Chapter I: AM beginning to catch sight of what I might call the “deep-lying (3)

“By Jove, I know well enough it isn’t you who think so. But, my dear fellow, it isn’t La Fontaine either. If he had only had that lightness, which, for that matter, he regretted and apologized for at the end of his life, he would never have been the artist we admire. That’s just what I said in my essay this morning, and I brought a great many quotations in support of my theory--for you know I’ve a fairly good memory. But I soon left La Fontaine, and taking as my text the justification these lines might afford to a certain class of superficial minds, I just let myself go in a tirade against the spirit of carelessness, of flippancy, of irony, of what is called ‘French wit,’ which some people think is the spirit of France, and which sometimes gives us such a deplorable reputation among foreigners. I said that we ought not to consider all this as even the smile of France, but as her grimace; that the real spirit of France was a spirit of investigation, of logic, of devotedness, of patient thoroughness; and if La Fontaine had not been animated by that spirit, he might have written his tales, but never his fables nor the admirable epistle (I showed that I knew it) from which the lines we had to comment upon were taken. Yes, old boy, a violent attack--perhaps I shall get ploughed for it. But I don’t care two straws; I had to say it.”

Olivier had not particularly meant what he had said just before. He had yielded to his desire to be brilliant and to bring out, as it were carelessly, a sentence which he thought would tremendously impress his friend. But now that Bernard took it in this way, there was nothing for him to do but to beat a retreat. But his great weakness lay in the fact that he was in much more need of Bernard’s affection than Bernard of his. Bernard’s speech had humiliated, mortified him. He was vexed with himself for having spoken too soon. It was too late now to go back on it--to agree with Bernard, as he certainly would have done if he had let him speak first. But how could he have foreseen that Bernard, whom he remembered so scathingly subversive, would set up as a defender of feelings and ideas which Passavant had taught him could not be considered without a smile? But he really had no desire to smile now; he was ashamed. And as he could neither retract nor contradict Bernard, whose genuine emotion he couldn’t help respecting, his one idea was to protect himself--to slip out of it.

“Oh! well, if you put that in your essay, it wasn’t against me that you were saying it.... I’m glad of that.”

He spoke as though he were vexed--not at all in the tone he would have liked.

“But it _is_ against you that I am saying it now,” retorted Bernard.

These words cut straight at Olivier’s heart. Bernard had certainly not said them with a hostile intention, but how else could they be taken? Olivier was silent. Between Bernard and him a gulf was yawning. He tried to think of some question to fling from one side of the gulf to the other which might re-establish the contact. He tried, without much hope of succeeding. “Doesn’t he understand how miserable I am?” he said to himself, and he grew more miserable still. He did not have to force back his tears, perhaps, but he said to himself that it was enough to make anyone cry. It was his own fault, too; his meeting with Bernard would have seemed less sad if he had looked forward to it with less joy. When two months before he had hurried off to meet Edouard, it had been the same thing. It would always be the same thing, he said to himself. He wanted to go away--anywhere--by himself--to chuck Bernard--to forget Passavant, Edouard.... An unexpected meeting suddenly interrupted these melancholy thoughts.

A few steps in front of them, going up the Boulevard Saint-Michel, along which he and Bernard were walking, Olivier caught sight of his young brother George. He seized Bernard’s arm, and, turning sharply on his heel, drew him hurriedly along with him.

“Do you think he saw us?... My people don’t know I’m back.”

Young George was not alone. Léon Ghéridanisol and Philippe Adamanti were with him. The conversation of the three boys was exceedingly animated; but George’s interest in it did not prevent him from keeping “his eyes skinned,” as he said. In order to listen to the children’s talk we will leave Olivier and Bernard for a moment; especially since our two friends have gone into a restaurant, and are for the moment more occupied in eating than in talking--to Olivier’s great relief.

“Well then, _you_ do it,” says Phiphi to George.

“Oh, he’s got the dithers! He’s got the dithers!” retorts George, putting what cold contempt he can into his voice, so as to goad Philippe to action. Then says Ghéridanisol with calm superiority:

“Look here, my lambs, if you aren’t game, you had better say so at once. I shan’t have any difficulty in finding fellows with a little more pluck than you. Here! Give it back!”

He turns to George, who is holding a small coin in his tight-shut hand.

“I’ll do it!” cries George, in a sudden burst of courage. “Won’t I just! Come on!” (They are opposite a tobacco shop.)

“No,” says Léon; “we’ll wait for you at the corner. Come along, Phiphi.”

A moment later George comes out of the shop; he has a packet of so-called “de luxe” cigarettes in his hand and offers them to his friends.

“Well?” asks Phiphi anxiously.

“Well, what?” replies George with an air of affected indifference, as if what he has just done has suddenly become so natural that it wasn’t worth mentioning.

But Philippe insists:

“Did you pass it?”

“Good Lord! Didn’t I?”

“And nobody said anything?”

George shrugged his shoulders:

“What on earth should they say?”

“And they gave you back the change?”

This time George doesn’t even deign to answer. But as Philippe, still a little sceptical and fearful, insists again: “Show us,” George pulls the money out of his pocket. Philippe counts--the seven francs are there right enough. He feels inclined to ask: “Are you sure _they_ aren’t false too?” But he refrains.

