Chapter I: AM beginning to catch sight of what I might call the “deep-lying (6)

“Call it by any name you please--pride, presumption, conceit ... it’s a feeling you won’t succeed in cheapening in my eyes. But at the present moment, what I should like to know is this--is it necessary to fix one’s eyes on a goal in order to guide oneself in life?”

“Explain.”

“I wrestled over it all last night. What am I to do with the strength I feel I possess? To what use am I to put it? How am I to get out of myself the best that’s in me? Is it by aiming at a goal? But how choose such a goal? How know what it is before reaching it?”

“To live without a goal, is to give oneself up to chance.”

“I am afraid you don’t understand. When Columbus discovered America did he know towards what he was sailing? His goal was to go ahead, straight in front of him. Himself was his goal, impelling him to go ahead....”

“I have often thought,” interrupted Edouard, “that in art, and particularly in literature, the only people who count are those who launch out on to unknown seas. One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. But our writers are afraid of the open; they are mere coasters.”

“Yesterday, when I came out from my examination,” Bernard said, without hearing him, “some demon or other urged me into a hall where there was a public meeting going on. The talk was all about national honour, devotion to one’s country, and a whole lot of things that made my heart beat. I came within an ace of signing a paper by which I pledged myself on my honour to devote my energies to the service of a cause, which certainly seemed to me a fine and noble one.”

“I am glad you didn’t sign, but what prevented you?”

“No doubt some secret instinct....” Bernard reflected a few moments, and then added, laughing: “I think it was chiefly the looks of the audience--starting with my brother, whom I recognized among them. It seemed to me all the young men I saw there, were animated by the best of sentiments, and that they were doing quite right to abdicate their initiative (for it wouldn’t have led them far) and their judgment (for it was inadequate) and their independence of mind (for it was still-born). I said to myself too, that it was a good thing for the country to count among its citizens a large number of these well-intentioned individuals with subservient wills, but that my will would never be of that kind. It was then that I began to ask myself how to establish a rule, since I did not accept life without a rule and yet would not accept a rule from anyone else.”

“The answer seems to me simple: to find the rule in oneself; to have for goal the development of oneself.”

“Yes ... that, as a matter of fact, is what I said to myself. But I wasn’t much further on. If I were certain of preferring what is best in myself, I might develop that rather than the rest. But I can’t even find out what _is_ best in myself.... I wrestled over it all night, I tell you. Towards morning I was so tired that I thought of enlisting--before I was called up.”

“Running away from the question doesn’t solve it.”

“That’s what I said to myself, and that even if I put the question off now, it would come up again more seriously than ever after my service. So I came to ask you your advice.”

“I have none to give you. You can only find counsel in yourself; you can only learn how you ought to live by living.”

“And if I live badly, whilst I’m waiting to decide how to live?”

“That in itself will teach you. It’s a good thing to follow one’s inclination, provided it leads up hill.”

“Are you joking?... No; I think I understand you, and I accept your formula. But while I am developing myself, as you say, I shall have to earn my living. What do you say to an alluring advertisement in the papers: “Young man of great promise requires a job. Could be employed in any capacity?”

Edouard laughed.

“No job is so difficult to find as any job. Better be a little more explicit.”

“Perhaps one of the innumerable little wheels in the organization of a big newspaper would do? Oh! I’d accept any post however subordinate--proof-reader--printer’s devil--anything. I need so little.”

He spoke with hesitation. In reality, it was a secretaryship he wanted; but he did not dare say so to Edouard, because of their mutual dissatisfaction with each other on this score. After all, it wasn’t his, Bernard’s, fault, that this trial of theirs had failed so lamentably.

“I might perhaps,” said Edouard, “get you into the _Grand Journal_; I know the editor....”

While Bernard and Edouard were conversing in this manner, Sarah was having an extremely painful explanation with Rachel. Sarah had suddenly understood that Rachel’s remonstrances were the cause of Bernard’s abrupt departure; and she was indignant with her sister, who, she said, was a kill-joy. She had no right to impose upon others a virtue which her example was enough to render odious.

Rachel, who was terribly upset by these accusations, for she had always sacrificed herself, turned very white, and protested with trembling lips:

“I can’t let you go to perdition.”

