
have endured to prove the truth of her words?

                   *       *       *       *       *

Almost a year had gone by since our last meeting. She seemed not to
consider this, but to count her time of waiting only from now onwards.
I reproached her with it.

                   *       *       *       *       *

“Was I not with you in Italy?” she replied. “Ungrateful! I never left
you for a single day. You must understand that now, for a time, I
can’t follow you any longer, and it is that, only that, which I call
separation. I try hard, it is true, to imagine you as a soldier. I
can’t succeed. At best I see you in the evening in your little room
in the Rue Gambetta, writing or reading--but no, not even that! In
reality it is only at Fongueusemare or Le Havre that I can see you, in
a year from now.

“A year! I don’t count the days that have already gone by; my hope
fastens its gaze on that point in the future, which is slowly, slowly,
drawing nearer. Do you remember the low wall that shelters the
chrysanthemums, at the end of the garden, and how sometimes we used to
venture along the top of it? Juliette and you walked on it as boldly as
though you were Mussulmans going straight to Paradise; as for me, I was
seized with giddiness after the first step or two, and you used to call
to me from below, ‘Don’t look at your feet! Eyes front! Don’t stop!
Look at the goal!’ And then, at last--and it was more of a help than
your words--you would climb on to the wall at the other end and wait
for me. Then I no longer trembled; I no longer felt giddy; I no longer
saw anything but you; I ran until I reached your open arms.

“Without faith in you, Jerome, what would become of me? I have need to
feel you strong; need to lean on you. Don’t weaken.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Out of a sort of spirit of defiance, which made us deliberately
prolong our time of waiting--out of fear, too, of an unsatisfactory
meeting--we agreed that I should spend my few days’ leave at Christmas
with Miss Ashburton, in Paris.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I have already told you that I do not give all her letters. Here is one
I received about the middle of February:--

  “Great excitement the day before yesterday in passing along the
  Rue de Paris to see Abel’s book, very ostentatiously displayed in
  M----’s shop window. You had indeed announced its appearance, but I
  could not believe in its _reality_. I wasn’t able to resist going
  in; but the title seemed to me so ridiculous that I hesitated to
  name it to the shopman; I was, in fact, on the point of going out
  again with any other book, no matter what. Fortunately a little
  pile of _Wantonness_ was set out for customers near the counter,
  and I took a copy and put down my money, without having had to
  speak.

  “I am grateful to Abel for not having sent me his book! I have not
  been able to look through it without shame; shame, not so much
  because of the book itself--in which, after all, I see more folly
  than indecency--but shame to think that Abel, Abel Vautier, your
  friend, should have written it. I searched in vain, from page
  to page, for the ‘great talent’ which the _Temps_ reviewer has
  discovered in it. In our little society of Le Havre, where Abel
  is often mentioned, people say that the book is very successful.
  I hear his incurable futility of mind called ‘lightness’ and
  ‘grace’; of course, I keep prudently silent, and have told no one
  but you that I have read it. Poor Pasteur Vautier, who at first
  looked deeply grieved--and very rightly--is now beginning to wonder
  whether, instead, he hasn’t cause to feel proud; and all his
  acquaintance are doing their best to persuade him so. Yesterday,
  at Aunt Plantier’s, when Mm. V---- said to him abruptly: ‘You must
  be very happy, Pasteur, over your son’s wonderful success!’ he
  answered, rather abashed, ‘Oh! I haven’t got as far as that yet!’
  ‘But you will! But you will!’ said Aunt, innocently no doubt, but
  in such an encouraging voice that everyone began to laugh, even he.

  “What will it be when _The New Abelard_ is brought out? I hear it
  is going to be acted at some theatre or other on the Boulevards,
  and that the papers are beginning to talk of it already! Poor Abel!
  Is that really the success he wants? Will he be satisfied with that?

  “Yesterday in the _Interior Consolation_ I read these words: ‘All
  human glory, indeed all temporal honour, all worldly grandeur,
  compared with Thy eternal glory, is vanity and foolishness.’ And I
  thought, ‘Oh, God! I thank Thee that Thou hast chosen Jerome for
  Thy eternal glory, compared with which the other is vanity and
  foolishness.’”

The weeks and months went by in monotonous occupations; but as there
was nothing on which I could fasten my thoughts but memories or hopes,
I hardly noticed how slow the time was, how long the hours.

My uncle and Alissa were to go in June to the neighbourhood of Nîmes on
a visit to Juliette, who was expecting her baby about that time. Less
favourable news of her health made them hasten their departure.

  “Your last letter, addressed to Le Havre,” wrote Alissa, “arrived
  after we had left. I cannot explain by what accident it reached
  me here only a week later. During all that week I went about
  with a soul that was only half a soul, a shivering, pitiful,
  beggarly soul. Oh, my brother! I am only truly myself--more than
  myself--when I am with you.

  “Juliette is better again. We are daily expecting her confinement,
  without undue anxiety. She knows that I am writing to you this
  morning. The day after our arrival at Aigues-Vives, she said to me:
  ‘And Jerome? What has become of him? Does he write to you still?’
  And as I couldn’t but tell her the truth: ‘When you write to him,’
  she said, ‘tell him that ...’ she hesitated a moment, and then,
  smiling very sweetly, went on: ‘that I am cured.’ I was rather
  afraid that in her letters, which are always so gay, she might be
  acting a part and taking herself in by it. The things she makes her
  happiness out of nowadays are so different from the things she had
  dreamt of, the things on which it seemed her happiness ought to
  have depended!... Ah! this, that we call _happiness_, how intimate
  a part of the soul it is, and of what little importance are the
  outside elements which seem to go to its making! I spare you all
  the reflections I make during my walks along the _garigue_, when
  what astonishes me most is that I don’t feel happier; Juliette’s
  happiness ought to fill me with joy ... why does my heart give way
  to an incomprehensible melancholy against which I am unable to
  fight? The very beauty of the country, which I feel, which at any
  rate I recognise, adds still further to this inexplicable sadness.
  When you wrote to me from Italy, I was able to see everything
  through you; now I feel as if I were depriving you of whatever I
  look at without you. And then at Fongueusemare or at Le Havre I
  had made myself a kind of rough-weather virtue, for use on rainy
  days; here, this virtue seems out of place, and I feel uneasily
  that there is no occasion for it. The laughter of the people and
  the country jars upon me; perhaps what I call being sad is simply
  not being so noisy as they. No doubt there was some pride in my joy
  formerly, for at present, in the midst of this alien gaiety, what I
  feel is not unlike humiliation.

  “I have scarcely been able to pray since I have been here: I have
  the childish feeling that God is no longer in the same place.
  Good-bye; I must stop now. I am ashamed of this blasphemy, and of
  my weakness, and of my sadness, and of confessing them, and of
  writing you all this which I should tear up to-morrow if it were
  not posted to-night....”

The next letter spoke only of the birth of her niece, whose godmother
she was to be, of Juliette’s joy and of my uncle’s, but of her own
feelings there was no further question.

Then there were letters dated from Fongueusemare again, where Juliette
came to stay with her in July.

  “Edouard and Juliette left us this morning. It is my little niece
  whom I regret most; when I see her again in six months’ time I
  shall no longer recognise every one of her movements; she had
  scarcely one which I hadn’t seen her invent. Growth is always so
  mysterious and surprising; it is through failure of attention that
  we are not oftener astonished at it. How many hours I have spent,
  bending over the little cradle, where so many hopes lie centred.
  By what selfishness, by what conceit, by what lack of desire for
  improvement is it that development ceases so soon, and that every
  creature becomes definitive, when still so far from God? Oh! if
  we could, if we would but approach nearer to Him ... think, what
  emulation!

  “Juliette seems very happy. I was grieved at first to find that
  she had given up her piano and her reading; but Edouard Teissières
  doesn’t like music and hasn’t much taste for books; no doubt
  Juliette is acting wisely in not seeking her pleasure where he
  cannot follow her. On the other hand, she takes an interest in her
  husband’s occupations and he tells her all about his business.
  It has developed greatly this year; it pleases him to say that
  it is because of his marriage, which has brought him an important
  _clientèle_ at Le Havre. Robert accompanied him the last time he
  went on a business journey. Edouard is very kind to him, declares
  he understands his character and doesn’t despair of seeing him take
  seriously to this kind of work.

  “Father is much better; the sight of his daughter’s happiness
  has made him young again; he is interesting himself again in the
  farm and the garden, and has just asked me to go on with our
  reading aloud, which we had begun with Miss Ashburton and which
  was interrupted by the Teissières’ visit. I am reading them Baron
  Hübner’s travels, and enjoy them very much myself. I shall have
  more time now for my own reading too; but I want some advice from
  you; this morning I took up several books, one after the other,
  without feeling a taste for any of them!”

Alissa’s letters, henceforward, became more troubled, more pressing.

  “The fear of troubling you prevents me from telling you how much
  I want you,” she wrote towards the end of the summer. “Every day
  that has to be got through before I see you again weighs on me,
  oppresses me. Another two months! It seems longer than all the
  rest of the time which has already gone by without you! Everything
  I take up to while away the hours, seems nothing but an absurd
  stop-gap, and I cannot set myself to anything. My books are without
  virtue and without charm; my walks have no attraction; Nature has
  lost her glamour; the garden is emptied of colour, of scent. I
  envy you your fatigue-parties and your compulsory drills which
  are constantly dragging you out of yourself, tiring you, hurrying
  along your days, and, at night, flinging you, wearied out, to your
  sleep. The stirring description you gave me of the manœuvres,
  haunts me. For the last few nights I have been sleeping badly,
  and several times I have been woken up with a start by the bugles
  sounding reveille ... I actually heard them. I can so well imagine
  the intoxication of which you speak, the morning rapture, the
  light-headedness almost ... How beautiful the plateau of Malzéville
  must have been in the icy radiance of dawn!

  “I have not been quite so well lately; oh! nothing serious. I think
  I am just looking forward to your coming a little too much.”

And six weeks later:

  “This is my last letter, my friend. However uncertain the date
  of your return may be, it cannot be delayed much longer. I shall
  not be able to write to you any more. I should have preferred our
  meeting to have been at Fongueusemare, but the weather has broken;
  it is very cold, and father talks of nothing but going back to
  town. Now that Juliette and Robert are no longer with us we could
  easily take you in, but it is better that you should go to Aunt
  Félicie’s, who will be glad, too, to have you.

  “As the day of our meeting comes near, I look forward to it with
  growing anxiety, almost with apprehension. I seem now to dread your
  coming that I so longed for; I try not to think of it; I imagine
  your ring at the bell, your step on the stairs, and my heart stops
  beating or hurts me ... And whatever you do, don’t expect me to be
  able to speak to you. I feel my past comes to an end here; I see
  nothing beyond; my life stops....”