George had given one franc for the false coin. It had been agreed that the money should be divided between them. He holds out three francs to Ghéridanisol. As for Phiphi, he shan’t have a farthing; at the outside a cigarette; it’ll be a lesson to him.

Encouraged by this first success, Phiphi is now anxious to try for himself. He asks Léon to sell him another coin. But Léon considers Phiphi a muff, and in order to screw him up to the right pitch, he affects contempt for his former cowardice and pretends to hold back. He had only to make up his mind sooner; they could very well do without him. Besides which, Léon thinks it imprudent to risk another attempt so close upon the first. And then it’s too late now. His cousin Strouvilhou is expecting him to lunch.

Ghéridanisol is not such a duffer that he can’t pass his false coins by himself; but his big cousin’s instructions are that he is to get himself accomplices. He goes off now to give him an account of his successfully performed mission.

“The kids we want, you see, are those who come of good families, because then if rumours get about, their parents do all they can to stifle them.” (It is Cousin Strouvilhou who is talking in this way, while the two are having lunch together.) “Only with this system of selling the coins one by one, they get put into circulation too slowly. I’ve got fifty-two boxes containing twenty coins each, to dispose of. They must be sold for twenty francs a box; but not to anyone, you understand. The best thing would be to form an association to which no one should be admitted who didn’t furnish pledges. The kids must be made to compromise themselves, and hand over something or other which will give us a hold over their parents. Before letting them have the coins, they must be made to understand that--oh! without frightening them. One must never frighten children. You told me Molinier’s father was a magistrate? Good. And Adamanti’s father?”

“A senator.”

“Better still. You’re old enough now to grasp that there’s no family without some skeleton or other in the cupboard, which the people concerned are terrified of having discovered. The kids must be set hunting; it’ll give them something to do. Family life as a rule is so boring! And then it’ll teach them to observe, to look about them. It’s quite simple. Those who contribute nothing will get nothing. When certain parents understand that they are in our hands, they’ll pay a high price for our silence. What the deuce! we have no intention of blackmailing them; we are honest folk. We merely want to have a hold on them. Their silence for ours. Let them keep silent and make other people keep silent, and then we’ll keep silent too. Here’s a health to them!”

Strouvilhou filled two glasses. They drank to each other.

“It’s a good--it’s even an indispensable thing,” he went on, “to create ties of reciprocity between citizens; by so doing societies are solidly established. We all hold together, good Lord! _We_ have a hold on the children, who have a hold on their parents, who have a hold on us. A perfect arrangement. Twig?”

Léon twigged admirably. He chuckled.

“That little George....” he began.

“Well, what about him? That little George...?”

“Molinier. I think he’s pretty well screwed up. He has laid his hands on some letters to his father from an Olympia chorus girl.”

“Have you seen them?”

“He showed them to me. I overheard him talking to Adamanti. I think they were pleased at my listening to them; at any rate they didn’t hide from me; I had already taken steps and treated them to a little entertainment in your style, to inspire them with confidence. George said to Phiphi (to give him a stunner): ‘My father’s got a mistress.’ Upon which, Phiphi, not to be outdone, answered: ‘_My_ father’s got two.’ It was idiotic and really nothing to make a fuss about; but I went up to George and said: ‘How do you know?’ ‘I’ve seen some letters,’ he answered. I pretended I didn’t believe him and said: ‘Rubbish!’... Well, I went on at him, until at last he said he had got them with him; he pulled them out of a big letter-case and showed them to me.”

“Did you read them?”

“I didn’t have time to. I only saw they were all in the same handwriting; one of them began: ‘My darling old ducky.’”

“And signed?”

“‘Your little white mousie.’ I asked George how he had got hold of them. He grinned and pulled out of his trouser pocket an enormous bunch of keys.... To fit every drawer in the universe,’ said he.”

“And what did Master Phiphi say?”

“Nothing. I think he was jealous.”

“Would George give you the letters?”

“If necessary I’ll get him to. I don’t want to take them from him. He’ll give them if Phiphi joins in, too. They each of them egg the other on.”

“That’s what goes by the name of emulation. And you don’t see anyone else at the school?”

“I’ll look about.”

“One thing more I wanted to say.... I think there must be a little boy called Boris amongst the boarders. You’re to leave him alone”; he paused a moment and then added in a whisper: “for the moment.”

Olivier and Bernard are seated at a table in one of the Boulevard restaurants. Olivier’s unhappiness melts like hoar-frost in the warmth of his friend’s smile. Bernard avoids pronouncing Passavant’s name; Olivier feels it; a secret instinct warns him; but the name is on the tip of his tongue; he must speak, come what may.

“Yes; I didn’t let my people know we were coming back so soon. This evening the _Argonauts_ are giving a dinner. Passavant particularly wants me to be present. He wishes our new review to be on good terms with its elder and not to set up as a rival.... You ought to come; and I tell you what ... you ought to bring Edouard.... Perhaps not to dinner, because one’s got to be invited, but immediately after. It’s to be in the upstairs room of the Taverne du Panthéon. The principal members of the _Argonaut_ staff will be there and a good many of our own _Vanguard_ contributors. Our first number is nearly ready; but, I say, why didn’t you send me anything?”

“Because I hadn’t anything ready,” he answers rather curtly.

