Chapter I (6)

The veiled moon darted from her clouds, and made the silver scales on the river's back gleam in her light. Christophe had a vague feeling that the river never used to pass near the knoll where he was sitting. He went near it. Yes. Beyond the pear-tree there used to be a tongue of sand, a little grassy slope, where he had often played. The river had swept them away: the river was encroaching, lapping at the roots of the pear-tree. Christophe felt a pang at his heart: he went back towards the station. In that direction a new colony--mean houses, sheds half-built, tall factory chimneys--was in course of construction. Christophe thought of the acacia-wood he had seen in the afternoon, and he thought:

"There, too, the river is encroaching...."

The old town, lying asleep in the darkness, with all that it contained of the living and the dead, became even more dear to him: for he felt that a menace hung over it....

_Hostis habet muros...._

Quick, let us save our women and children! Death is lying in wait for all that we love. Let us hasten to carve the passing face upon eternal bronze. Let us snatch the treasure of our motherland before the flames devour the palace of Priam.

Christophe scrambled into the train as it was going, like a man fleeing before a flood. But, like those men who saved the gods of their city from the wreck, Christophe bore away within his soul the spark of life which had flown upwards from his native land, and the sacred spirit of the past.

Jacqueline and Olivier had come together again for a time. Jacqueline had lost her father, and his death had moved her deeply. In the presence of real misfortune she had felt the wretched folly of her other sorrows: and the tenderness which Olivier showed towards her had revived her affection for him. She was taken back several years to the sad days which had followed on the death of her Aunt Marthe--days which had been followed by the blessed days of love. She told herself that she was ungrateful to life, and that she ought to be thankful that the little it had given her was not taken from her. She hugged that little to herself now that its worth had been revealed to her. A short absence from Paris, ordered by her doctor to distract her in her grief, travel with Olivier, a sort of pilgrimage to the places where they had loved each other during the first year of her marriage, softened her and filled her with tenderness. In the sadness of seeing once more at the turn of the road the dear face of the love which they thought was gone forever, of seeing it pass and knowing that it would vanish once more,--for how long? perhaps forever?--they clutched at it passionately and desperately....

"Stay, stay with us!"

But they knew that they must lose it....

When Jacqueline returned to Paris she felt a little new life, kindled by love, thrilling in her veins. But love had gone already. The burden which lay so heavy upon her did not bring her into sympathy with Olivier again. She did not feel the joy she expected. She probed herself uneasily. Often when she had been so tormented before she had thought that the coming of a child might be her salvation. The child had come, but it brought no salvation. She felt the human plant rooted in her flesh growing, and sucking up her blood and her life. She would stay for days together lost in thought, listening with vacant eyes, all her being exhausted by the unknown creature that had taken possession of her. She was conscious of a vague buzzing, sweet, lulling, agonizing. She would start suddenly from her torpor--dripping with sweat, shivering, with a spasm of revolt. She fought against the meshes in which Nature had entrapped her. She wished to live, to live freely, and it seemed to her that Nature had tricked her. Then she was ashamed of such thoughts, and seemed monstrous in her own eyes, and asked herself if she were more wicked than, or made differently from, other women. And little by little she would grow calm again, browsing like a tree over the sap, and the dream of the living fruit ripening in her womb. What was it? What was it going to be?...

When she heard its first cry to the light, when she saw its pitiable touching little body, her heart melted. In one dazzling moment she knew the glorious joy of motherhood, the mightiest in all the world: in her suffering to have created of her own flesh a living being, a man. And the great wave of love which moves the universe, caught her whole body, dashed her down, rushed over her, and lifted her up to the heavens.... O God, the woman who creates is Thy equal: and thou knowest no joy like unto hers: for thou hast not suffered....

Then the wave rolled back, and her soul dropped back into the depths. Olivier, trembling with emotion, stooped over the child: and, smiling at Jacqueline, he tried to understand what bond of mysterious life there was between themselves and the wretched little creature that was as yet hardly human. Tenderly, with a little feeling of disgust, he just touched its little yellow wrinkled face with his lips. Jacqueline watched him: jealously she pushed him away: she took the child and hugged it to her breast, and covered it with kisses. The child cried and she gave it back, and, with her face turned to the wall, she wept. Olivier came to her and kissed her, and drank her tears: she kissed him too, and forced herself to smile: then she asked to be left alone to rest with the child by her side.... Alas! what is to be done when love is dead? The man who gives more than half of himself up to intelligence never loses a strong feeling without preserving a trace, an idea, of it in his brain. He cannot love any more, but he cannot forget that he has loved. But the woman who has loved wholly and without reason, and without reason ceases wholly to love, what can she do? Will? Take refuge in illusions? And what if she be too weak to will, too true to take refuge in illusions?...