Four days later, however--a week, that is, before I was liberated from
my military service--I received one more letter, a very short one:

  “My friend, I entirely approve of your not wanting to prolong
  beyond measure your stay at Le Havre and the time of our first
  meeting. What should we have to say to each other that we have not
  already written? So if the business connected with your examination
  calls you to Paris as early as the 28th, don’t hesitate, don’t even
  regret that you are not able to give us more than two days. Shall
  we not have all our lives?”




VI


It was at Aunt Plantier’s that our first meeting took place. I suddenly
felt that my military service had made me heavy and clumsy.... Later
on I thought she must have found me altered. But why should this first
deceptive impression have had any importance for us two? As for me, I
was so much afraid of not recognising the Alissa I knew, that at first
I hardly dared look at her. No! what was really embarrassing was the
absurd position of being engaged which they all forced upon us, and
everybody’s anxiety to leave us alone and hurry away when we were there!

“Oh, Aunt! you are not the least in the way; we have nothing private to
say to each other,” cried Alissa at last, impatient at the tactless
manner in which the excellent woman tried to efface herself.

“Yes, yes! my dears. I quite understand. When young people haven’t seen
each other for a long time, they always have lots of little things to
tell each other.”

“Please, Aunt! You really will annoy us if you go away!” and this was
said in a tone which was almost angry, and in which I hardly recognised
Alissa’s voice.

“Aunt! I assure you that if you go away, we shan’t utter a single other
word!” added I, laughing, but myself filled with a certain apprehension
at the idea of our being left alone. And then, with sham cheerfulness,
we all three set to work to make conversation, trying to hide our
embarrassment beneath the forced liveliness of our commonplace talk. We
were to meet again the next day, as my uncle had invited me to lunch,
so that we parted that evening without regret, glad to put an end to
this absurd scene.

I arrived long before luncheon-time, but I found Alissa talking to
a girl friend, whom she had not the strength of mind to send away,
and who was not discreet enough to go. When at last she left us, I
pretended to be surprised that Alissa had not kept her to lunch. We
were both of us in a state of nervous tension and tired by a sleepless
night. My uncle appeared. Alissa felt that I thought him aged. He had
grown rather deaf, and heard my voice with difficulty; the necessity I
was under of shouting so as to make myself understood made my talk dull
and stupid.

After lunch Aunt Plantier, as had been arranged, came to take us out in
her carriage; she drove us to Orcher, with the idea of letting Alissa
and me do the pleasantest part of the return journey on foot.

The weather was hot for the time of year. The part of the hill up which
we had to walk was exposed to the sun and unattractive; the leafless
trees gave us no shelter. In our anxiety to rejoin the carriage in
which our aunt was to wait for us, we hastened our pace uncomfortably.
My head was aching so badly that I could not extract a single idea
from it; to keep myself in countenance, or because I thought that
the gesture might serve instead of words, I had taken Alissa’s hand,
which she let me keep. Our emotion, the rapidity of our walk, and the
awkwardness of our silence, sent the blood to our faces; I felt my
temples throbbing; Alissa’s colour was unpleasantly heightened; and
soon the discomfort of feeling the contact of our damp hands made us
unclasp them and let them drop sadly to our sides.

We had made too much haste, and arrived at the cross-roads long
before the carriage, which had taken another road and driven very
slowly, because of my aunt’s desire to leave us plenty of time for
talking. We sat down on the bank at the side of the road; a cold wind,
which suddenly got up, chilled us to the bone, for we were bathed in
perspiration; then we walked on to meet the carriage. But the worst was
again the pressing solicitude of our poor aunt, who was convinced that
we had had a long and satisfactory talk and was longing to question us
about our engagement. Alissa, unable to bear it, and with her eyes full
of tears, alleged a violent headache, and we drove home in silence.

The next day I woke up with aching limbs and a bad chill, so unwell
that I put off going to the Bucolins’ till the afternoon. By ill
luck, Alissa was not alone. Madeleine Plantier, one of Aunt Félicie’s
granddaughters, was there. I knew Alissa liked talking to her. She was
staying with her grandmother for a few days, and when I came in, she
exclaimed:

“If you are going back to the Côte when you leave here, we might as
well go together.”

I agreed mechanically; so that I was unable to see Alissa alone. But
the presence of this charming girl was, no doubt, a help to us; I
no longer felt the intolerable embarrassment of the day before; the
conversation between the three of us was soon going smoothly, and was
less futile than I had at first feared. Alissa smiled strangely when I
said good-bye to her; I had the impression that she had not understood
till that moment that I was going away the next morning. But the
prospect of my speedy return took away any touch of tragedy from my
good-bye.

After dinner, however, prompted by a vague uneasiness, I went down to
the town, where I wandered about for nearly an hour before I made up my
mind to ring at the Bucolins’ door. It was my uncle who received me.
Alissa, who was not feeling very well, had already gone to her room
and, no doubt, straight to bed. I talked to my uncle for a few moments,
and then left.

It would be vain for me to blame the perverseness of these incidents,
unfortunate though they were. For even if everything had favoured us,
we should still have invented our embarrassment ourselves. But nothing
could have made me more wretched, than that Alissa, too, should feel
this. This is the letter I received as soon as I got to Paris:

  “My friend, what a melancholy meeting! You seemed to lay the blame
  on other people, but without being able to convince yourself. And
  now I think--I know--it will be so always. Oh! I beg of you, don’t
  let us see each other again!

  “Why this awkwardness, this feeling of being in a false position,
  this paralysis, this dumbness, when we have everything in the
  world to say to each other? The first day of your return this very
  silence made me happy, because I believed it would vanish, and that
  you would tell me the most wonderful things; it was impossible that
  you should leave me without.

  “But when our lugubrious expedition to Orcher came to an end
  without a word, when, above all, our hands unclasped and fell apart
  so hopelessly, I thought my heart would have fainted within me for
  grief and pain. And what distressed me most was not so much that
  your hand let go mine, but my feeling that if yours had not, mine
  would have done so, for my hand too no longer felt happy in yours.

  “The next day--yesterday--I expected you, madly, all the morning. I
  was too restless to stop indoors, and I left a line for you to tell
  you where to find me on the jetty. I stayed a long time looking at
  the stormy sea, but I was too miserable looking at it without you;
  I imagined suddenly that you were waiting for me in my room, and
  went in. I knew I shouldn’t be free in the afternoon; Madeleine had
  told me the day before that she meant to come, and as I expected to
  see you in the morning I did not put her off. But, perhaps, it was
  to her presence we owed the only pleasant moments of our meeting.
  For a few minutes I had the strange illusion that this comfortable
  conversation was going to last a long, long time. And when you came
  up to the sofa where I was sitting beside her, and bent down and
  said ‘good-bye,’ I could not answer; it seemed as though it were
  the end of everything: it suddenly dawned upon me that you were
  going.

  “You had no sooner left with Madeleine, than it struck me as
  impossible, unbearable. Will you believe it? I went out! I wanted
  to speak to you again, to tell you all the things I had not told
  you; I was already hurrying to the Plantiers’ ... It was late;
  I didn’t have time, didn’t dare ... I came in again, desperate,
  to write to you--that I didn’t want to write to you any more--a
  good-bye letter because I felt too much that our correspondence was
  nothing but a vast mirage, that we were each writing, alas! only
  to ourselves and that--Jerome! Jerome! Ah! how far apart we were
  all the time!

  “I tore that letter up, it is true; but now I am writing it over
  again, almost the same. Oh! I do not love you less, my dear! On the
  contrary, I never before felt so clearly, by my very disturbance,
  by my embarrassment as soon as you came near me, how deeply I
  loved you; but hopelessly too, for I must perforce confess it to
  myself--when you were away, I loved you more. I had already begun
  to suspect so, alas! This longed-for meeting has finally shown me
  the truth, and you too, my friend, must needs be convinced of it.
  Good-bye, my much-loved brother; may God keep and guide you! To Him
  alone can we draw near with impunity.”

And as if this letter were not sufficiently painful, the next day she
had added the following postscript:

  “I do not wish to let this letter go without asking you to show a
  little more discretion in regard to what concerns us both. Many
  a time you have wounded me by talking to Juliette or Abel about
  things which should have remained private between you and me, and
  this is, indeed, what made me think--long before you suspected
  it--that your love was above all intellectual, the beautiful
  tenacity of a tender faithful mind.”

The fear lest I should show this letter to Abel had doubtless inspired
the last lines. What suspicious instinct had put her on her guard? Had
she formerly detected in my words some reflection of my friend’s advice?

In truth, I felt myself far enough away from him! The paths we
followed were henceforth divergent; and there was little need of these
recommendations to teach me to bear the anxious burden of my grief
alone.

The next three days were wholly occupied by my pleading; I wished to
reply to Alissa; I was afraid of incurably inflaming the wound by
too deliberate a discussion, by too vehement protestations, by the
slightest clumsy word; twenty times over I began the letter in which
my love struggled for its life. I cannot to this day re-read without
weeping the tear-stained paper, which is the copy of the one I at last
decided to send:

  “Alissa! Have pity on me, on us both! Your letter hurts me. How
  much I wish I could smile at your fears! Yes, I felt everything
  you write; but I was afraid to own it to myself. What frightful
  reality you give to what is merely imaginary, and how you thicken
  it between us!

  “If you feel that you love me less ... Ah! let me dismiss this
  cruel supposition, which your whole letter contradicts! But then,
  of what importance are your fleeting apprehensions? Alissa! As soon
  as I begin to argue, my words freeze; I can only hear the weeping
  of my heart. I love you too much to be skilful, and the more I love
  you the less I know what to say to you. ‘Intellectual love!’...
  what am I to answer to that? When it is with my whole soul that
  I love you, how can I distinguish between my intellect and my
  heart? But since our correspondence is the cause of your unkind
  imputation, since we have been so grievously hurt by our fall into
  reality from the heights to which that correspondence had raised
  us, since, if you were to write to me now you would think that you
  were writing only to yourself, since, too, I have not strength to
  bear another letter like your last--please, for a time, let us stop
  all communication.”

In the rest of my letter I protested and appealed against her judgment,
imploring her to grant us the opportunity of another interview. The
last had had everything against it: the scene, the personages, the
time of year--and even our correspondence, whose impassioned tone had
prepared us for it with so little prudence. This time it should be
preceded only by silence. I wished it to take place in the spring,
at Fongueusemare, where my uncle would let me stay during the Easter
holidays, for as long or as short a time as she herself should think
fit.

My determination was firmly taken and as soon as my letter had gone I
was able to bury myself in my work.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I was to see Alissa once more before the end of the year. Miss
Ashburton, whose health had been declining for some months past, died
four days before Christmas. On my return from my military service I had
gone back to stay with her. I left her very little and was present at
her last moments. A card from Alissa showed me that our vow of silence
lay nearer her heart than my bereavement: she would come up, she said,
for the day, just to go to the funeral, which my uncle would not be
able to attend.

She and I were almost the only mourners to be present at the burial
service and afterwards to follow the coffin. We walked side by side and
exchanged barely a few sentences; but in church, where she took her
seat beside me, I several times felt her eyes resting tenderly upon me.