Olivier’s voice becomes almost imploring:

“I put your name down next to mine in the list of contents.... We could wait a little, if necessary ... no matter what; anything.... You had almost promised.”

It grieves Bernard to hurt his friend; but he hardens himself:

“Look here, old boy, I had better tell you at once--I’m afraid I shouldn’t hit it off with Passavant very well.”

“But it’s I who am the editor. He leaves me perfectly free.”

“And then I dislike the idea of sending you _no matter what_; I don’t want to write _no matter what_.”

“I said _no matter what_, because I knew that no matter what you wrote would be good ... that it would never really be _no matter what_.”

He doesn’t know what to say. He is just floundering. If he cannot feel his friend beside him, all his interest in the review vanishes. It had been such a delightful dream, this of making their début together.

“And then, old fellow, if I’m beginning to know what I don’t want to do, I don’t know yet what I _do_ want to do. I don’t even know whether I shall write.”

This declaration fills Olivier with consternation. But Bernard goes on:

“Nothing that I could write easily tempts me. It’s because I can turn my sentences easily that I have a detestation of well-turned sentences. Not that I like difficulty for its own sake; but I really do think that writers of the present time take things a bit too easy. I don’t know enough about other people’s lives to write a novel; and I haven’t yet had a life of my own. Poetry bores me. The alexandrine is worn threadbare; the _vers libre_ is formless. The only poet who satisfies me nowadays is Rimbaud.”

“That’s exactly what I say in our manifesto.”

“Then it’s not worth while my repeating it. No, old boy; no; I don’t know whether I shall write. It sometimes seems to me that writing prevents one from living, and that one can express oneself better by acts than by words.”

“Works of art are acts that endure,” ventured Olivier timidly; but Bernard was not listening.

“That’s what I admire most of all in Rimbaud--to have preferred life.”

“He made a mess of his own.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Oh! really, old boy!...”

“One can’t judge other people’s lives from the outside. But anyhow, let’s grant he was a failure; with ill-luck, poverty, illness to bear.... Even so, I envy him his life; yes, I envy it more--even with its sordid ending--more than the life of....”

Bernard did not finish his sentence; on the point of naming an illustrious contemporary, he hesitated between too many of them. He shrugged his shoulders and went on:

“I have a confused feeling in myself of extraordinary aspirations, surgings, stirrings, incomprehensible agitations, which I don’t want to understand--which I don’t even want to observe, for fear of preventing them. Not so long ago, I was constantly talking to myself. Now, even if I wanted to, I shouldn’t be able to. It was a mania that came to an end suddenly, without my even being aware of it. I think that this habit of soliloquizing--of inward dialogue, as our professor used to call it--necessitated a kind of division of the personality, which I ceased to be capable of, the day that I began to love someone else better than myself.”

“You mean Laura,” said Olivier. “Do you still love her as much as ever?”

“No,” said Bernard; “more than ever. I think it’s the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing; and that’s what distinguishes it from friendship.”

“Friendship, too, can grow less,” said Olivier sadly.

“I think that the margins of friendship aren’t so wide.”

“I say ... you won’t be angry if I ask you something?”

“Try.”

“I don’t want to make you angry.”

“If you keep your questions to yourself, you’ll make me more angry still.”

“I want to know whether you feel ... desire for Laura.”

Bernard suddenly became very grave.

“If it weren’t you ...” he began. “Well, old boy, it’s a curious thing that’s happened to me: ever since I have come to know her, all my desires have gone; I have none left at all. You remember in the old days how I used to be all fire and flame for twenty women at once whom I happened to pass by in the street (and that’s the very thing that prevented me from choosing any one of them); well, now it seems to me that I shall never be touched again by any other form of beauty than hers; that I shall never be able to love any other forehead than hers; her lips, her eyes. But what I feel for her is veneration; when I am with her every carnal thought seems an impiety. I think I was mistaken about myself, and that in reality I am very chaste by nature. Thanks to Laura, my instincts have been sublimated. I feel I have within me great unemployed forces. I should like to make them take up service. I envy the Carthusian who bends his pride to the rule of his order; the person to whom one says: “I count upon you.” I envy the soldier.... Or rather, no; I envy no one; but the turbulence I feel within me oppresses me and my aspiration is to discipline it. It’s like steam inside me; it may whistle as it escapes (that’s poetry), put in motion wheels and pistons; or even burst the engine. Do you know the act which I sometimes think would express me best? It’s.... Oh! I know well enough I shan’t kill myself; but I understand Dmitri Karamazof perfectly when he asks his brother if he understands a person killing himself out of enthusiasm, out of sheer excess of life ... just _bursting_.”

An extraordinary radiance shone from his whole being. How well he expressed himself! Olivier gazed at him in a kind of ecstasy.

“So do I,” he murmured timidly, “I understand killing oneself too; but it would be after having tasted a joy so great, that all one’s life to come would seem pale beside it; a joy so great, that it would make one feel: ‘I have had enough. I am content; never again shall I....’”

But Bernard was not listening. He stopped. What was the use of talking to empty air? All his sky clouded over again. Bernard took out his watch:

“I must be off. Well then, this evening, you say?... What time?”

“Oh, I should think ten would be early enough. Will you come?”