Jacqueline, lying on her side with her head propped up by her hand, looked down at the child with tender pity. What was he? Whatever he was, he was not entirely hers. He was also something of "the other." And she no longer loved "the other." Poor child! Dear child! She was exasperated with the little creature who was there to bind her to the dead past: and she bent over him and kissed and kissed him....

It is the great misfortune of the women of to-day that they are too free without being free enough. If they were more free, they would seek to form ties, and would find charm and security in them. If they were less free, they would resign themselves to ties which they would not know how to break: and they would suffer less. But the worst state of all is to have ties which do not bind, and duties from which it is possible to break free.

If Jacqueline had believed that her little house was to be her lot for the whole of her life, she would not have found it so inconvenient and cramped, and she would have devised ways of making it comfortable: she would have ended as she began, by loving it. But she knew that it was possible to leave, it, and it stifled her. It was possible for her to revolt, and at last she came to think it her duty to do so.

The present-day moralists are strange creatures. All their qualities have atrophied to the profit of their faculties of observation. They have given up trying to see life, hardly attempt to understand it, and never by any chance WILL it. When they have observed and noted down the facts of human nature, they seem to think their task is at an end, and say:

"That is a fact."

They make no attempt to change it. In their eyes, apparently, the mere fact of existence is a moral virtue. Every sort of weakness seems to have been inserted with a sort of Divine right. The world is growing democratic. Formerly only the King was irresponsible. Nowadays all men, preferably the basest, have that privilege. Admirable counselors! With infinite pains and scrupulous care they set themselves to prove to the weak exactly how weak they are, and that it has been decreed that they should be so and not otherwise from all eternity. What can the weak do but fold their arms? We may think ourselves lucky if they do not admire themselves! By dint of hearing it said over and over again that she is a sick child, a woman soon takes a pride in being so. It is encouraging cowardice, and making it spread. If a man were to amuse himself by telling children complacently that there is an age in adolescence when the soul, not yet having found its balance, is capable of crimes, and suicide, and the worst sort of physical and moral depravity, and were to excuse these things--at once these offenses would spring into being. And even with men it is quite enough to go on telling them that they are not free to make them cease to be so and descend to the level of the beasts. Tell a woman that she is a responsible being, and mistress of her body and her will, and she will be so. But you moralists are cowards, and take good care not to tell her so: for you have an interest in keeping such knowledge from her!...

The unhappy surroundings in which Jacqueline found herself led her astray. Since she had broken with Olivier she had returned to that section of society which she despised when she was a girl. About her and her friends, among married women, there gathered a little group of wealthy young men and women, smart, idle, intelligent, and licentious. They enjoyed absolute liberty of thought and speech, tempered only by the seasoning of wit. They might well have taken for their motto the device of the Rabelaisian abbey:

_"Do what thou wilt."_

But they bragged a little: for they did not will anything much: they were like the enervated people of Thelema. They would complacently profess the freedom of their instincts: but their instincts were faded and faint; and their profligacy was chiefly cerebral. They delighted in feeling themselves sink into the great piscina of civilization, that warm mud-bath in which human energy, the primeval and vital forces, primitive animalism, and its blossom of faith, will, duties, and passions, are liquefied. Jacqueline's pretty body was steeped in that bath of gelatinous thought. Olivier could do nothing to keep her from it. Besides, he too was touched by the disease of the time: he thought he had no right to tamper with the liberty of another human being: he would not ask anything of the woman he loved that he could not gain through love. And Jacqueline did not in the least resent his non-interference, because she regarded her liberty as her right.

The worst of it was that she went into that amphibious section of society with a wholeness of heart which made anything equivocal repulsive to her: when she believed she gave herself: in the generous ardor of her soul, even in her egoism, she always burned her boats; and, as a result of living with Olivier, she had preserved a moral inability to compromise, which she was apt to apply even in immorality.

Her new friends were too cautious to let others see them as they were. In theory they paraded absolute liberty with regard to the prejudices of morality and society, though in practice they so contrived their affairs as not to fall out with any one whose acquaintance might be useful to them: they used morality and society, while they betrayed them like unfaithful servants, robbing their masters. They even robbed each other for want of anything better to do, and as a matter of habit. There was more than one of the men who knew that his wife had lovers. The wives were not ignorant of the fact that their husbands had mistresses. They both put up with it. Scandal only begins when one makes a noise about these things. These charming marriages rested on a tacit understanding between partners--between accomplices. But Jacqueline was more frank, and played to win or lose. The first thing was to be sincere. Again, to be sincere. Again and always, to be sincere. Sincerity was also one of the virtues extolled by the ideas of that time. But herein it is proved once again that everything is sound for the sound in heart, while everything is corrupt for the corrupt. How hideous it is sometimes to be sincere! It is a sin for mediocre people to try to look into the depths of themselves. They see their mediocrity: and their vanity always finds something to feed on.