“It is agreed,” said she, as she left me, “nothing before Easter.”

“No, but at Easter ...”

“I will expect you.”

We were at the gate of the cemetery. I suggested taking her to the
station; but she called a cab and without a word of farewell, left me.




VII


“Alissa is waiting for you in the garden,” said my uncle, after having
embraced me paternally, when one day at the end of April I arrived at
Fongueusemare. If at first I was disappointed at not finding her ready
to welcome me, the next moment I was grateful that she had spared us
both the first commonplace greetings.

She was at the bottom of the garden. I made my way to the place at the
head of the steps, where, at this time of year, the shrubs that set it
closely round were all in flower--lilacs, rowan-trees, laburnums and
weigelias; in order not to catch sight of her from too far, or so that
she should not see me coming, I took the other side of the garden,
along the shady path, where the air was cool beneath the branches.

I advanced slowly; the sky was like my joy--warm, bright, delicately
pure. No doubt she was expecting me by the other path. I was close to
her, behind her, before she heard me; I stopped ... and as if time
could have stopped with me, “This is the moment,” thought I, “the
most delicious moment, perhaps, of all, even though it should precede
happiness itself--which happiness itself will not equal.”

I meant to fall on my knees before her; I took a step which she heard.
She got up suddenly, letting the embroidery at which she was working
roll to the ground; she stretched out her arms towards me, put her
hands on my shoulders. For a few moments we stayed so, she with her
arms outstretched, her face smiling and bent towards me, looking at me
tenderly without speaking. She was dressed all in white. On her grave
face--almost too grave--I recognised her childhood’s smile.

“Listen, Alissa,” I cried suddenly. “I have twelve days before me. I
will not stay one more than you please. Let us settle on a sign, which
shall mean: ‘To-morrow you must leave Fongueusemare.’ The next day I
will go, without recrimination, without complaint. Do you agree?”

As I had not prepared what I was going to say, I spoke more easily. She
reflected a moment; then:

“The evening that I come down to dinner without wearing the amethyst
cross you like ... will you understand?”

“That it is to be my last evening.”

“But will you be able to go without a tear or a sigh?”

“Without a good-bye. I will leave you on that last evening exactly as
I shall have done the evening before, so simply that you will wonder
whether I have understood. But when you look for me the next morning, I
shall just not be there.”

“I shall not look for you the next morning.”

She held out her hand; as I raised it to my lips, I added:

“But from now till the fatal evening, not an allusion to make me feel
that it is coming.”

“And you, not an allusion to the parting that will follow.”

The embarrassment, which the solemnity of this meeting was in danger of
creating between us, had now to be dispelled.

“I should so much like,” I went on, “that these few days with you
should seem like other days ... I mean, that we should not feel, either
of us, that they are exceptional. And then ... if we were not to try
too hard to talk just at first ...”

She began to laugh. I added:

“Isn’t there anything we could do together?”

Ever since we could remember we had taken great pleasure in gardening.
An inexperienced gardener had lately replaced the old one, and there
was a great deal to be done in the garden, which had been neglected
for the last two months. Some of the rose trees had been badly pruned;
some, luxuriant growers, were encumbered with dead wood; some of the
ramblers had come down for want of the necessary props; others were
being exhausted by suckers. Most of them had been grafted by us; we
recognised our nurslings; the attention of which they were in need took
up a large part of our time, and allowed us during the first three days
to talk a great deal without saying anything of weight, and, when we
said nothing, it enabled us not to feel our silence burdensome.

In this way we once more grew accustomed to one another. It was on this
familiarity that I counted, rather than on any actual explanation. The
very recollection of our separation was already beginning to disappear
from between us, and the fearfulness which I used to feel in her, the
tension of spirit which she used to fear in me, were already beginning
to grow less. Alissa seemed younger than during my melancholy visit of
the autumn, and I had never thought her prettier. I had not yet kissed
her. Every evening I saw sparkling on her bodice the little amethyst
cross, which she wore hanging from a gold chain round her neck. Hope
sprang up again, confidently, in my breast. Hope, do I say? No! it was
already certainty, and I thought I felt it too in Alissa; for I was so
little doubtful of myself that I could no longer have any doubts of
her. Little by little our talk grew bolder.

“Alissa,” I said to her one morning, when all the air breathed laughter
and delight and our hearts were opening like the flowers, “now that
Juliette is happy, won’t you let us too ...”

I spoke slowly, with my eyes fixed upon her; on a sudden she turned
pale, so extraordinarily, that I could not finish my sentence.

“Dear!” she began, without turning her eyes towards me, “I feel happier
with you than I thought it was possible to feel ... but, believe me, we
were not born for happiness.”

“What can the soul prefer to happiness?” I cried, impetuously. She
whispered:

“Holiness ...” so low that I divined rather than heard the word.

My whole happiness spread its wings and flew away out of my heart and
up to Heaven.

“I cannot reach it without you,” I said, and with my head on her knees,
weeping like a child--but for love, not for grief--I repeated again and
again: “Not without you; not without you!”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Then that day, too, passed by like the others. But in the evening
Alissa came down without the little amethyst ornament. Faithful to my
promise, the next morning at daybreak I left.

                   *       *       *       *       *

On the following day I received the strange letter which I give below,
with these lines of Shakespeare’s as motto:

    “‘That strain again,--it had a dying fall:
    Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south,
    That breathes upon a bank of violets,
    Stealing and giving odour.--Enough; no more,
    ’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.’

  “Yes! In spite of myself, I looked for you the whole morning, my
  brother. I could not believe that you had gone. I felt resentful
  against you for having kept to our engagement. I thought it must
  be a jest. I expected you to step out from behind every bush. But
  no! you have really gone. Thank you.

  “I spent the rest of the day haunted by the constant presence of
  thoughts, which I should like to communicate to you, and by the
  peculiar and very definite fear that if I did not, I should have
  the feeling later on of having failed in my duty towards you, of
  having deserved your reproaches ...

  “In the first moments of your stay at Fongueusemare it was
  astonishment that I felt--soon after it was uneasiness--at the
  strange contentment that filled my whole being in your presence; ‘a
  contentment so great,’ you said, ‘that I desire nothing beyond!’
  Alas! that is just what makes me uneasy....

  “I am afraid, my friend, lest you should misunderstand me. Above
  all, I am afraid lest you should take for subtlety (Oh, how
  mistaken a subtlety!) what is merely the expression of the most
  violent feeling of my soul.

  “‘If it did not suffice, it would not be happiness,’ you said, do
  you remember? And I did not know what to answer. No, Jerome, it
  does not suffice us. Jerome, it must not suffice us. I cannot take
  this delicious contentment for the true one. Did we not realise
  last autumn what misery it covered over?...

  “The true one! Ah! God forbid! We were born for a happiness other
  than that....

  “Just as it was our correspondence which spoilt our meeting last
  autumn, so now the memory of your presence yesterday disenchants
  my letter of to-day. What has happened to the delight I used to
  take in writing to you? By writing to each other, by being with
  each other, we have exhausted all that is pure in the joy to which
  our love dare aspire. And now, in spite of myself, I exclaim, like
  Orsino in _Twelfth Night_: ‘Enough; no more; ’tis not so sweet now
  as it was before.’

  “Good-bye, my friend. _Hic incipit amor Dei._ Ah! will you ever
  know how much I love you?... Until the end I will be your

                                                             “Alissa.”

Against the snare of virtue I was defenceless. All heroism attracted
and dazzled me, for I could not separate it from love. Alissa’s letter
inspired me with a rash and intoxicating enthusiasm. God knows that
I strove after more virtue only for her sake. Any path, provided it
climbed upwards, would lead me to her. Ah! the ground could not too
soon narrow enough to hold only her and me! Alas! I did not suspect the
subtlety of her feint, and little imagined that it would be by a height
where there was room for only one, that she might escape me once more.

I replied lengthily. I remember the only passage of my letter that was
at all clear-sighted.

“I often think,” I said, “that my love is the best part of me; that
all my virtues are suspended to it; that it raises me above myself,
and that without it I should fall back to the mediocre level of a very
ordinary disposition. It is the hope of reaching you that will always
make me think the steepest path the best.”

What did I add which can have induced her to answer as follows:

  “But, my friend, holiness is not a choice; it is an obligation”
  (the word was underlined three times in her letter). “If you are
  what I take you to be, _you_ will not be able to evade it either.”

That was all. I understood, or rather I had a foreboding, that our
correspondence would stop there, and that neither the most cunning
counsels nor the most steadfast determination would be of any avail.

I wrote again, however, lengthily, tenderly. After my third letter I
received this note:

  “My friend,

  “Do not imagine that I have made any resolution not to write to
  you; I merely no longer take any pleasure in writing. And yet your
  letters still interest me, but I reproach myself more and more for
  engrossing so much of your thoughts.

  “The summer is not far off. I propose that we give up our
  correspondence for a time, and that you come and spend the last
  fortnight of September with me at Fongueusemare. Do you accept? If
  you do, I have no need of a reply. I shall take your silence for
  consent, and hope, therefore, that you will not answer.”

I did not answer. No doubt this silence was only the last trial to
which she was subjecting me. When, after a few months’ work and a
few weeks’ travel, I returned to Fongueusemare, it was with the most
tranquil assurance.

                   *       *       *       *       *

How should I, by a simple recital, make clear at once what I myself
understood at first so ill? What can I paint here save the occasion
of the wretchedness which from that moment overwhelmed me wholly?
For if I have no forgiveness in my heart to-day for my failure to
recognise that love that was still throbbing, hidden under a semblance
so artificial, it was at first only this semblance that I was able to
see; and so, no longer finding my friend, I accused her ... No! Even
then, Alissa, I did not accuse you, but wept despairingly that I could
recognise you no longer. Now that I can gauge the strength of your love
by the cunning of its silence and by its cruel workings, must I love
you all the more, the more agonisingly you bereft me?

Disdain? Coldness? No; nothing that could be overcome; nothing against
which I could even struggle; and sometimes I hesitated, doubting
whether I had not invented my misery, so subtle seemed its cause and
so skilful was Alissa’s pretence of not understanding it. What should
I have complained of? Her welcome was more smiling than ever; never
had she shown herself more cordial, more attentive; the first day I
was almost taken in by it. What did it matter, after all, that she
did her hair in a new way, which flattened it and dragged it back
from her face, so that her features were harshened and their true
expression altered--that an unbecoming dress, dull in colour and ugly
in texture, turned the delicate rhythm of her body to clumsiness?...
There was nothing here, I thought blindly, that might not be remedied
the very next day, either of her own accord or at my request. I was
more unpleasantly affected by the cordiality, by the attentions, which
were so foreign to our habits, and in which I was afraid I saw more
deliberation than spontaneity, and, though I scarcely dare say so, more
politeness than love.

That evening, when I went into the drawing-room, I was astonished not
to find the piano in its usual place; Alissa answered my exclamation of
disappointment in her most tranquil voice:

“It has gone to be done up, dear.”