“Yes. I’ll try to bring Edouard, too. But you know he doesn’t much care for Passavant; and literary gatherings bore him. It would only be to see you. I say, can’t we meet somewhere after my Latin paper?” Olivier did not immediately answer. He reflected with despair that he had promised to meet Passavant that afternoon at the printer’s to talk over the printing of the _Vanguard_. What would he not have given to be free?

“I should like to, but I’m engaged.”

No trace of his unhappiness was apparent; and Bernard answered:

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.”

And at that the two friends parted.

Olivier had said nothing to Bernard of all he had meant and hoped to say. He was afraid Bernard had taken a dislike to him. He took a dislike to himself. He, so gay, so smart that morning, walked now with lowered head. Passavant’s friendship, of which at first he had been so proud, began to be irksome to him; for he felt Bernard’s reprobation weighing upon it. Even if he were to meet his friend at the dinner that evening, he would be unable to speak to him in front of all those people. He would be unable to enjoy the dinner if they had not come to an understanding beforehand. And what an unfortunate idea his vanity had suggested to him of trying to get Uncle Edouard to come too! There, in the presence of Passavant, surrounded by elder men, by other writers, by the future contributors to the _Vanguard_, he would be obliged to show off. Edouard would misjudge him still more--misjudge him no doubt irrevocably.... If only he could see him before this evening!... see him at once; he would fling his arms round his neck; he would cry perhaps; he would tell all his troubles.... From now till four o’clock, he has the time. Quick! a taxi.

He gives the address to the chauffeur. He reaches the door with a beating heart; he rings.... Edouard is out.

Poor Olivier! Instead of hiding from his parents, why did he not simply return home? He would have found his Uncle Edouard sitting with his mother.

VI

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: MADAME MOLINIER

THOSE novelists deceive us who show the individual’s development without taking into account the pressure of surroundings. The forest fashions the tree. To each one how small a place is given! How many buds are atrophied! One shoots one’s branches where one can. The mystic bough is due more often than not to stifling. The only escape is upwards. I cannot understand how Pauline manages not to grow a mystic bough, nor what further pressure she needs. She has talked to me more intimately than ever before. I did not suspect, I confess, the amount of disillusionment and resignation she hides beneath the appearance of happiness. But I recognize that she would have had to have a very vulgar nature not to have been disappointed in Molinier. In my conversation with her the day before yesterday, I was able to gauge his limits. How in the world could Pauline have married him?... Alas! the most lamentable lack of all--lack of character--is a hidden one, to be revealed only by time and usage.

Pauline puts all her efforts into palliating Oscar’s insufficiencies and weaknesses, into hiding them from everyone; and especially from his children. Her utmost ingenuity is employed in enabling them to respect their father; and she is really hard put to it; but she does it in such a way that I myself was deceived. She speaks of her husband without contempt, but with a kind of indulgence which is expressive enough. She deplores his want of authority over the boys; and, as I expressed my regrets at Olivier’s being with Passavant, I understood that if it had depended on her, the trip to Corsica would not have taken place.

“I didn’t approve of it,” she said, “and to tell you the truth, I don’t much care about that Monsieur Passavant. But what could I do? When I see that I can’t prevent a thing, I prefer granting it with a good grace. As for Oscar, he always gives in; he gives in to me, too. But when I think it’s my duty to oppose any plan of the children’s--stand out against them in any way, he never supports me in the least. On this occasion Vincent stepped in as well. After that, how could I oppose Olivier without risking the loss of his confidence? And it’s that I care about most.”

She was darning old socks--the socks, I said to myself, which were no longer good enough for Olivier. She stopped to thread her needle, and then went on again in a lower voice, more confidingly and more sadly:

“His confidence.... If I were only sure I still had it. But no; I’ve lost it....”

The protest I attempted--without conviction--made her smile. She dropped her work and went on:

“For instance, I know he is in Paris. George met him this morning; he mentioned it casually, and I pretended not to hear, for I don’t like him to tell tales about his brother. But still I know it. Olivier hides things from me. When I see him again, he will think himself obliged to lie to me, and I shall pretend to believe him, as I pretend to believe his father every time _he_ hides things from me.”

“It’s for fear of paining you.”

“He pains me a great deal more as it is. I am not intolerant. There are a number of little shortcomings that I tolerate, that I shut my eyes to.”

“Of whom are you talking now?”

“Oh! of the father as well as the sons.”

“When you pretend not to see them, _you_ are lying too.”

“But what am I to do? It’s enough not to complain. I really can’t approve! No, I say to myself that, sooner or later, one loses hold, that the tenderest affection is helpless. More than that. It’s in the way; it’s a nuisance. I have come to the pitch of hiding my love itself.”

“Now you are talking of your sons.”

“Why do you say that? Do you mean that I can’t love Oscar any more? Sometimes I think so, but I think too that it’s for fear of suffering too much that I don’t love him more. And.... Yes, I suppose you are right--in Olivier’s case, I prefer to suffer.”

“And Vincent?”

“A few years ago everything I now say of Olivier would have been true of Vincent.”

“My poor friend.... Soon you will be saying the same of George.”

“But one becomes resigned, slowly. And yet one didn’t ask so much of life. One learns to ask less ... less and less.” Then she added softly: “And of oneself, more and more.”

“With ideas of that kind, one is almost a Christian,” said I, smiling in my turn.