Jacqueline spent her time in looking at herself in her mirror: she saw things in it which it were better she had never seen: for when she saw them she could not take her eyes off them: and instead of struggling against them she watched them grow: they became enormous and in the end captured her eyes and her mind.

The child was not enough to fill her life. She had not been able to nurse it: the baby pined with her. She had to procure a wet nurse. It was a great grief to her at first.... Soon it became a solace. The child became splendidly healthy: he grew lustily, and became a fine little fellow, gave no trouble, spent his time in sleeping, and hardly cried at all at night. The nurse--a strapping Nivernaise who had fostered many children, and always had a jealous and embarrassing animal affection for each of them in turn--was like the real mother. Whenever Jacqueline expressed an opinion, the woman went her own way: and if Jacqueline tried to argue, in the end she always found that she knew nothing at all about it. She had never really recovered from the birth of the child: a slight attack of phlebitis had dragged her down, and as she had to lie still for several weeks she worried and worried: she was feverish, and her mind went on and on indefinitely beating out the same monotonous deluded complaint:

"I have not lived, I have not lived: and now my life is finished...."

For her imagination was fired: she thought herself crippled for life: and there rose in her a dumb, harsh, and bitter rancor, which she did not confess to herself, against the innocent cause of her illness, the child. The feeling is not so rare as is generally believed: but a veil is drawn over it: and even those who feel it are ashamed to submit to it in their inmost hearts. Jacqueline condemned herself: there was a sharp conflict between her egoism and her mother's love. When she saw the child sleeping so happily, she was filled with tenderness: but a moment later she would think bitterly:

"He has killed me."

And she could not suppress a feeling of irritation and revolt against the untroubled sleep of the creature whose happiness she had bought at the price of her suffering. Even after she had recovered, when the child was bigger, the feeling of hostility persisted dimly and obscurely. As she was ashamed of it, she transferred it to Olivier. She went on fancying herself ill: and her perpetual care of her health, her anxieties, which were bolstered up by the doctors, who encouraged the idleness which was the prime cause of it all,--(separation from the child, forced inactivity, absolute isolation, weeks of emptiness spent in lying in bed and being stuffed with food, like a beast being fatted for slaughter),--had ended by concentrating all her thoughts upon, herself. The modern way of curing neurasthenia is very strange, being neither more nor less than the substitution of hypertrophy of the ego for a disease of the ego! Why not bleed their egoism, or restore the circulation of the blood from head to heart, if they do not have too much, by some violent, moral reagent!

Jacqueline came out of it physically stronger, plumper, and rejuvenated,--but morally she was more ill than ever. Her months of isolation had broken the last ties of thought which bound her to Olivier. While she lived with him she was still under the ascendancy of his idealism, for, in spite of all his failings, he remained constant to his faith: she struggled in vain against the bondage in which she was held by a mind more steadfast than her own, against the look which pierced to her very soul, and forced her sometimes to condemn herself, however loath she might be to do so. But as soon as chance had separated her from her husband--as soon as she ceased to feel the weight of his all-seeing love--as soon as she was free--the trusting friendship that used to exist between them was supplanted by a feeling of anger at having broken free, a sort of hatred born of the idea that she had for so long lived beneath the yoke of an affection which she no longer felt.--Who can tell the hidden, implacable, bitter feelings that seethe and ferment in the heart of a creature he loves, by whom he believes that he is loved? Between one day and the next, all is changed. She loved the day before, she seemed to love, she thought she loved. She loves no longer. The man she loved is struck out from her thoughts. She sees suddenly that he is nothing to her: and he does not understand: he has seen nothing of the long travail through which she has passed: he has had no suspicion of the secret hostility towards himself that has been gathering in her: he does not wish to know the reasons for her vengeful hatred. Reasons often remote, complex, and obscure,--some hidden deep in the mysteries of their inmost life,--others arising from injured vanity, secrets of the heart surprised and judged,--others.... What does she know of them herself? It is some hidden offense committed against her unwittingly, an offense which she will never forgive. It is impossible to find out, and she herself is not very sure what it is: but the offense is marked deep in her flesh: her flesh will never forget it.

To fight against such an appalling stream of disaffection called for a very different type of man from Olivier--one nearer nature, a simpler man and a more supple one not hampered with sentimental scruples, a man of strong instincts, capable, if need be, of actions which his reason would disavow. He lost the fight before ever it began, for he had lost heart: his perception was too clear, and he had long since recognized in Jacqueline a form of heredity which was stronger than her will, her mother's soul reappearing in her: he saw her falling like a stone down to the depths of the stock from which she sprang: and his weak and clumsy efforts to stay her only accelerated her downfall. He forced himself to be calm. She, from an unconsciously selfish motive, tried to break down his defenses and make him say violent, brutal, boorish things to her so as to have a reason for despising him. If he gave way to anger, she despised him. If at once he were ashamed and became apologetic, she despised him even more. And if he did not, would not, give way to anger--then she hated him. And worst of all was the silence which for days together would rise like a wall between them. A suffocating, crushing, maddening silence which brings even the gentlest creatures to fury and exasperation, and makes them have moments when they feel a savage desire to hurt, to cry out, or make the other cry out. The black silence in which love reaches its final stage of disintegration, and the man and the woman, like the worlds, each following its own orbit, pass onward into the night.... They had reached a point at which everything they did, even an attempt to come together again, drove them farther and farther apart. Their life became intolerable. Events were precipitated by an accident.