“But I repeatedly told you, my child,” said my uncle, in a tone of
reproach that was almost severe, “that as it had done well enough up
till now, you might have waited until Jerome had gone before sending it
away; your haste has deprived us of a great pleasure.”

“But, father,” said she, turning aside to blush, “I assure you it had
got so jingly latterly that Jerome himself wouldn’t have been able to
get anything out of it.”

“When you played it, it didn’t seem so bad,” said my uncle.

She stayed a few moments in the shadow, stooping down, as if she were
engaged in taking the measurements of a chair cover, then she left the
room abruptly, and did not return till later, when she brought in the
tray with the cup of _tisane_ which my uncle was in the habit of taking
every evening.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The next day she changed neither the way of doing her hair nor her
dress; seated beside her father on a bench in front of the house, she
went on with the mending on which she had already been engaged the
evening before. On the bench or the table beside her was a great basket
full of stockings and socks into which she dipped. A few days later
it was towels and sheets. This work absorbed her, it seemed, to such
a pitch that every gleam of expression vanished from her lips and her
eyes.

“Alissa!” I exclaimed the first evening, almost terrified by this
obliteration of all poetry from her face, which I could hardly
recognise, and at which I had been gazing for some moments without her
seeming to feel my look.

“What is it?” said she, raising her head.

“I wanted to see if you would hear me. Your thoughts seemed so far away
from me.”

“No; they are here; but this darning requires a great deal of
attention.”

“Wouldn’t you like me to read to you while you are sewing?”

“I am afraid I shouldn’t be able to listen very well.”

“Why do you choose such absorbing work to do?”

“Some one must do it.”

“There are so many poor women who would be glad to do it for the sake
of earning a trifle. It can’t be from economy that you undertake such a
tedious task?”

She at once assured me that she liked no other kind of sewing so much,
that it was the only kind she had done for a long time past, and that
she was doubtless out of practice for doing anything else. She smiled
as she spoke. Never had her voice been sweeter than now, when she was
so grieving me. “I am saying nothing but what is natural,” her face
seemed to declare, “why should it make you sad?”

And my whole heart’s protest no longer even rose to my lips--it choked
me.

                   *       *       *       *       *

A day or two later, as we had been picking roses, she invited me to
carry them for her to her room, into which I had not as yet been this
year. What flattering hopes arose in me at once! For I had not got
beyond blaming myself for my sadness; one word from her would have
healed my heart.

I never went into this room without emotion; I cannot tell what it
was that made up the kind of melodious peace which breathed in it,
and in which I recognised Alissa. The blue shadow of the curtains at
the windows and round the bed, the furniture of shining mahogany, the
order, the spotlessness, the silence, all spoke to my heart of her
purity and pensive grace.

I was astonished that morning to see that two large photographs of
Masaccio’s, which I had brought back from Italy, were no longer on the
wall beside her bed; I was on the point of asking her what had become
of them when my glance fell on the book-shelf close by, where she used
to keep her bedside books. This little collection had been gradually
formed, partly by the books I had given her, partly by others which we
had read together. I had just noticed that all these books had been
removed, and that they had been replaced exclusively by a number of
insignificant little works of vulgar piety, for which I hoped she had
nothing but contempt. Raising my eyes suddenly, I saw that Alissa was
laughing--yes, laughing--as she watched me.

“I beg your pardon,” said she at once; “your face made me laugh; it
fell so abruptly when you saw my book-case.”

I felt very little inclined for pleasantry.

“No, really, Alissa, is that what you read now?”

“Yes, certainly. What is it surprises you?”

“I should have thought that a mind accustomed to substantial food would
have been disgusted by such sickly stuff.”

“I don’t understand you,” said she. “These are humble souls who talk to
me simply, and express themselves as best they can. I take pleasure in
their society. I know beforehand that they will not fall into any snare
of fine language, and that I, as I read, shall not be tempted by any
profane admiration.”

“Do you read nothing but that, then, now?”

“Almost. Yes, for the last few months. But I haven’t much time for
reading now. And I confess that quite lately, when I tried to re-read
one of the great authors whom you taught me to admire, I felt like the
man in the Scriptures, who strives to add a cubit to his height.”

“Who is this ‘great author’ who has given you such an odd opinion of
yourself?”

“He didn’t give it me, but it was while reading him that I got it....
It was Pascal. Perhaps I lighted on some passage that was not so
good....”

I made an impatient movement. She spoke in a clear, monotonous voice,
as if she were reciting a lesson, not lifting her eyes from her
flowers, which she went on arranging and re-arranging interminably. She
stopped for an instant at my movement and then continued in the same
tone:

“Such surprising grandiloquence and such effort!--and to prove so
little! I wonder sometimes whether his pathetic intonation is not the
result of doubt rather than of faith. The voice of perfect faith speaks
with fewer tears, with fewer tremors.”

“It is just those very tremors, those very tears, which make the beauty
of his voice,” I endeavoured to retort, although dispiritedly; for in
her words I could recognise nothing of what I loved in Alissa. I write
them down as I remember them, and without any after addition of either
art or logic.

“If he had not first emptied this life of its joy,” she went on, “it
would weigh heavier in the balance than ...”

“Than what?” I asked, for I was amazed at her strange sayings.

“Than the uncertain felicity he holds out.”

“Don’t you believe in it, then?” I exclaimed.

“No matter!” she answered; “I wish it to remain uncertain, so that
every suspicion of a bargain may be removed. The soul that loves God
steeps itself in virtue out of natural nobility, and not for the hope
of reward.”

“And that is the reason of the secret scepticism in which nobility such
as Pascal’s finds a refuge.”

“Not scepticism--Jansenism,” said she smiling. “What have I to do
with such things? These poor souls, here,” she added, turning towards
her books, “would be at a loss to say whether they are Jansenist or
quietist or what not. They bow down before God like the grass which is
bent by the wind, without guile or anxiety or beauty. They consider
themselves of little account, and know that their only value lies in
their effacement before God.”

“Alissa!” I cried, “why do you tear off your wings?”

Her voice remained so calm and natural that my exclamation seemed to me
all the more absurdly emphatic.

She smiled again, and shook her head. “All that I brought away from my
last visit to Pascal ...”

“Was what?” I asked, for she stopped.

“This saying of Christ’s: ‘Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall
lose it.’ And as for that,” she went on, smiling still more and looking
me steadily in the face, “I really hardly understood him any longer.
When one has lived any time in the society of such lowly ones as these,
it is extraordinary how quickly the sublimity of the great leaves one
breathless and exhausted.”

Would my discomposure allow me no answer?

“If I were obliged to read all these sermons and tracts with you now
...”

“But,” she interrupted, “I should be very sorry to see you read them!
I agree with you; I think you were meant for much better things than
that.”

She spoke quite simply and without seeming to suspect that my heart
might be rent by these words which implied the separation of our lives.
My head was burning; I should have liked to go on speaking; I should
have liked to cry; perhaps my tears would have vanquished her; but I
remained without saying a word, my elbows on the mantelpiece, my head
buried in my hands. She went on calmly arranging her flowers, seeing
nothing--or pretending to see nothing of my suffering....

At this moment the first bell rang.

“I shall never be ready for lunch,” said she. “You must go away now.”
And as if it had been nothing but play: “We will go on with this
conversation another time.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

We never went on with the conversation. Alissa continually eluded
me; not that she ever appeared to be avoiding me; but every casual
occupation became a duty of far more urgent importance. I had to wait
my turn; I only came after the constantly recurring cares of the
household, after she had attended to the alterations that were being
carried out in the barn, after her visits to the farmers and after her
visits to the poor, with whom she busied herself more and more. I had
the time that was left over, and very little it was; I never saw her,
but she was in a hurry--though it was still, perhaps, in the midst of
these trivial occupations, and when I gave up pursuing her, that I
least felt how much I had been dispossessed. The slightest talk showed
it me more clearly. When Alissa granted me a few minutes, it was,
indeed, for the most laborious conversation to which she lent herself
as one does to playing with a child. She passed beside me swiftly,
absent-minded and smiling; and I felt she had become more distant than
if I had never known her. It even seemed to me sometimes that there
was a kind of challenge in her smile, or at any rate a kind of irony
and that she took amusement in thus eluding my wishes.... And at that
it was myself that I turned to upbraid, not wishing to give way to
reproaches, and, indeed, hardly knowing what might be expected from her
now, nor with what I could reproach her.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Thus the days from which I had promised myself so much felicity passed
by. I contemplated their flight with stupor, but without desiring to
increase their number or delay their passage, so greatly each one
aggravated my grief. Two days before my departure, however, Alissa came
with me to the bench beside the deserted marl-pit; it was a bright
autumn evening; as far as the cloudless horizon, every blue-tinted
detail of the landscape stood out distinct and clear, and in the past
the dimmest of its memories. I could not withhold my lamentations as I
showed her my present unhappiness--as I showed her the happiness I had
lost.

“But what is it I can do, my friend?” she said at once: “You are in
love with a phantom.”

“No, not with a phantom, Alissa.”

“With a creature of your imagination.”

“Alas! I am not inventing. She was once my friend. I call upon her.
Alissa! Alissa! it was you I loved. What have you done with yourself?
What have you made yourself become?”

She remained a few moments without answering, slowly pulling a flower
to pieces and keeping her head down. Then, at last:

“Jerome, why don’t you simply admit that you love me less?”

“Because it’s not true! Because it’s not true!” I exclaimed
indignantly; “because I never loved you more.”

“You love me--and yet you regret me!” said she, trying to smile, and
slightly shrugging her shoulders.

“I cannot put my love into the past.”

The ground was giving way beneath me; and I caught at anything.

“It must pass with the rest.”

“A love like mine will pass only with me.”

“It will gradually grow less. The Alissa whom you think you still love,
already exists only in your memory; a day will come when you will only
remember that you loved her.”

“You speak as if her place might be taken in my heart, or as if my
heart were going to stop loving. Do you no longer remember that you
once loved me yourself that you take such pleasure in torturing me?”

I saw her pale lips tremble; in an almost inaudible voice she whispered:

“No, no; Alissa has not changed in that.”

“Why, then nothing has changed,” I said, seizing her arm....

She went on more firmly:

“One word would explain everything; why don’t you dare say it?”

“What word?”

“I have grown older.”

“Hush!”