“I sometimes think so too. But having them isn’t enough to make one a Christian.”

“Any more than being a Christian is enough to make one have them.”

“I have often thought--will you let me say so?--that in their father’s default, _you_ might speak to the boys.”

“Vincent is not here.”

“It is too late for him. I am thinking of Olivier. It’s with you that I should have liked him to go away.”

At these words, which gave me the sudden imagination of what might have been if I had not so thoughtlessly listened to the appeal of passing adventure, a dreadful emotion wrung my heart, and at first I could find nothing to say; then, as the tears started to my eyes, and wishing to give some appearance of a motive to my disturbance:

“Too late, I fear, for him too,” I sighed.

Pauline seized my hand:

“How good you are!” she cried.

Embarrassed at seeing her thus mistake me, and unable to undeceive her, I could only turn aside the conversation from a subject which put me too ill at my ease.

“And George?” I asked.

“He makes me more anxious than the other two put together,” she answered. “I can’t say that with him I am losing my hold, for he has never been either confiding or obedient.”

She hesitated a few moments. It obviously cost her a great deal to say what follows.

“This summer something very serious happened,” she went on at last, “something it’s a little painful for me to speak to you about, especially as I am still not very sure.... A hundred-franc note disappeared from a cupboard in which I was in the habit of keeping my money. The fear of being wrong in my suspicions prevented me from bringing any accusation; the maid who waited on us at the hotel was a very young girl and seemed to me honest. I said I had lost the note before George; I might as well admit that my suspicions fell upon him. He didn’t appear disturbed; he didn’t blush.... I felt ashamed of having suspected him; I tried to persuade myself I had made a mistake. I did my accounts over again; unfortunately there was no possibility of a doubt--a hundred francs were missing. I shrank from questioning him, and finally I didn’t. The fear of seeing him add a lie to a theft kept me back. Was I wrong?... Yes, I reproach myself now for not having insisted; perhaps it was out of a fear that I should have to be too severe--or that I shouldn’t be severe enough. Once again, I played the part of a person who knows nothing, but with a very anxious heart, I assure you. I had let the time go by, and I said to myself it was too late and that the punishment would come too long after the fault. And how punish him? I did nothing; I reproach myself for it ... but what could I have done?

“I had thought of sending him to England; I even wanted to ask your advice about it, but I didn’t know where you were.... At any rate, I didn’t hide my trouble from him--my anxiety; I think he must have felt it, for, you know, he has a good heart. I count more on his own conscience to reproach him than on anything I could have said. He won’t do it again, I feel certain. He used to go about with a very rich boy at the sea-side, and he was no doubt led on to spend money. No doubt I must have left the cupboard open; and I repeat, I’m not really sure it was he. There were a great many people coming and going in the hotel....”

I admired the ingenious way in which she put forward every possible consideration that might exonerate her child.

“I should have liked him to put the money back,” I said.

“I hoped he would. And when he didn’t, I thought it must be a proof of his innocence. And then I said to myself that he was afraid to.”

“Did you tell his father?”

She hesitated a few moments:

“No,” she said at last, “I prefer him to know nothing about it.”

No doubt she thought she heard a noise in the next room; she went to make sure there was no one there; then she sat down again beside me.

“Oscar told me you lunched together the other day. He was so loud in your praise, that I suppose what you chiefly did was to listen to him.” (She smiled sadly, as she said these words.) “If he confided in you, I have no desire not to respect his confidences ... though in reality I know a great deal more about his private life than he imagines. But since I got back, I can’t understand what has come over him. He is so gentle--I was almost going to say--so humble.... It’s almost embarrassing. He goes on as if he were afraid of me. He needn’t be. For a long time past I’ve been aware that he has been carrying on.... I even know with whom. He thinks I know nothing about it and takes enormous pains to hide it; but his precautions are so obvious, that the more he hides, the more he gives himself away. Every time he goes out with an affectation of being busy, worried, anxious, I know that he is off to his pleasure. I feel inclined to say to him: ‘But, my dear friend, I’m not keeping you; are you afraid I’m jealous?’ I should laugh if I had the heart to. My only fear is that the children may notice something; he’s so careless--so clumsy! Sometimes, without his suspecting it, I find myself forced to help him, as if I were playing his game. I assure you I end by being almost amused by it; I invent excuses for him; I put the letters he leaves lying about back in his coat pocket.”

“That’s just it,” I said; “he’s afraid you have discovered some letters.”

“Did he tell you so?”

“And that’s what’s making him so nervous.”

“Do you think I want to read them?”

A kind of wounded pride made her draw herself up. I was obliged to add:

“It’s not a question of the letters he may have mislaid inadvertently; but of some letters he had put in a drawer and which he says he can’t find. He thinks you have taken them.”

At these words, I saw Pauline turn pale, and the horrible suspicion which darted upon her, forced itself suddenly into my mind too. I regretted having spoken, but it was too late. She looked away from me and murmured:

“Would to Heaven it _were_ I!”

She seemed overcome.

“What am I to do?” she repeated. “What am I to do?” Then raising her eyes to mine again: “You? Couldn’t _you_ speak to him?”

Although she avoided, as I did, pronouncing George’s name, it was clear that she was thinking of him.