During the past year Cécile Fleury had often been to the Jeannins'. Olivier had met her at Christophe's: then Jacqueline had invited her to the house; and Cécile went on seeing them even after Christophe had broken with them. Jacqueline had been kind to her: although she was hardly at all musical and thought Cécile a little common, she felt the charm of her singing and her soothing influence. Olivier liked playing with her, and gradually she became a friend of the family. She inspired confidence: when she came into the Jeannins' drawing-room with her honest eyes and her air of health and high spirits, and her rather loud laugh which it was good to hear, it was like a ray of sunlight piercing the mist. She brought a feeling of inexpressible relief and solace to Olivier and Jacqueline. When she was leaving they longed to say to her:

"No. Stay, stay a little while longer, for I am cold!"

During Jacqueline's absence Olivier saw Cécile more often: he could not help letting her see something of his troubles. He did it quite unthinkingly, with the heedlessness of a weak and tender creature who is stifling and has need of some one to confide in, with an absolute surrender. Cécile was touched by it: she soothed him with motherly words of comfort. She pitied both of them, and urged Olivier not to lose heart. But whether it was that she was more embarrassed than he by his confidences, or that there was some other reason, she found excuses for going less often to the house. No doubt it seemed to her that she was not acting loyally towards Jacqueline, for she had no right to know her secrets. At least, that was how Olivier interpreted her estrangement: and he agreed with her, for he was sorry that he had spoken. But the estrangement made him feel what Cécile had become to him. He had grown used to sharing his ideas with her, and she was the only creature who could deliver him from the pain he was suffering. He was too much skilled in reading his own feelings to have any doubt as to the name of what he felt for her. He would never have said anything to Cécile. But he could not resist the imperative desire to write down what he felt. For some little time past he had returned to the dangerous habit of communing with his thoughts on paper. He had cured himself of it during the years of love: but now that he found himself alone once more, his inherited mania took possession of him: it was a relief from his sufferings, and it was the artist's need of self-analysis. So he described himself, and set his troubles down in writing, as though he were telling them to Cécile--more freely indeed; since she was never to read it. And as luck would have it the manuscript came into Jacqueline's hands. It happened one day when she was feeling nearer Olivier than she had been for years. As she was clearing out her cupboard she read once more the old love-letters he had sent her: she had been moved to tears by them. Sitting in the shadow of the cupboard, unable to go on with her tidying, she lived through the past once more: and then was filled with sorrow and remorse to think that she had destroyed it. She thought of the grief it must be to Olivier; she had never been able to face the idea of it calmly: she could forget it: but she could not bear to think that he had suffered through her. Her heart ached. She longed to throw herself into his arms and say:

"Oh! Olivier, Olivier, what have we done? We are mad, we are mad! Don't let us ever again hurt each other!"

If only he had come in at that moment!

And it was exactly at that moment that she found his letters to Cécile.... It was the end.--Did she think that Olivier had really deceived her? Perhaps. But what does it signify? To her the betrayal was not so much in the act as in the thought and intention. She would have found it easier to forgive the man she loved for taking a mistress than for secretly giving his heart to another woman. And she was right.

"A pretty state of things!" some will say....--(They are poor creatures who only suffer from the betrayal of love when it is consummated!... When the heart remains faithful, the sordid offenses of the body are of small account. When the heart turns traitor, all the rest is nothing.)...

Jacqueline did not for a moment think of regaining Olivier's love. It was too late! She no longer cared for him enough. Or perhaps she cared for him too much. All her trust in him crumbled away, all that was left in her secret heart of her faith and hope in him. She did not tell herself that she had scorned him, and had discouraged him, and driven him to his new love, or that his love was innocent: and that after all we are not masters of ourselves sufficiently to choose whether we will love or not. It never occurred to her to compare his sentimental impulse with her flirtation with Christophe: she did not love Christophe, and so he did not count! In her passionate exaggeration she thought that Olivier was lying to her, and that she was nothing to him. Her last stay had failed her at the moment when she reached out her hand to grasp it.... It was the end.

Olivier never knew what she had suffered that day. But when he next saw her he too felt that it was the end.