I protested immediately that I myself had grown as much older as she,
that the difference of age between us remained the same ... but she
had regained control of herself; the one and only moment had gone by,
and by beginning to argue I let slip my advantage; the ground gave way
beneath me.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Two days later I left Fongueusemare, discontented with her and with
myself, full of a vague hatred against what I still called “virtue,”
and of resentment against the habitual occupation of my heart. It
seemed as though during this last meeting, and through the very
exaggeration of my love, I had come to the end of all my fervour;
each one of Alissa’s phrases, against which I had at first rebelled,
remained alive and triumphant within me, after my protestations had
died away. Yes, no doubt, she was right! It was nothing but a phantom
that I cared for; the Alissa that I had loved, that I still loved, was
no more.... Yes, no doubt we had grown old! This frightful obliteration
of all poetry which had chilled my very heart, was nothing, after all,
but a return to the natural course of things; if by slow degrees I had
exalted her, if out of her I had made myself an idol, and adorned it
with all that I was enamoured of, what now remained to me as the result
of my labours but my fatigue? As soon as she was left to herself,
Alissa had relapsed to her own level--a mediocre level, on which I
found myself too, but on which I no longer desired her. Ah! how absurd
and fantastic seemed this exhausting effort of virtue in order to
reach her there, on the heights where she had been placed by my own
sole endeavour. A little less pride and our love would have been easy
... but what sense was there in persisting in a love without object?
This was to be obstinate not to be faithful. Faithful to what? To a
delusion. Was it not wiser to admit to myself that I had been mistaken?

In the meantime I had been offered a place in the School of Athens; I
agreed to take it up at once, with no feeling of either ambition or
pleasure, but welcoming the idea of departure as though it had been an
escape.




VIII


And yet I saw Alissa once more. It was three years later, towards the
end of summer. Ten months before, I had heard from her the news of
my uncle’s death. A fairly long letter, which I had at once written
her from Palestine, where I was travelling at the time, had remained
unanswered.

Happening to be at Le Havre, on I forget what errand, a natural
instinct set me on the road to Fongueusemare. I knew Alissa was there,
but I was afraid she might not be alone. I had not announced my
arrival; shrinking from the idea of presenting myself like an ordinary
visitor, I went on my way undecided: should I go in? or should I go
away without having seen her, without having tried to see her? Yes,
without doubt, I would just walk up the avenue, sit on the bench,
where sometimes, perhaps, she still went to sit ... and I was already
beginning to wonder what token I could leave behind me, which after I
had gone, would tell her of my coming ... Thus reflecting, I walked
slowly on; and now that I had resolved not to see her, the sharpness
of the sorrow which wrung my heart began to give way to a melancholy
that was almost sweet. I had already reached the avenue, and, for fear
of being taken unawares, I was walking on the footpath which ran along
the bottom of the bank skirting the farmyard. I knew a place on the
bank from which one could look over into the garden; I climbed up; a
gardener whom I did not recognise, was raking one of the paths and soon
disappeared from sight. There was a new gate to the courtyard. A dog
barked as I went by. Further on, where the avenue came to an end, I
turned to the right, came again upon the garden wall, and was making
my way to the portion of the beech wood, parallel to the avenue I had
left, when, as I was passing by the little door that led into the
kitchen garden, the idea of going in suddenly seized me.

The door was shut. The inside bolt, however, offered only a slight
resistance and I was on the point of forcing it open with my
shoulder.... At that moment I heard the sound of steps; I drew back
round the corner of the wall.

I could not see who it was that came out of the garden; but I heard, I
felt it was Alissa. She took three steps forward and called in a weak
voice:

“Is that you, Jerome?”

My heart, which was beating violently, stopped, and as no word would
come from my choking throat, she repeated louder:

“Jerome! Is that you?”

At hearing her call me in this way, the emotion which seized on me was
so great that it forced me to my knees. As I still did not answer,
Alissa took a few steps forward, turned the corner of the wall, and
I suddenly felt her against me--against me, who was kneeling there
hiding my face with my arm, as if in dread of seeing her too soon. She
remained a few moments stooping over me, while I covered her frail
hands with kisses.

“Why were you hiding?” she said, as simply as if those three years of
absence had lasted only a few days.

“How did you guess it was I?”

“I was expecting you.”

“Expecting me?” said I, so astonished that I could only repeat her
words, wondering ... And as I was still on my knees:

“Let us go to the bench,” she went on. “Yes, I knew I was to see you
again once more. For the last three days I have come here every evening
and called you, as I did to-night.... Why didn’t you answer?”

“If you had not come upon me by surprise, I should have gone away
without seeing you,” I said, steeling myself against the emotion which
had at first overmastered me. “I happened to be at Le Havre, and merely
meant to walk along the avenue and round the outside of the garden and
to rest a few moments on this bench, where I thought you might still
come to sit sometimes, and then ...”

“Look what I have brought here to read for the last three evenings,”
she interrupted, and held out to me a packet of letters; I recognised
those I had written her from Italy. At that moment I raised my eyes
to look at her. She was extraordinarily changed; her thinness, her
paleness smote my heart horribly. Leaning heavily upon my arm, she
clung to me as though she were frightened or cold. She was still in
deep mourning, and, no doubt the black lace which she had put round
her head, and which framed her face, added to her paleness. She was
smiling, but her failing limbs seemed hardly to bear her up. I was
anxious to know whether she was alone at Fongueusemare. No, Robert
was living with her; Juliette, Edouard and their three children had
been spending August with them.... We had reached the bench; we sat
down and the conversation for a few minutes longer dragged along in
the usual commonplace enquiries. She asked after my work. I replied
with a bad grace. I should have liked her to feel that my work no
longer interested me. I should have liked to disappoint her as she had
disappointed me. I do not know whether I succeeded, but if so, she did
not show it. As for me, full both of resentment and love, I did my
best to speak as curtly as possible, and was angry with myself for the
emotion which at times made my voice tremble.

The setting sun, which had been hidden for a few moments by a cloud,
reappeared on the edge of the horizon almost opposite us, flooding the
empty fields with a shimmering glory and heaping the narrow valley
that opened at our feet with a sudden profusion of wealth; then it
disappeared. I sat there dazzled and speechless; I felt that I was
wrapped round and steeped in a kind of golden ecstasy, in which my
resentment vanished and nothing survived in me but love. Alissa, who
had been leaning, drooping against me, sat up; she took out of her
bodice a tiny packet wrapped up in tissue paper, made as though she
meant to give it me, stopped, seemed to hesitate, and, as I looked at
her in surprise:

“Listen, Jerome,” said she, “this is my amethyst cross that I have
here; for the last three evenings I have brought it here because for a
long time past I have been wanting to give it you.”

“What am I to do with it?” I asked, rather brusquely.

“Keep it in memory of me for your daughter.”

“What daughter?” I cried, looking at Alissa without understanding her.

“Please, listen to me quite calmly; no, don’t look at me so; don’t
look at me; it’s already difficult enough for me to speak to you;
but I must, I simply must say this. Listen, Jerome; one day you will
marry--no, don’t answer; don’t interrupt, I implore you. I only want
you to remember that I loved you very much, and ... a long time ago ...
three years ago. I thought that a daughter of yours might one day wear
this little cross you liked, in memory of me. Oh! without knowing whose
it was ... and perhaps, too, you might give her ... my name ...”

She stopped, her voice choking; I exclaimed, almost with hostility:

“Why not give it her yourself?”

She tried to speak again. Her lips trembled like those of a sobbing
child, but she did not cry; the extraordinary light that shone in her
eyes flooded her face with an unearthly, an angelic beauty.

“Alissa! whom should I marry? You know I can love no one but you ...”
and suddenly clasping her wildly, almost brutally in my arms, I crushed
my kisses on her lips. An instant I held her unresisting, as she half
lay back against me; I saw her look grow dim; then her eyes closed, and
in a voice so true and melodious that never, to my mind, will it be
equalled:

“Have pity on us, my friend!” she said, “Oh! don’t spoil our love.”

Perhaps she said too: “Don’t be cowardly!” or perhaps it was I who said
it to myself; I cannot tell now; but suddenly flinging myself on my
knees before her, and folding my arms piously round her:

“If you loved me so, why have you always repulsed me? Think! I waited
first for Juliette to be married; I understood your waiting for her to
be happy, too; she _is_ happy; you yourself have told me so. I thought
for a long time that you didn’t want to leave your father; but now we
are both alone.”

“Oh! don’t let us regret the past,” she murmured. “I have turned the
page now.”

“There is still time, Alissa.”

“No, my friend, there is not time. There was no longer time from the
moment when our love made us foresee for one another something better
than love. Thanks to you, my friend, my dream climbed so high that any
earthly satisfaction would have been a declension. I have often thought
of what our life with each other would have been; as soon as it had
been less than perfect, I could not have borne ... our love.”

“Did you ever think what our life would be without each other?”

“No! Never.”

“Now you see! For the last three years, without you, I have been
drifting miserably about ...”

The evening was drawing in.

“I am cold,” said she, getting up and wrapping her shawl too closely
round her for me to be able to take her arm again. “You remember the
Scripture text which troubled us so, and which we were afraid we didn’t
understand properly: ‘These all received not the promise, God having
provided some better thing for us’....”

“Do you still believe those words?”

“Indeed I must.”

We walked on for a few moments beside each other, without saying
anything more. She went on:

“Can you imagine it, Jerome?--‘Some better thing!’” And suddenly the
tears started from her eyes, as she repeated once more: “‘Some better
thing!’”

We had again reached the small garden door through which she had come
out a little before. She turned towards me:

“Good-bye!” said she. “No, don’t come any further. Good-bye, my beloved
friend. Now ... the better thing ... is going to begin.”

One moment she looked at me, at once holding me fast and keeping me
at arm’s length, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes filled with an
unspeakable love.

                   *       *       *       *       *

As soon as the door was shut, as soon as I heard the bolt drawn behind
her, I fell against the door, a prey to the extremest despair, and
stayed for a long time weeping and sobbing in the night.

But to have kept her, to have forced the door, to have entered by any
means whatever into the house, which yet would not have been shut
against me--no, even to-day, when I look back to the past and live
it over again--no, it was not possible to me, and whoever does not
understand me here, has understood nothing of me up till now.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Intolerable anxiety made me write to Juliette a few days later. I told
her of my visit to Fongueusemare, and said how much Alissa’s paleness
and thinness had alarmed me; I implored her to see what could be done
and to give me news which I could no longer expect to get from Alissa
herself.

Less than a month later, I received the following letter:

  “My dear Jerome,

  “This is to give you very sad news: our poor Alissa is no more.
  Alas! the fears you expressed in your letter were only too well
  founded. For the last few months, without being ill exactly, she
  seemed to be wasting away; she yielded, however, to my entreaties
  and consented to see Dr. A----, who wrote to me that there was
  nothing serious the matter with her. But three days after the
  visit you paid her, she suddenly left Fongueusemare. It was from
  a letter of Robert’s that I learnt she was gone; she writes to
  me so seldom that if it had not been for him I should have known
  nothing of her flight, for I should have been a long time before
  taking alarm at her silence. I blamed Robert severely for having
  let her go in this way, and for not having gone with her to Paris.
  Will you believe that from that moment we were ignorant of her
  address? You can imagine my sickening anxiety; impossible to see
  her, impossible even to write to her. Robert, it is true, went to
  Paris a few days later, but he was unable to discover anything.
  He is so slack that we could not trust to his taking the proper
  steps. We had to tell the police; it was not possible to remain
  in such cruel uncertainty. Edouard then went himself, and at last
  managed to discover the little nursing home where Alissa had taken
  refuge. Alas! too late. I received a letter from the head of the
  home announcing her death, and, at the same time, a telegram from
  Edouard, who was not in time to see her again. On the last day she
  had written our address on an envelope, so that we might be told,
  and in another envelope she had put the copy of a letter she had
  sent our lawyer at Le Havre containing her last instructions. I
  think there is a passage in this letter which concerns you: I will
  let you know soon. Edouard and Robert were able to be present at
  the funeral which took place the day before yesterday. They were
  not the only persons to follow the bier. Some of the patients
  of the nursing home wished to be present at the ceremony and to
  accompany the body to the cemetery. As for me, I am expecting my
  fifth baby any day now, and unfortunately I was unable to move.