“I will try. I will think it over,” I said, rising. And as she accompanied me to the front door:

“Say nothing about it to Oscar, please. Let him go on suspecting me--thinking what he thinks.... It is better so. Come and see me again.”

VII

OLIVIER AND ARMAND

IN THE mean time Olivier, deeply disappointed at not having found his Uncle Edouard, and unable to bear his solitude, turned his thoughts towards Armand with a heart aching for friendship. He made his way to the Pension Vedel.

Armand received him in his bedroom. It was a small, narrow room, reached by the backstairs. Its window looked on to an inner courtyard, on to which the water-closets and kitchens of the next-door house opened also. The light came from a corrugated zinc reflector, which caught it from above and cast it down, pallid, leaden and dreary. The room was badly ventilated; an unpleasant odour pervaded it.

“But one gets accustomed to it,” said Armand. “My parents, you understand, keep the best rooms for the boarders who pay best. It’s only natural. I have given up the room I had last year to a Vicomte--the brother of your illustrious friend Passavant. A princely room--but under the observation of Rachel’s. There are heaps of rooms here, but not all of them are independent. For instance, poor Sarah, who came back from England this morning, is obliged to pass, either through our parents’ room (which doesn’t suit her at all) to get to her new abode, or else through mine, which, truth to tell, is really nothing but a dressing-room or box-room. At any rate, I have the advantage here of being able to go out and in as I please, without being spied upon by anyone. I prefer that to the attics, where the servants live. To tell the truth, I rather like being uncomfortably lodged; my father would call it the ‘love of maceration,’ and would explain that what is hurtful to the body leads to the salvation of the soul. For that matter, he has never been inside the place. He has other things to do, you understand, than worrying over his son’s habitat. My papa’s a wonderful fellow. He has by heart a number of consoling phrases for the principal events of life. It’s magnificent to hear him. A pity he never has any time for a little chat.... You’re looking at my picture gallery; one can enjoy it better in the morning. That is a colour print by a pupil of Paolo Ucelli’s--for the use of veterinaries. In an admirable attempt at synthesis, the artist has concentrated on a single horse all the ills by means of which Providence chastens the equine soul; you observe the spirituality of the look.... That is a symbolical picture of the ages of life from the cradle to the grave. As a drawing, not much can be said for it; its chief value lies in its intention. Further on you will note with admiration the photograph of one of Titian’s courtesans, which I have put over my bed in order to give myself libidinous thoughts. That is the door into Sarah’s room.”

The almost sordid aspect of the place made a melancholy impression on Olivier; the bed was not made and the basin on the wash-stand was not emptied.

“Yes, I fix up my room myself,” said Armand, in response to his anxious look. “Here, you see, is my writing table. You have no idea how the atmosphere of the room inspires me.... ‘_L’atmosphère d’un cher réduit...._’ I even owe it the idea of my last poem--_The Nocturnal Vase_.”

Olivier had come to see Armand with the intention of speaking about his review and asking him to contribute to it; he no longer dared to. But Armand’s own conversation was coming round to the subject.

“_The Nocturnal Vase_--eh? What a magnificent title!... With this motto from Baudelaire:

‘_Funereal vase, what tears awaitest thou?_’[6]

BAUDELAIRE.

“I take up once more the ancient (and ever young) comparison of the potter creator, who fashions every human being as a vase destined to hold--ah! what? And I compare myself in a lyrical outburst to the above-mentioned vase--an idea which, as I was telling you, came to me as the natural result of breathing the odour of this chamber. I am particularly pleased with the opening line:

‘_Whoe’er at forty boasts no hemorrhoids...._’

I had first of all written, in order to reassure the reader, Whoe’er at fifty...’ but I should have missed the assonance. As for ‘hemorrhoids,’ it is undoubtedly the finest word in the French language--independently of its meaning,” he added with a saturnine laugh.

Olivier, a pain at his heart, kept silent. Armand went on:

“Needless to say, the night vase is particularly flattered when it receives a visit from a pot filled with aromatics like yourself.”

“And haven’t you written anything but that?” asked Olivier at last, desperately.

“I was going to offer my _Nocturnal Vase_ to your great and glorious review, but from the tone in which you have just said ‘_that_,’ I see there isn’t much likelihood of its pleasing you. In such cases the poet always has the resource of arguing: ‘I don’t write to please,’ and of persuading himself that he has brought forth a master-piece. But I cannot conceal from you that I consider my poem execrably bad. For that matter, I have so far only written the first line. And when I say _written_, it’s a figure of speech, for I have this very moment composed it in your honour.... No, really? were you thinking of publishing something of mine? You actually desired my collaboration? You judged me, then, not incapable of writing something decent? Can you have discerned on my pale brow the revealing stigmata of genius? I know the light here is not very favourable for looking at oneself in the glass, but when--like another Narcissus--I gaze at my reflection, I can see nothing but the features of a failure. After all, perhaps it’s an effect of chiaroscuro.... No, my dear Olivier, no; I have done nothing this summer, and if you are counting on me for your review, you may go to blazes. But that’s enough about me.... Did all go well in Corsica? Did you enjoy your trip? Did it do you good? Did you rest after your labours? Did you....”

Olivier could bear it no longer:

“Oh! do shut up, old boy. Stop playing the ass. If you imagine I think it’s funny....”