From that moment on they never spoke to each other except in the presence of strangers. They watched each other like trapped beasts fearfully on their guard. Jeremias Gotthelf somewhere describes, with pitiless simplicity, the grim situation of a husband and a wife who no longer love each other and watch each other, each carefully marking the other's health, looking for symptoms of illness, neither actually thinking of hastening or even wishing the death of the other, but drifting along in the hope of some sudden accident: and each of them living in the flattering thought of being the healthier of the two. There were moments when both Jacqueline and Olivier almost fancied that such thoughts were in the other's mind. And they were in the mind of neither: but it was bad enough that they should attribute them to each other, as Jacqueline did at night when she would lie feverishly awake and tell herself that her husband was the stronger, and that he was wearing her down gradually, and would soon triumph over her.... The monstrous delirium of a crazy heart and brain!--And to think that in their heart of hearts, with all that was best in them, they loved each other!...

Olivier bent beneath the weight of it, and made no attempt to fight against it; he held aloof and dropped the rudder of Jacqueline's soul. Left to herself with no pilot to steer her, her freedom turned her dizzy: she needed a master against whom to revolt: if she had no master she had to make one. Then she was the prey of a fixed idea. Till then, in spite of her suffering, she had never dreamed of leaving Olivier. From that time on she thought herself absolved from every tie. She wished to love, before it was too late:--(for, young as she was, she thought herself an old woman).--She loved, she indulged in those imaginary devouring passions, which fasten on the first object they meet, a face seen in a crowd, a reputation, sometimes merely a name, and, having laid hold of it cannot let go, telling the heart that it cannot live without the object of its choice, laying it waste, and completely emptying it of all the memories of the past that filled it; other affections, moral ideas, memories, pride of self, and respect for others. And when the fixed idea dies in its time for want of anything to feed it, after it has consumed everything, who can tell what the new nature may be that will spring from the ruins, a nature often without kindness, without pity, without youth, without illusions, thinking of nothing but devouring life as grass smothers and devours the ruins of monuments!

In this case, as usual, the fixed idea fastened on a creature of the type that most easily tricks the heart. Poor Jacqueline fell in love with a philanderer, a Parisian writer, who was neither young nor handsome, a man who was heavy, red-faced, dissipated, with bad teeth, absolutely and terribly heartless, whose chief merit was that he was a man of the world and had made a great many women unhappy. She had not even the excuse that she did not know how selfish he was: for he paraded it in his art. He knew perfectly what he was doing: egoism enshrined in art is like a mirror to larks, like a candle to moths. More than one woman in Jacqueline's circle had been caught: quite recently one of her friends, a young, newly-married woman, whom he had had no great difficulty in seducing, had been deserted by him. Their hearts were not broken by it, though they found it hard to conceal their discomfiture from the delight of the gossips. Even those who were most cruelly hurt were much too careful of their interests and their social interests not to keep their perturbation within the bounds of common sense. They made no scandal. Whether they deceived their husbands or their lovers, or whether they were themselves deceived and suffered, it was all done in silence. They were the heroines of scandalous rumors.

But Jacqueline was mad: she was capable not only of doing what she said, but also of saying what she did. She brought into her folly an absolute lack of selfish motive, and an utter disinterestedness. She had the dangerous merit of always being frank with herself and of never shirking the consequences of her own actions. She was a better creature than the people she lived with: and for that reason she did worse. When she loved, when she conceived the idea of adultery, she flung herself into it headlong with desperate frankness.

* * * * *

Madame Arnaud was alone in her room, knitting with the feverish tranquillity with which Penelope must have woven her famous web. Like Penelope, she was waiting for her husband's return. M. Arnaud used to spend whole days away from home. He had classes in the morning and evening. As a rule he came back to lunch. Although he was a slow walker and his school was at the other end of Paris, he forced himself to take the long walk home, not so much from affection, as from habit, and for the sake of economy. But sometimes he was detained by lectures, or he would take advantage of being in the neighborhood of a library to go and work there. Lucile Arnaud would be left alone in the empty flat. Except for the charwoman who came from eight to ten to do the cleaning, and the tradesmen who came to fetch and bring orders, no one ever rang the bell. She knew nobody in the house now. Christophe had removed, and there were newcomers in the lilac garden. Céline Chabran had married André Elsberger. Élie Elsberger had gone away with his family to Spain, where he had been appointed manager of a mine. Old Weil had lost his wife and hardly ever lived in his flat in Paris. Only Christophe and his friend Cécile had kept up their relations with Lucile Arnaud: but they lived far away, and they were busy and hard at work all day long, so that they often did not come to see her for weeks together. She had nothing outside herself.