  “My dear Jerome, I know the deep sorrow this loss will cause you,
  and I write to you with a breaking heart. I have been obliged to
  stop in bed for the last two days, and I write with difficulty,
  but I would not let anyone else, not even Edouard or Robert, speak
  to you of her whom we two, doubtless, were the only persons in the
  world to know. Now that I am an almost old mother of a family, and
  that the burning past is covered over with a heap of ashes, I may
  hope to see you again. If business or pleasure ever take you to
  Nîmes, come on to Aigues-Vives. Edouard would be glad to know you,
  and you and I would be able to talk together of Alissa. Good-bye,
  my dear Jerome.

                                  “Affectionately and sadly yours ...”

A few days later, I learnt that Alissa had left Fongueusemare to her
brother, but had asked that all the things that were in her room
and a few pieces of furniture which she mentioned, should be sent to
Juliette. I was shortly to receive some papers which she had put in a
sealed packet addressed to me. I learnt, also, that she had asked that
the little amethyst cross which I had refused at my last visit should
be put round her neck, and I heard from Edouard that this had been done.

The sealed packet which the lawyer sent me contained Alissa’s journal.
I here transcribe a considerable number of its pages. I transcribe them
without commentary. You will imagine well enough the reflections I made
as I read, and the commotion of my heart, of which I could but give a
too imperfect idea.




ALISSA’S JOURNAL


_Aigues-Vives._

Left Le Havre the day before yesterday; yesterday arrived at Nîmes;
my first journey! With no housekeeping to do and no cooking to look
after, and consequently with a slight feeling of idleness, to-day, the
23rd May, 188–, my twenty-fifth birthday, I begin this journal--without
much pleasure, a little for the sake of company; for, perhaps for
the first time in my life, I feel lonely--in a different, a foreign
land almost, one with which I have not yet made acquaintance. It has,
no doubt the same things to say to me as Normandy--the same that I
listen to untiringly at Fongueusemare--for God is nowhere different
from Himself--but this southern land speaks a language I have not yet
learnt, and to which I listen wondering.


_24th May._

Juliette is dozing on a sofa near me--in the open gallery which is the
chief charm of the house, built as it is after the Italian fashion. The
gallery opens on to the gravelled courtyard which is a continuation of
the garden. Without leaving her sofa, Juliette can see the lawn sloping
down to the piece of water, where a tribe of parti-coloured ducks
disport themselves and two swans sail. A stream which, they say, never
runs dry in the heat of any summer, feeds it and then flows through the
garden, which merges into a grove of ever-increasing wildness, more
and more shut in by the bed of a dried torrent on the one side and the
vineyards on the other, and finally strangled altogether between them.

Edouard Teissières yesterday showed my father the garden, the farm,
the cellars and the vineyards, while I stayed behind with Juliette--so
that this morning, while it was still very early, I was able to make
my first voyage of discovery in the park, by myself. A great many
plants and strange trees, whose names, however, I should have liked to
know. I pick a twig of each of them so as to be told what they are,
at lunch. In some of them I recognise the evergreen oaks which Jerome
admired in the gardens of the Villa Borghese or Doria-Pamphili--so
distantly related to our northern tree, of such a different character!
Almost at the furthest end of the park there is a narrow, mysterious
glade which they shelter, bending over a carpet of grass so soft to the
feet that it seems an invitation to the choir of nymphs. I wonder--I
am almost scared that my feeling for nature, which at Fongueusemare
is so profoundly Christian, should here become, in spite of myself,
half pagan. And yet the kind of awe which oppressed me more and more
was religious too. I whispered the words: “_hic nemus_.” The air was
crystalline; there was a strange silence. I was thinking of Orpheus,
of Armida, when all at once there rose a solitary bird’s song, so near
me, so pathetic, so pure, that it seemed suddenly as though all nature
had been awaiting it. My heart beat violently; I stayed for a moment
leaning against a tree, and then came in before anyone was up.


_26th May._

Still no letter from Jerome. If he had written to me at Le Havre, his
letter would have been forwarded.... I can confide my anxiety to no
one but this book; for the last three days I have not been distracted
from it for an instant, either by our excursion yesterday to Les
Baux, or by reading, or by prayer. To-day I can write of nothing else;
the curious melancholy from which I have been suffering ever since I
arrived at Aigues-Vives has, perhaps, no other cause--and yet I feel
it at such a depth within me that it seems to me now as if it had been
there for a long time past, and as if the joy on which I prided myself
did no more than cover it over.


_27th May._

Why should I lie to myself? It is by an effort of mind that I rejoice
in Juliette’s happiness. That happiness which I longed for so much, to
the extent of offering my own in sacrifice to it, is painful to me,
now that I see that she has obtained it without trouble, and that it
is so different from what she and I imagined. How complicated it all
is! Yes ... I see well enough that a horrible revival of egoism in me
is offended at her having found her happiness elsewhere than in my
sacrifice--at her not having needed my sacrifice in order to be happy.

And now I ask myself, as I feel what uneasiness Jerome’s silence causes
me: Was that sacrifice really consummated in my heart? I am, as it
were, humiliated, to feel that God no longer exacts it. Can it be that
I was not equal to it?


_28th May._

How dangerous this analysis of my sadness is! I am already growing
attached to this book. Is my personal vanity, which I thought I had
mastered, re-asserting its rights here? No; may my soul never use this
journal as a flattering mirror before which to attire itself! It is
not out of idleness that I write, as I thought at first, but out of
sadness. Sadness is a _state of sin_, which had ceased to be mine,
which I hate, from whose _complications_ I wish to free my soul. This
book must help me to find my happiness in myself once more.

Sadness is a complication. I never used to analyse my happiness.

At Fongueusemare I was alone, too, still more alone--why did I not
feel it? And when Jerome wrote to me from Italy, I was willing that
he should see without me, that he should live without me; I followed
him in thought, and out of his joy I made my own. And now, in spite of
myself, I want him; without him every new thing I see is irksome to me.


_10th June._

Long interruption of this journal which I had scarcely begun; birth of
little Lise; long hours of watching beside Juliette; I take no pleasure
in writing anything here that I can write to Jerome.

I should like to keep myself from the intolerable fault which is common
to so many women--that of writing too much. Let me consider this
notebook as a means of perfection.

                   *       *       *       *       *

There followed several pages of notes made in the course of her
reading, extracts, etc. Then, dated from Fongueusemare once more:


_16th July._

Juliette is happy; she says so, seems so; I have no right, no reason to
doubt it. Whence comes this feeling of dissatisfaction, of discomfort,
which I have now when I am with her? Perhaps from feeling that such
happiness is so practical, so easily obtained, so perfectly “to
measure” that it seems to cramp the soul and stifle it....

And I ask myself now whether it is really happiness that I desire, so
much as the progress towards happiness. Oh, Lord! preserve me from a
happiness to which I might too easily attain! Teach me to put off my
happiness, to place it as far away from me as Thou art.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Several pages here had been torn out; they referred, no doubt, to our
painful meeting at Le Havre. The journal did not begin again till
the following year; the pages were not dated, but had certainly been
written at the time of my stay at Fongueusemare.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Sometimes as I listen to him talking, I seem to be watching myself
think. He explains me and discovers me to myself. Should I exist
without him? I _am_ only when I am with him....

Sometimes I hesitate as to whether what I feel for him is really what
people call love--the picture that is generally drawn of love is so
different from that which I should like to draw. I should like nothing
to be said about it, and to love him without knowing that I love him. I
should like, above all, to love him without his knowing it.

I no longer get any joy out of that part of life that has to be lived
without him. My virtue is all only to please him--and yet, when I am
with him, I feel my virtue weakening.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I used to like learning the piano, because it seemed to me that I
was able to make some progress in it every day. That too, perhaps,
is the secret of the pleasure I take in reading a book in a foreign
language; not, indeed, that I prefer any other language whatever to
our own, or that the writers I admire in it appear to me in any way
inferior to those of other countries--but the slight difficulty that
lies in the pursuit of their meaning and feeling, the unconscious pride
of overcoming this difficulty, and of overcoming it more and more
successfully, adds to my intellectual pleasure a certain spiritual
contentment, which it seems to me I cannot do without.

                   *       *       *       *       *

However blessed it might be, I cannot desire a state without progress.
I imagine Heavenly joy, not as a confounding of the spirit with God,
but as an infinite, a perpetual drawing near to Him ... and if I were
not afraid of playing upon words I should say that I did not care for
any joy that was not _progressive_.

                   *       *       *       *       *

This morning we were sitting on the bench in the avenue; we were not
talking, and did not feel any need to talk.... Suddenly he asked me if
I believed in a future life.

“Oh! Jerome!” I cried at once, “it is more than hope I have; it is
certainty.”

And it seemed to me, on a sudden, that my whole faith had, as it were,
been poured into that exclamation.

“I should like to know,” he added. He stopped a few moments; then:
“Would you act differently without your faith?”

“How can I tell?” I answered; and I added: “And you, my dear, you
yourself, and in spite of yourself, can no longer act otherwise than as
if you were inspired by the liveliest faith. And I should not love you
if you were different.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

No, Jerome, no, it is not after a future recompense that our virtue is
striving; it is not for recompense that our love is seeking. A generous
soul is hurt by the idea of being rewarded for its efforts; nor does it
consider virtue an adornment; no, virtue is the form of its beauty.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Papa is not so well again; nothing serious, I hope, but he has been
obliged to go back to his milk diet for the last three days.

Yesterday evening, Jerome had just gone up to his room; Papa, who was
sitting up with me for a little, left me alone for a few minutes. I
was sitting on the sofa, or rather--a thing I hardly ever do--I was
lying down, I don’t know why. The lamp-shade was shading my eyes and
the upper part of my body from the light; I was mechanically looking at
my feet, which showed a little below my dress in the light thrown upon
them by the lamp. When Papa came back, he stood for a few moments at
the door, staring at me oddly, half smiling, half sad. I got up with a
vague feeling of shyness; then he called me:

“Come and sit beside me,” said he; and, though it was already late, he
began speaking to me about my mother, which he had never done since
their separation. He told me how he had married her, how much he had
loved her and how much she had at first been to him.