“And what about me?” cried Armand. “No, my dear fellow, no; all the same I’m not so stupid as all that. I’ve still intelligence enough to understand that everything I’ve been saying is idiotic.”

“Can’t you ever talk seriously?”

“Very well; we’ll talk seriously, since seriousness is the style you favour. Rachel, my eldest sister, is going blind. Her sight has been getting very bad lately. For the last two years, she hasn’t been able to read without glasses. I thought at first it would be all right if she were to change them. But it wasn’t. At my request, she went to see an oculist. It seems the sensitiveness of the retina is failing. You understand there are two very different things--on the one hand, a defective power of accommodation of the crystalline, which can be remedied by glasses. But even after they have brought the visual image to the proper focus, that image may make an insufficient impression on the retina and be only dimly transmitted to the brain. Do I make myself clear? You hardly know Rachel, so don’t imagine that I am trying to arouse your pity for her. Then why am I telling you all this?... Because, reflecting on my own case, I became aware that not only images but ideas may strike the brain with more or less clearness. A person with a dull mind receives only confused perceptions; but for that very reason he cannot realize clearly that he is dull. He would only begin to suffer from his stupidity if he were conscious of it; and in order to be conscious of it, he would have to become intelligent. Now imagine for a moment such a monster--an imbecile who is intelligent enough to understand that he is stupid.”

“Why, he would cease to be an imbecile.”

“No, my dear fellow; you may believe me, because as a matter of fact, _I_ am that very imbecile.”

Olivier shrugged his shoulders. Armand went on:

“A real imbecile has no consciousness of any idea beyond his own. _I_ am conscious of the _beyond_. But all the same I’m an imbecile, because I know that I shall never be able to attain that ‘_beyond_’!...”

“But, old fellow,” said Olivier, in a burst of sympathy, “we are all made so that we might be better, and I think the greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations.”

Armand shook off the hand that Olivier had placed affectionately on his arm.

“Others,” said he, “have the feeling of what they possess; I have only the feeling of what I lack. Lack of money, lack of strength, lack of intelligence, lack of love--an everlasting deficit. I shall never be anything but below the mark.”

He went up to the toilette table, dipped a hairbrush in the dirty water in the basin and plastered his hair down in hideous fashion over his forehead.

“I told you I hadn’t written anything; but a few days ago, I did have an idea for an essay, which I should have called: _On Incapacity_. But of course I was incapable of writing it. I should have said.... But I’m boring you.”

“No; go on; you bore me when you make jokes; you’re interesting me very much now.”

“I should have tried to find throughout nature the dividing line, below which nothing exists. An example will show you what I mean. The newspapers the other day had an account of a workman who was electrocuted. He was handling some live wires carelessly; the voltage was not very high; but it seems his body was in a state of perspiration. His death is attributed to the layer of humidity which enabled the current to envelop his body. If his body had been drier, the accident wouldn’t have taken place. But now let’s imagine the perspiration added drop by drop.... One more drop--there you are!”

“I don’t understand,” said Olivier.

“Because my example is badly chosen. I always choose my examples badly. Here’s another: Six shipwrecked persons are picked up in a boat. They have been adrift for ten days in the storm. Three are dead; two are saved. The sixth is expiring. It was hoped he might be restored to life; but his organism had reached the extreme limit.”

“Yes, I understand,” said Olivier. “An hour sooner and he might have been saved.”

“An hour! How you go it! I am calculating the extremest point. It is possible. It is still possible.... It is no longer possible! My mind walks along that narrow ridge. That dividing line between existence and non-existence is the one I keep trying to trace everywhere. The limit of resistance to--well, for instance, to what my father would call temptation. One holds out; the cord on which the devil pulls is stretched to breaking.... A tiny bit more, the cord snaps--one is damned. Do you understand now? A tiny bit less--non-existence. God would not have created the world. Nothing would have been. ‘The face of the world would have been changed,’ says Pascal. But it’s not enough for me to think--‘if Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter.’ I insist. I ask: shorter, by how much? For it might have been a tiny bit shorter, mightn’t it?... Gradation; gradation; and then a sudden leap.... _Natura non fecit saltus._ What absurd rubbish! As for me, I am like the Arab in the desert who is dying of thirst. I am at that precise point, you see, when a drop of water might still save him ... or a tear....”

His voice trailed away; there had come into it a note of pathos which surprised Olivier and disturbed him. He went on more gently--almost tenderly:

“You remember: ‘I shed that very tear for thee....’”

Olivier remembered Pascal’s words; he was even a little put out that his friend had not quoted them exactly. He could not refrain from correcting: “‘I shed that very drop of blood for thee....’”

Armand’s emotion dropped at once. He shrugged his shoulders:

“What can we do? There are some who get through with more than enough and to spare.... Do you understand now what it is to feel that one is always ‘on the border line’? As for me, I shall always have one mark too little.”

He had begun to laugh again. Olivier thought that it was for fear of crying. He would have liked to speak in his turn, to tell Armand how much his words had moved him, and how he felt all the sickness of heart that lay beneath his exasperating irony. But the time for his rendezvous with Passavant was pressing him; he pulled out his watch.

“I must go now. Are you free this evening?”

“What for?”