She was not bored. She needed very little to keep her interest in things alive: the very smallest daily task was enough, or a tiny plant, whose delicate foliage she would clean with motherly care every morning. She had her quiet gray cat, who had lost something of his manners, as is apt to happen with domestic animals who are loved by their masters: he used to spend the day, like herself, sitting by the fire, or on the table near the lamp watching her fingers as she sewed, and sometimes gazing at her with his strange eyes, which watched her for a moment and then closed again. Even the furniture was company to her. Every piece was like a familiar face. She took a childlike pleasure in looking after them, in gently wiping off the dust which settled on their sides, and in carefully replacing them in their usual corners. She would hold silent conversations with them. She would smile at the fine Louis XVI. round-topped bureau, which was the only piece of old furniture she had. Every day she would feel the same joy in seeing it. She was always absorbed in going over her linen, and she would spend hours standing on a chair, with her hands and arms deep in the great country cupboard, looking and arranging, while the cat, whose curiosity was roused, would spend hours watching her.

But her real happiness came when, after her work was done and she had lunched alone, God knows how--(she never had much of an appetite)--and had gone the necessary errands, and her day was at an end, she would come in about four and sit by the window or the fire with her work and her cat. Sometimes she would find some excuse for not going out at all; she was glad when she could stay indoors, especially in the winter when it was snowing. She had a horror of the cold, and the wind, and the mud, and the rain, for she was something of a cat herself, very clean, fastidious, and soft. She would rather not eat than go and procure her lunch when the tradespeople forgot to bring it. In that case she would munch a piece of chocolate or some fruit from the sideboard. She was very careful not to let Arnaud know. These were her escapades. Then during the days when the light was dim, and also sometimes on lovely sunny days,--(outside the blue sky would shine, and the noise of the street would buzz round the dark silent rooms; like a sort of mirage enshrouding the soul),--she would sit in her favorite corner, with her feet on her hassock, her knitting in her hands, and go off into day-dreams while her fingers plied the needles. She would have one of her favorite books by her side: as a rule one of those humble, red-backed volumes, a translation of an English novel. She would read very little, hardly more than a chapter a day; and the book would lie on her knees open at the same page for a long time together, or sometimes she would not even open it: she knew it already, and the story of it would be in her dreams. So the long novels of Dickens and Thackeray would be drawn out over weeks, and in her dreams they would become years. They wrapped her about with their tenderness. The people of the present day, who read quickly and carelessly, do not know the marvelous vigor irradiated by those fine books which must be taken in slowly. Madame Arnaud had no doubt that the lives of the characters in the novels were not as real as her own. There were some for whom she would have laid down her life: the tender jealous creature, Lady Castlewood, the woman who loved in silence with her motherly virginal heart, was a sister to her: little Dombey was her own dear little boy: she was Dora, the child-wife, who was dying: she would hold out her arms to all those childlike souls which pass through the world with the honest eyes of purity: and around her there would pass a procession of friendly beggars and harmless eccentrics, all in pursuit of their touchingly preposterous cranks and whims,--and at their head the fond genius of dear Dickens, laughing and crying together at his own dreams. At such times, when she looked out of the window, she would recognize among the passers-by the beloved or dreaded figure of this or that personage in that imaginary world. She would fancy similar lives, the same lives, being lived behind the walls of the houses. Her dislike for going out came from her dread of that world with its moving mysteries. She saw around her hidden dramas and comedies being played. It was not always an illusion. In her isolation she had come by the gift of mystical intuition which in the eyes of the passers-by can perceive the secrets of their lives of yesterday and to-morrow, which are often unknown to themselves. She mixed up what she actually saw with what she remembered of the novels and distorted it. She felt that she must drown in that immense universe. And she would have to go home to regain her footing.

But what need had she to read or to look at others? She had but to gaze in upon herself. Her pale, dim existence--seeming so when seen from without--was gloriously lit up within. There was abundance and fullness of life in it. There were memories, and treasures, the existence of which lay unsuspected.... Had they ever had any reality?--No doubt they were real, since they were real to her.... Oh! the wonder of such lowly lives transfigured by the magic wand of dreams!