“Papa,” I said to him at last, “do, please, say why are you telling me
this this evening--what makes you tell me this just this particular
evening?”

“Because, just now, when I came into the drawing-room and saw you lying
on the sofa, I thought for a moment it was your mother.”

The reason I asked this so insistently was because that very evening,
Jerome was reading over my shoulder, standing leaning over me. I could
not see him, but I felt his breath and, as it were, the warmth and
pulsation of his body. I pretended to go on reading, but my mind had
stopped working; I could not even distinguish the lines; a perturbation
so strange took possession of me that I was obliged to get up from my
chair quickly, whilst I still could; I managed to leave the room for
a few minutes, luckily without his noticing anything. But a little
later, when I was alone in the drawing-room and lay down on the sofa,
where Papa thought I looked like my mother, at that very moment I was
thinking of her.

I slept very badly last night; I was disturbed, oppressed, miserable,
haunted by the recollection of the past, which came over me like a wave
of remorse.

Lord, teach me the horror of all that has any appearance of evil.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Poor Jerome! If he only knew that sometimes he would have but a single
sign to make, and that sometimes I wait for him to make it....

When I was a child, even then it was because of him that I wanted
to be beautiful. It seems to me now that I have never striven after
perfection, except for him. And that this perfection can only be
attained without him, is of all Thy teachings, my God! of the one that
is most disconcerting to my soul.

                   *       *       *       *       *

How happy must that soul be for whom virtue is one with love! Sometimes
I doubt whether there is any other virtue than love ... to love as much
as possible and continually more and more.... But at other times, alas!
virtue appears to me to be nothing but resistance to love. What! shall
I dare to call that virtue which is the most natural inclination of
my heart? Oh, tempting sophism! Specious allurement! Cunning mirage of
happiness!

This morning I read in La Bruyère:

“In the course of this life one sometimes meets with pleasures so dear,
promises so tender, which are yet forbidden us, that it is natural to
desire at least that they might be permitted: charms so great can be
surpassed only when virtue teaches us to renounce them.”

Why did I invent here that there was anything forbidden? Can it be
that I am secretly attracted by a charm more powerful and a sweetness
greater still than that of love? Oh! that it were possible to carry our
two souls forward together, by force of love, beyond love!

                   *       *       *       *       *

Alas! I understand now only too well: between God and him there is no
other obstacle but myself. If perhaps, as he says, his love for me at
first inclined him to God, now that very love hinders him; he lingers
with me, prefers me, and I am become the idol that keeps him back from
making further progress in virtue. One of us two must needs attain to
it; and as I despair of overcoming the love in my coward heart, grant
me, my God, vouchsafe me strength to teach him to love me no longer,
so that at the cost of my merits I may bring Thee his, which are so
infinitely preferable ... and if to-day my soul sobs with grief at
losing him, do I not lose him to find him again hereafter in Thee?

Tell me, oh, my God! what soul ever deserved Thee more? Was he not born
for something better than to love me? And should I love him so much if
he were to stop short at myself? How much all that might become heroic
dwindles in the midst of happiness!


_Sunday._

“God having provided some better thing for us.”


_Monday, 3rd May._

To think that happiness is here, close by, offering itself, and that
one only has to put out one’s hand to grasp it ...

This morning, as I was talking to him, I consummated the sacrifice.


_Monday evening._

He leaves to-morrow....

Dear Jerome, I still love you with infinite tenderness; but never more
shall I be able to tell you so. The constraint which I lay upon my
eyes, upon my lips, upon my soul, is so hard that to leave you is a
relief and a bitter satisfaction.

I strive to act according to reason, but at the moment of action the
reasons which made me act escape me, or appear foolish; I no longer
believe in them.

The reasons which make me fly from him? I no longer believe in them ...
And yet I fly from him, sadly and without understanding why I fly.

Lord! that we might advance towards Thee, Jerome and I together, each
beside the other, each helping the other; that we might walk along the
way of life like two pilgrims, of whom one says at times to the other:
“Lean on me, brother, if you are weary,” and to whom the other replies:
“It is enough to feel you near me ...” But no! The way Thou teachest,
Lord, is a narrow way--so narrow that two cannot walk in it abreast.


_5th July._

More than six weeks have gone by without my opening this book. Last
month, as I was re-reading some of its pages, I became aware of a
foolish, wicked anxiety to write well ... which I owe to _him_....

As though in this book, which I began only so as to help myself to do
without _him_, I was continuing to write to _him_.

I have torn up all the pages which seemed to me to be _well written_.
(I know what I mean by this.) I ought to have torn up all those in
which there was any question of him. I ought to have torn them all up.
I could not.

And already, because I tore up those few pages, I had a little feeling
of pride ... a pride which I should laugh at if my heart were not so
sick.

It really seemed as though I had done something meritorious, and as
though what I had destroyed had been of some importance!


_6th July._

I have been obliged to banish from my bookshelves ...

I fly from him in one book only to find him in another. I hear his
voice reading me even those pages which I discover without him. I care
only for what interests him, and my mind has taken the form of his to
such an extent, that I can distinguish one from the other no better
than I did at the time when I took pleasure in feeling they were one.

Sometimes I force myself to write badly in order to escape from the
rhythm of his phrases; but even to struggle against him is still to
be concerned with him. I have made a resolution to read nothing but
the Bible (perhaps the _Imitation_), and to write nothing more in this
book, except every evening the chief text of my reading.

                   *       *       *       *       *

There followed a kind of diary, in which the date of each day, starting
with July 1st, was accompanied by a text. I transcribe only those which
are accompanied by some commentary.


_20th July._

“Sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor.”

I understand that I ought to give to the poor this heart of mine which
belongs only to Jerome. And by so doing should I not teach him at the
same time to do likewise?... Lord, grant me this courage.


_24th July._

I have stopped reading the _Interior Consolation_. The old-fashioned
language greatly charmed me, but it was distracting, and the almost
pagan joy it gives me is far removed from the edification which I set
myself to get from it.

I have taken up the _Imitation_ again and not even in the Latin text,
which I was vain of understanding. I am glad that the translation in
which I read it should not even be signed. It is true that it is
Protestant, but “adapted to the use of all Christian communities,” says
the title.

“Oh, if thou wert sensible how much peace thou wouldest procure for
thyself and joy for others, by rightly ordering thyself, methinks thou
wouldest be more solicitous for thy spiritual progress!”


_10th August._

If I were to cry to Thee, my God, with the impulsive faith of a child
and with the heavenly tongues of angels....

All this comes to me, I know, not from Jerome, but from Thee.

Why, then, between Thee and me, dost Thou everywhere set his image?


_14th August._

Only two months more in which to complete my work ... Oh, Lord, grant
me Thy help!


_20th August._

I feel--I feel by my _unhappiness_ that the sacrifice is not
consummated in my heart. My God, grant that henceforth I owe to none
but Thee the joy that he alone used to give me.


_28th August._

How mediocre, and miserable is the virtue to which I attain! Do I then
exact too much from myself?... To suffer no more.

What cowardice makes me continually implore God for His strength? My
prayers now are nothing but complainings.


_29th August._

“Consider the lilies of the field ...”

This simple saying plunged me this morning into a sadness from which
nothing could distract me. I went out into the country and these words,
which I kept continually repeating to myself filled my heart and eyes
with tears. I contemplated the vast and empty plain where the labourer
was toiling, bent over his plough.... “The lilies of the field ...”
But, Lord, where are they...?


_16th September, 10 o’clock at night._

I have seen him again. He is here under this roof. I see the light from
his window shining on the grass. He is still up as I write these lines,
and perhaps he is thinking of me. He has not changed. He says so and I
feel it. Shall I be able to show myself to him such as I have resolved
to be, so that his love may disown me?


_24th September._

Oh, torturing conversation in which I succeeded in feigning
indifference--coldness, when my heart was fainting within me! Up till
now I had contented myself with avoiding him. This morning I was able
to believe that God would give me strength to be victorious and that to
slink for ever out of the combat was to prove myself a coward. Did I
triumph? Does Jerome love me a little less? Alas! I both hope and fear
it together. I have never loved him more.

                   *       *       *       *       *

And if it is Thy Will, Lord, that to save him from me I must compass my
own perdition, so be it.

“Enter into my heart and into my soul in order to bear in them my
sufferings and to continue to endure in me what remains to Thee to
suffer of Thy Passion.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

We spoke of Pascal.... What did I say? What shameful, foolish words?
I suffered even as I uttered them, but to-night I repent them as a
blasphemy. I turned again to the heavy volume of the _Pensées_, which
opened of itself at this passage in the letters to Mademoiselle de
Roannez:

“We do not feel our bonds as long as we follow willingly him who leads;
but as soon as we begin to resist and to draw away, then indeed we
suffer.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

These words affected me so personally that I did not have strength to
go on reading, but opening the book in another place I came across an
admirable passage which I did not know and which I have just copied out.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The first volume of the Journal came to an end here. No doubt the
next had been destroyed, for in the papers which Alissa left behind
the Journal did not begin again till three years later--still at
Fongueusemare--in September--a short time, that is to say, before our
last meeting.

The last volume begins with the sentences which follow.


_17th September._

My God, Thou knowest I have need of him to love Thee.


_20th September._

My God, give him to me so that I may give Thee my heart.

My God, let me see him only once more.

My God, I engage to give Thee my heart. Grant me what my love
beseeches. I will give what remains to me of life to Thee alone.

My God, forgive me this despicable prayer, but I cannot keep his name
from my lips nor forget the anguish of my heart.

My God, I cry to Thee. Do not forsake me in my distress.


_21st September._

“Whatever ye shall ask the Father in my name ...”

Lord, in Thy name, I dare not.

But though I no longer formulate my prayer, wilt Thou be the less
aware of the delirious longing of my heart?


_27th September._

Ever since the morning a great calm. Spent nearly the whole night in
meditation, in prayer. Suddenly I was conscious of a kind of luminous
peace like the imagination I had as a child of the Holy Ghost; it
seemed to wrap me round, to descend into me. I went to bed at once
fearing that my joy was due only to nervous exaltation. I went to sleep
fairly quickly without this felicity leaving me. It is still here this
morning in all its completeness. I have the certainty now that he will
come.


_30th September._

Jerome, my friend! you whom I still call brother, but whom I love
infinitely more than a brother ... How many times I have cried your
name in the beech copse. Every evening towards dusk I go out by the
little gate of the kitchen-garden and walk down the avenue where it is
already dark. If you were suddenly to answer me, if you were to appear
there from behind the stony bank round which I so eagerly seek you, or
if I were to see you in the distance, seated on the bench waiting for
me, my heart would not leap ... no! I am astonished at not seeing you.