“To come and meet me at the Taverne du Panthéon. The _Argonauts_ are giving a dinner. You might look in afterwards. There’ll be a lot of fellows there--some of them more or less well known--and most of them rather drunk. Bernard Profitendieu has promised to come. It might be funny.”

“I’m not shaved,” said Armand a little crossly. “And then what should I do among a lot of celebrities? But, I say--why don’t you ask Sarah? She got back from England this very morning. I’m sure it would amuse her. Shall I invite her from you? Bernard could take her.”

“All right, old chap,” said Olivier.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: _Es-tu vase funèbre attendant quelques pleurs?_]

VIII

THE ARGONAUTS’ DINNER

IT HAD been agreed then that Bernard and Edouard, after having dined together, should pick up Sarah a little before ten o’clock. She had delightedly accepted the proposal passed on to her by Armand. At about half past nine, she had gone up to her bedroom, accompanied by her mother. She had to pass through her parents’ room in order to reach hers; but another door, which was supposed to be kept shut, led from Sarah’s room to Armand’s, which in its turn opened, as we have seen, on to the backstairs.

Sarah, in her mother’s presence, made as though she were going to bed, and asked to be left to go to sleep; but as soon as she was alone, she went up to her dressing table to put an added touch of brilliancy to her lips and cheeks. The toilette table had been placed in front of the closed door, but it was not too heavy for Sarah to lift noiselessly. She opened the door.

Sarah was afraid of meeting her brother, whose sarcasms she dreaded. Armand, it is true, encouraged her most audacious exploits; it was as though he took pleasure in them--but only with a kind of temporary indulgence, for it was to judge them later on with all the greater severity; so that Sarah wondered whether his complaisance itself was not calculated to play the censor’s game.

Armand’s room was empty. Sarah sat down on a little low chair and, as she was waiting, meditated. She cultivated a facile contempt for all the domestic virtues as a kind of preventive protest. The constraint of family life had intensified her energies and exasperated her instinct for revolt. During her stay in England, she had worked herself up into a white heat of courage. Like Miss Aberdeen, the English girl boarder, she was resolved to conquer her liberty, to grant herself every license, to dare all. She felt ready to affront scorn and blame on every side, capable of every defiance. In the advances she had made to Olivier, she had already triumphed over natural modesty and many an instinctive reluctance. The example of her two sisters had taught her her lesson; she looked upon Rachel’s pious resignation as the delusion of a dupe, and saw in Laura’s marriage nothing but a lugubrious barter with slavery as its upshot. The education she had received, that which she had given herself, that which she had taken, inclined her very little to what she called “conjugal piety.” She did not see in what particular the man she might marry could be her superior. Hadn’t she passed her examinations like a man? Hadn’t she her opinions and ideas on any and every subject? On the equality of the sexes in particular; and it even seemed to her that in the conduct of life, and consequently of business, and even, if need were, of politics, women often gave proof of more sense than many men....

Steps on the staircase. She listened and then opened the door gently.

Bernard and Sarah had never met. There was no light in the passage. They could hardly distinguish each other in the dark.

“Mademoiselle Sarah Vedel?” whispered Bernard. She took his arm without more ado.

“Edouard is waiting for us at the corner of the street in a taxi. He didn’t want to get down for fear of meeting your parents. It didn’t matter for me; you know I am staying in the house.”

Bernard had been careful to leave the door into the street ajar, so as not to attract the porter’s attention. A few minutes later, the taxi deposited them all three in front of the Taverne du Panthéon. As Edouard was paying the taxi, they heard a clock strike ten.

Dinner was finished. The table had been cleared, but it was still covered with coffee-cups, bottles and glasses. Everyone was smoking and the atmosphere was stifling. Madame des Brousses, the wife of the editor of the _Argonauts_, called for fresh air in a strident voice, which rang out shrilly above the hum of general talk. Someone opened a window. But Justinien, who wanted to put in a speech, had it shut almost immediately “for acoustics’ sake.” He rose to his feet and struck on his glass with a spoon, but failed to attract anyone’s attention. The editor of the _Argonauts_, whom people called the Président des Brousses, interposed, and having at last succeeded in obtaining a modicum of silence, Justinien’s voice gushed forth in a copious stream of dullness. A flood of metaphors covered the triteness of his ideas. He spoke with an emphasis which took the place of wit, and managed to ladle out to everyone in turn a handsome helping of grandiloquent flummery. At the first pause, and just as Edouard, Bernard and Sarah were making their entry, there was a loud burst of polite applause. Some of the company prolonged it, no doubt a little ironically, and as if hoping to put an end to the speech; but in vain--Justinien started off afresh; nothing could daunt his eloquence. At that moment it was the Comte de Passavant whom he was bestrewing with the flowers of his rhetoric. He spoke of _The Horizontal Bar_ as of another _Iliad_. Passavant’s health was drunk. Edouard had no glass, neither had Bernard nor Sarah, so that they were dispensed from joining in the toast.

Justinien’s speech ended with a few heartfelt wishes for the prosperity of the new review and a few elegant compliments to its future editor--“the young and gifted Molinier--the darling of the Muses, whose pure and lofty brow would not long have to wait for its crown of laurels.”

Olivier was standing near the door, so as to welcome his friends as soon as they should arrive. Justinien’s blatant compliments obviously embarrassed him, but he was obliged to respond to the little ovation which followed them.