Madame Arnaud would go back through the years to her childhood: each of the little frail flowers of her vanished hopes sprang silently into life again.... Her first childish love for a girl, whose charm had fascinated her at first sight: she loved her with the love which is only possible to those who are infinitely pure: she used to think she would die at the touch of her: she used to long to kiss her feet, to be her little girl, to marry her: the girl had married, had not been happy, had had a child which died, and then she too had died.... Another love, when she was about twelve years old, for a little girl of her own age, who tyrannized over her: a fair-haired mad-cap, gay and imperious, who used to amuse herself by making her cry, and then would devour her with kisses: she laid a thousand romantic plans for their future together: then, suddenly, the girl became a Carmelite nun, without anybody knowing why: she was said to be happy.... Then there had been a great passion for a man much older than herself. No one had ever known anything about it, not even the object of it. She had given to it a great and ardent devotion and untold wealth of tenderness.... Then another passion: this time she was loved. But from a strange timidity, and mistrust of herself, she had not dared to believe that she was loved, or to let the man see that she loved him. And happiness passed without her grasping it.... Then.... But what is the use of telling others what only has a meaning for oneself? So many trivial facts which had assumed a profound significance: a little attention at the hands of a friend: a kind word from Olivier, spoken without his attaching any importance to it: Christophe's kindly visits, and the enchanted world evoked by his music: a glance from a stranger: yes, and even in that excellent woman, so virtuous and pure, certain involuntary infidelities in thought, which made her uneasy and feel ashamed, while she would feebly thrust them aside, though all the same--being so innocent--they brought a little sunshine into her heart.... She loved her husband truly, although he was not altogether the husband of her dreams. But he was kind, and one day when he said to her: "My darling wife, you do not know all you are to me; you are my whole life," her heart melted: and that day she felt that she was one with him, wholly and forever, without any possibility of going back on it. Each year brought them closer to each other, and tightened the bond between them. They had shared lovely dreams: of work, traveling, children. What had become of them?... Alas!... Madame Arnaud was still dreaming them. There was a little boy of whom she had so often and so profoundly dreamed, that she knew him almost as well as though he really existed. She had slowly begotten him through the years, always adorning him with all the most beautiful things she saw, and the things she loved most dearly.... Silence!...

That was all. It meant worlds to her. There are so many tragedies unknown, even the most intimate, in the depths of the most tranquil and seemingly most ordinary lives! And the greatest tragedy of all perhaps is:--_that nothing happens_ in such lives of hope crying for what is their right, their just due promised, and refused, by Nature--wasting away in passionate anguish--showing nothing of it all to the outside world! Madame Arnaud, happily for herself, was not only occupied with herself. Her own life filled only a part of her dreams. She lived also in the lives of those she knew, or had known, and put herself in their place: she thought much of Christophe and his friend Cécile. She was thinking of them now. The two women had grown fond of one another. The strange thing was that of the two it was the sturdy Cécile who felt most need to lean on the frail Madame Arnaud. In reality the healthy, high-spirited young woman was not so strong as she seemed to be. She was passing through a crisis. Even the most tranquil hearts are not immune from being taken by surprise. Unknown to herself, a feeling of tenderness had crept into her heart: she refused to admit it at first: but it had grown so that she was forced to see it:--she loved Olivier. His sweet and affectionate disposition, the rather feminine charm of his personality, his weakness and inability to defend himself, had attracted her at once:--(a motherly nature is attracted by the nature which has need of her).--What she had learned subsequently of his marital troubles had inspired her with a dangerous pity for Olivier. No doubt these reasons would not have been enough. Who can say why one human being falls in love with another? Neither counts for anything in the matter, but often it merely happens that a heart which is for the moment of its guard is taken by surprise, and is delivered up to the first affection it may meet on the road,--As soon as she had no room left for doubt as to her state of mind, Cécile bravely struggled to pluck out the barb of a love which she thought wicked and absurd: she suffered for a long time and did not recover. No one would have suspected what was happening to her: she strove valiantly to appear happy. Only Madame Arnaud knew what it must have cost her. Not that Cécile had told her her secret. But she would sometimes come and lay her head on Madame Arnaud's bosom. She would weep a little, without a word, kiss her, and then go away laughing. She adored this friend of hers, in whom, though she seemed so fragile, she felt a moral energy and faith superior to her own. She did not confide in her. But Madame Arnaud could guess volumes on a hint. The world seemed to her to be a sad misunderstanding. It is impossible to dissolve it. One can only love, have pity, and dream.

And when the swarm of her dreams buzzed too loudly, when her thoughts stopped, she would go to her piano and let her hands fall lightly on the keys, at random, and play softly to wreathe the mirage of life about with the subdued light of music....

But the good little creature would not forget to perform her everyday duties: and when Arnaud came home he would find the lamp lit, the supper ready, and his wife's pale, smiling face waiting for him. And he would have no idea of the universe in which she had been living.