_1st October._

Nothing yet. The sun has set in a sky of incomparable purity. I am
waiting. I know that soon I shall be sitting with him on this very
bench. I hear his voice already. I like it so much when he says my
name. He will be here! I shall put my hand in his hand. I shall let
my head lean on his shoulder. I shall breathe beside him. Yesterday
I brought out some of his letters with me to re-read, but I did not
look at them--I was too much taken up with the thought of him. I took
with me, too, the amethyst cross he used to like, and which I used to
wear one summer every evening as long as I did not want him to go. I
should like to give him this cross. For a long time past I have had a
dream--that he was married and I godmother to his first daughter, a
little Alissa, to whom I gave this ornament.... Why have I never dared
tell him?


_2nd October._

My soul to-day is as light and joyful as a bird would be that had made
its nest in the sky. For to-day he will come. I feel it! I know it!
I should like to proclaim it aloud to the world. I feel I must write
it here. I cannot hide my joy any longer. Even Robert, who is usually
so inattentive and indifferent to what concerns me, noticed it. His
questions embarrassed me and I did not know what to answer. How shall I
be able to wait till this evening?...

Some kind of strange transparent bandage over my eyes seems to show
me his image everywhere--his image magnified, and all love’s rays are
concentrated on a single burning spot in my heart.

Oh! how this waiting tires me!

Lord, unclose for me one moment the wide gateways of gladness.


_3rd October._

All is over. Alas! he has slipped out of my arms like a shadow. He was
here! He was here! I feel him still. I call him. My hands, my lips seek
him in vain in the night....

                   *       *       *       *       *

I can neither pray nor sleep. I went out again into the dark garden.
I was afraid--in my room--everywhere in the house--I was afraid. My
anguish brought me once more to the door behind which I had left him.
I opened it with a mad hope that he might have come back. I called. I
groped in the darkness. I have come in again to write to him. I cannot
accept my grief.

                   *       *       *       *       *

What has happened? What did I say to him? What did I do? Why do I
always want to exaggerate my virtue to him? What can be the worth of a
virtue which my whole heart denies? I was secretly false to the words
which God set upon my lips. In spite of all that my heart was bursting
with, I could bring nothing out. Jerome! Jerome, my unhappy friend in
whose presence my heart bleeds and in whose absence I perish, believe
nothing of all I said to you just now, but the words spoken by my love.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Tore up my letter, then wrote again.... Here is the dawn, grey, wet
with tears, as sad as my thoughts. I hear the first sounds of the farm
and everything that was sleeping re-awakens to life.... “Arise, now.
The hour is at hand....”

My letter shall not go.


_5th October._

Oh, jealous God, who hast despoiled me, take Thou possession of my
heart. All warmth henceforth has forsaken it; nothing will touch it
more. Help me to triumph over the melancholy remnant of myself. This
house, this garden encourage my love intolerably. I must fly to some
place where I shall see none but Thee.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Thou wilt help me to bestow upon Thy poor what fortune I possessed; let
me leave Fongueusemare, which I cannot dispose of easily, to Robert.
I have made my will, it is true, but I am ignorant of the necessary
formalities and yesterday I could not talk to the lawyer properly, as I
was afraid he might suspect the decision I had taken and warn Juliette
and Robert. I will finish this business in Paris.


_10th October._

Arrived here so tired that I was obliged to stay in bed the first
two days. The doctor, who was sent for against my will, speaks of an
operation which he considers necessary. What is the use of objecting?
But I easily made him believe that I was frightened at the idea of an
operation and preferred waiting till I had “regained my strength a
little.”

I have managed to conceal my name and address. I have deposited enough
money with the management of the house for them to make no difficulty
about taking me in and keeping me for as long as God shall continue to
think it necessary.

I like this room. The walls need no other decoration than their perfect
cleanliness. I was quite astonished to feel almost joyful. The reason
is that I expect nothing more from life--that I must be content now
with God, and His love is sweet only if it fills to completion whatever
space there is within us....

                   *       *       *       *       *

The only book I have brought with me is the Bible; but to-day there
sounded in me louder than any words I find there, this wild and
passionate sob of Pascal’s:

“Whatever is not God cannot satisfy my longing.”

Oh! too human joy, that my imprudent heart desired ... Was it to wring
this cry from me, Lord, that Thou hast thus bereft me?


_12th October._

Thy Kingdom come! May it come in me; so that Thou alone mayest reign
over me and reign over the whole of me. I will no longer grudge Thee my
heart.

Though I am as tired as if I were very old, my soul keeps a strange
childishness. I am still the little girl, who could not go to sleep
before everything in her room was tidy and the clothes she had taken
off neatly folded beside her bed.... That is how I should like to get
ready to die.


_13th October._

Re-read my journal before destroying it. “It is unworthy of noble
natures to spread round them the disturbance they feel.” It is, I
think, Clotilde de Vaux who says this so finely.

Just as I was going to throw this journal into the fire, I felt a
kind of warning which held me back. It seemed to me that it no longer
belonged to me, that I had no right to deprive Jerome of it, that I
had never written it except for him. My anxieties, my doubts seem
to me now so foolish that I can no longer attach any importance to
them, or believe that they will disturb Jerome. My God, grant that he
may at times catch in these lines the unskilled accent of a heart,
passionately desirous of urging him to those heights of virtue which I
myself despaired of reaching.

“My God, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”


_15th October._

“Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy ...”

Above human joy and beyond all suffering, yes, I foresee that radiant
joy. The “rock that is higher than I” bears, I know, the name of
happiness ... I understand that my whole life has been vain, except
in so far as it culminates in happiness.... Ah! Lord, but Thy promise
to the pure and renouncing soul was this: “Blessed _from henceforth_”
said Thy holy word, “Blessed are they which die in the Lord from
henceforth.” Must I wait until I die? This is the point where my faith
wavers. Lord! I cry unto Thee with all my strength. I am in the night!
I am waiting for the dawn. I cry unto Thee with a crying that wastes me
to death. Come and slake the thirst of my heart. It is now, at once,
that I thirst for happiness.... Or ought I to persuade myself that I
have it? And as the pipe of the impatient bird before daybreak calls
rather than heralds the light, ought I to sing, without waiting for the
night to dwindle?


_16th October._

Jerome, I wish I could teach you perfect joy.

                   *       *       *       *       *

This morning I was shattered by a fit of sickness. And afterwards I
felt so weak that for a moment I hoped I was going to die. But no;
first a great calm fell upon my whole being; then a pang of anguish
pierced me, a shudder of my flesh and soul; it was like the sudden and
disenchanting _illumination_ of my life. It seemed to me that I saw for
the first time the walls of my room in their atrocious bareness. I was
seized with fear. Even now I am writing to reassure myself, to calm
myself. Oh Lord! may I reach the end without blasphemy!

I was able to get up again. I went down on my knees like a child....

I should like to die now, quickly, before again realising that I am
alone.




                   *       *       *       *       *
                   *       *       *       *       *


I saw Juliette again last year. More than ten years had gone by since
her last letter, in which she had told me of Alissa’s death. A journey
to Provence gave me an opportunity of stopping at Nîmes. The Teissières
occupy an important house in the Avenue de Feuchères, in a noisy
and central part of the town. Although I had written to announce my
arrival, it was with considerable emotion that I crossed the threshold.

A maidservant showed me into the drawing-room, where Juliette joined
me in a few minutes. I thought I saw Aunt Plantier--the same gait,
the same stoutness, the same breathless hospitality. She immediately
began plying me with questions (without waiting for my answers) as
to my career, my manner of living in Paris, my occupations, my
acquaintances; what was my business in the South? Why shouldn’t I go on
to Aigues-Vives, where Edouard would be so happy to see me?... Then she
gave me news of all the family, talked of her husband, her children,
her brother, of the last vintage, of the fall prices.... I learnt that
Robert had sold Fongueusemare in order to live at Aigues-Vives; that he
was now Edouard’s partner, which left her husband free to travel, and
in particular to look after the commercial side of the business, whilst
Robert stayed on the land, improving and increasing the plantations.

In the meantime I was uneasily looking round for anything that
might recall the past. I recognised, indeed, amongst the otherwise
new furniture of the drawing-room, certain pieces that came from
Fongueusemare; but of the past which was quivering within me, Juliette
now seemed to be oblivious, or else to be endeavouring to distract our
thoughts from it.

Two boys of twelve and thirteen were playing on the stairs; she called
them in to introduce them to me. Lise, the eldest of her children, had
gone with her father to Aigues-Vives. Another boy of ten was expected
in from his walk; it was he whose advent Juliette had told me of in
the same letter in which she had announced our bereavement. There had
been some trouble over this last confinement; Juliette had suffered
from its effects for a long time; then last year, as an afterthought,
she had given birth to a little girl, whom, to hear her talk, she
preferred to all her other children.

“My room, where she sleeps, is next door,” said she; “come and see
her.” And as I was following her: “Jerome, I didn’t dare write to you
... would you consent to be the baby’s god-father?”

“Yes, with pleasure, if you would like me to,” said I, slightly
surprised, as I bent over the cradle. “What is my god-daughter’s name?”

“Alissa ...” replied Juliette, in a whisper. “She is a little like her,
don’t you think so?”

I pressed Juliette’s hand, without answering. Little Alissa, whom her
mother lifted, opened her eyes; I took her in my arms.

“What a good father you would make!” said Juliette, trying to laugh.
“What are you waiting for to marry?”

“To have forgotten a great many things”; I replied and watched her
blush.

“Which you are hoping to forget soon?”

“Which I do not hope ever to forget.”

“Come in here,” said she, abruptly, leading the way into a smaller
room, which was already dark, and of which one door led into her
bedroom, and another into the drawing-room. “This is where I take
refuge when I have a moment to myself; it is the quietest room in the
house; I feel that I am almost sheltered from life in here.”

The window of this small drawing-room did not open like those of
the other rooms, on to the noises of the town, but on to a sort of
courtyard planted with trees.

“Let us sit down,” said she, dropping into an armchair. “If I
understand you rightly it is to Alissa’s memory that you mean to remain
faithful.”

I stayed a moment without answering.

“Rather, perhaps, to her idea of me. No, don’t give me any credit for
it. I think I couldn’t do otherwise. If I married another woman, I
could only pretend to love her.”

“Ah!” said she, as though indifferently; then turning her face away
from me, she bent it towards the ground, as if she were looking for
something she had lost. “Then you think that one can keep a hopeless
love in one’s heart for so long as that?”

“Yes, Juliette.”

“And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it?”

The evening came slowly up like a grey tide, reaching and flooding each
object which seemed to come to life again in the gloom and repeat in
a whisper the story of its past. Once more I saw Alissa’s room, all
the furniture of which Juliette had collected together here. And then
she turned her face towards me again, but it was too dark for me to
distinguish her features, so that I did not know whether her eyes were
shut or not. I thought her very beautiful. And we both now remained
without speaking.

“Come!” said she at last; “we must wake up.”

I saw her rise, take a step forward, drop again as though she had no
strength, into the nearest chair; she put her hands up to her face and
I thought I saw that she was crying.

A servant came in, bringing the lamp.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79693 ***