The great difficulty was to keep the two lives going side by side without their clashing: her everyday life and that other, the great life of the mind, with its far-flung horizons. It was not always easy. Fortunately Arnaud also lived to some extent in an imaginary life, in books, and works of art, the eternal fire of which fed the flickering flames of his soul. But during the last few years he had become more and more preoccupied with the petty annoyances of his profession, injustice and favoritism, and friction with his colleagues or his pupils: he was embittered: he began to talk politics, and to inveigh against the Government and the Jews: and he made Dreyfus responsible for his disappointments at the university. His mood of soreness infected Madame Arnaud a little. She was at an age when her vital force was upset and uneasy, groping for balance. There were great gaps in her thoughts. For a time they both lost touch with life, and their reason for existence: for they had nothing to which to bind their spider's web, which was left hanging in the void. Though the support of reality be never so weak, yet for dreams there must be one. They had no sort of support. They could not contrive any means of propping each other up. Instead of helping her, he clung to her. And she knew perfectly well that she was not strong enough to hold him up, for she could not even support herself. Only a miracle could save her. She prayed for it to come. It came from the depths of her soul. In her solitary pious heart Madame Arnaud felt the irony of the sublime and absurd hunger for creation in spite of everything, the need of weaving her web in spite of everything, through space, for the joy of weaving, leaving it to the wind, the breath of God, to carry her whithersoever it was ordained that she should go. And the breath of God gave her a new hold on life, and found her an invisible support. Then the husband and wife both set patiently to work once more to weave the magnificent and vain web of their dreams, a web fashioned of their purest suffering and their blood.

Madame Arnaud was alone in her room.... It was near evening.

The door-bell rang. Madame Arnaud, roused from her reverie before the usual time, started and trembled. She carefully arranged her work and went to open the door. Christophe came in. He was in a great state of emotion. She took his hands affectionately.

"What is it, my dear?" she asked.

"Ah!" he said. "Olivier has come back."

"Come back?"

"He came this morning and said: 'Christophe, help me!' I embraced him. He wept. He told me: I have nothing but you now. She has gone."

Madame Arnaud gasped, and clasped her hands and said:

"Poor things!"

"She has gone," said Christophe. "Gone with her lover."

"And her child?" asked Madame Arnaud.

"Husband, child--she has left everything."

"Poor thing!" said Madame Arnaud again.

"He loved her," said Christophe. "He loved her, and her alone. He will never recover from the blow. He keeps on saying: 'Christophe, she has betrayed me.... My dearest friend has betrayed me.' It is no good my saying to him, 'Since she has betrayed you, she cannot have been your friend. She is your enemy. Forget her or kill her!'"

"Oh! Christophe, what are you saying! It is too horrible!"

'Yes, I know. You all think it barbaric and prehistoric to kill! It is jolly to hear these Parisians protesting against the brutal instincts which urge the male to kill the female if she deceives him, and preaching indulgence and reason! They're splendid apostles! It is a fine thing to see the pack of mongrel dogs waxing wrath against the return to animalism. After outraging life, after having robbed it of its worth, they surround it with religious worship.... What! That heartless, dishonorable, meaningless life, the mere physical act of breathing, the beating of the blood in a scrap of flesh, these are the things which they hold worthy of respect! They are never done with their niceness about the flesh: it is a crime to touch it. You may kill the soul if you like, but the body is sacred...."

"The murderers of the soul are the worst of all: but one crime is no excuse for another. You know that."

"I know it. Yes. You are right. I did not think what I was saying.... Who knows? I should do it, perhaps."

"No. You are unfair to yourself. You are so kind."

"If I am roused to passion, I am as cruel as the rest. You see how I had lost control of myself!... But when you see a friend brought to tears, how can you not hate the person who has caused them? And how can one be too hard on a woman who leaves her child to run after her lover?"

"Don't talk like that, Christophe. You don't know."

"What! You defend her?"

"I pity her, too."

"I pity those who suffer. Not those who cause suffering."

"Well! Do you think she hasn't suffered too? Do you think she has left her child and wrecked her life out of lightness of heart? For her life is wrecked too. I hardly know her, Christophe. I have only seen her a few times, and that only in passing: she never said a friendly word to me, she was not in sympathy with me. And yet I know her better than you. I am sure she is not a bad woman. Poor child! I can guess what she has had to go through...."

"You.... You whose life is so worthy and so right and sensible!..."

"Yes, Christophe, I. You do not know. You are kind, but you are a man and, like all men, you are hard, in spite of your kindness--a man hard and set against everything which is not in and of yourself. You have no real knowledge of the women who live with you. You love them, after your fashion; but you never take the trouble to understand them. You are so easily satisfied with yourselves! You are quite sure that you know us.... Alas! If you knew how we suffer sometimes when we see, not that you do not love us, but how you love us, and that that is all we are to those we love the best! There are moments, Christophe, when we clench our fists so that the nails dig into our hands to keep ourselves from crying to you: 'Oh! Do not love us, do not love us! Anything rather than love us like that!'... Do you know the saying of a poet: 'Even in her home, among her children, surrounded with sham honors, a woman endures a scorn a thousand times harder to bear than the most utter misery'? Think of that, Christophe. They are terrible words."

"What you say has upset me. I don't rightly understand. But I am beginning to see.... Then, you yourself...."

"I have been through all these torments."

"Is it possible?... But, even so, you will never make me believe that you would have done the same as that woman."

"I have no child, Christophe. I do not know what I should have done in her place."

"No. That is impossible. I believe in you. I respect you too much. I swear that you could not."