But Sarah sobbed and cried out:

“I don’t believe in your heaven. I don’t want to be saved.”

She decided on the spot to return to England, where she would go and stay with her friend. For, after all, she was free and claimed the right to live in any way she pleased. This melancholy quarrel left Rachel shattered.

XVI

EDOUARD WARNS GEORGE

EDOUARD took care to arrive at the pension before the boys came in. He had not seen La Pérouse since the beginning of the term and it was to him that he wanted to speak first. The old music master carried out his new duties as well as he could--that is to say, very badly. He had at first tried to make himself liked, but he had no authority; the boys took advantage of him; his indulgence passed for weakness, and they began to take strange liberties. La Pérouse tried to be severe, but too late; his exhortations, his threats, his reprimands finally set the boys against him. If he raised his voice, they laughed; if he thumped his fist resoundingly on his desk, they shrieked in pretended terror; they mimicked him; they called him by absurd nicknames; caricatures of him circulated from bench to bench; he--so kind and courteous--was portrayed armed with a pistol (the pistol which Ghéridanisol, George and Phiphi had found one day in the course of an indiscreet investigation of his room), ferociously massacring the boys; or else on his knees before them, with hands clasped, imploring, as he had done at first, for “a little quiet, for pity’s sake.” He was like a poor old stag at bay among a savage pack of hounds. Edouard knew nothing of all this.

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL

La Pérouse received me in a small class-room on the ground floor, which I recognized as the most uncomfortable one in the school. Its only furniture consisted of four benches attached to four desks, a blackboard and a straw chair, on which La Pérouse forced me to sit down, while he screwed himself up slantwise on to one of the benches, after vain endeavours to get his long legs under the desk.

“No, no. I’m perfectly comfortable, I assure you,” he declared, while the tone of his voice and the expression of his face said:

“I am horribly uncomfortable, and I hope it’s obvious; but I prefer to be so; and the more uncomfortable I am, the less you will hear me complain.”

I tried to make a joke, but could not succeed in getting him to smile. His manner was ceremonious and stiff, as if he wished to keep me at a distance and imply: “I owe it to you that I am here.”

At the same time he declared himself perfectly satisfied with everything, though all the while eluding my questions and seeming vexed at my insisting. I asked him, however, where his room was.

“Rather too far from the kitchen,” he suddenly exclaimed; and as I expressed my astonishment: “Sometimes during the night, I want something to eat ... when I can’t sleep.”

I was near him; I came nearer still and put my hand gently on his arm. He went on in a more natural tone:

“I must tell you that I sleep very badly. When I do go to sleep, I never lose the feeling that I am asleep. That’s not proper sleep, is it? A person who is properly asleep, doesn’t feel that he is asleep. When he wakes up, he just knows that he has been asleep.”

Then, leaning towards me, he went on with a kind of finicky insistence:

“Sometimes I’m inclined to think that it’s an illusion and that, all the same, I _am_ properly asleep, when I think I’m not asleep. But the proof that I’m not properly asleep is that if I want to open my eyes, I open them. As a rule, I don’t want to. You understand, don’t you, that there’s no object in it? What’s the use of proving to myself that I’m not asleep? I always go on hoping that I shall go to sleep by persuading myself that I’m asleep already....”

He bent still nearer and went on in a whisper:

“And then there’s something that disturbs me. Don’t tell anyone.... I haven’t complained, because there’s nothing to do about it; and if a thing can’t be altered, there’s no good complaining, is there?... Well, just imagine, in the wall, right against my bed and exactly on a level with my head, there’s something that makes a noise.”

He had grown excited as he spoke. I suggested that he should take me to his room.

“Yes! Yes!” he said getting up suddenly. “You might be able to tell me what it is ... I can’t succeed in making out. Come along.”

We went up two stories and then down a longish passage. I had never been into that part of the house before.

La Pérouse’s room looked on to the street. It was small but decent. On the bedside table, I noticed, next a prayer book, the case of pistols, which he had insisted on taking with him. He seized me by the arm, and pushing aside the bed a little:

“There! Now!... Put your ear to the wall.... Can you hear it?”

I listened for a long time with the greatest attention. But notwithstanding the best will in the world, I could not succeed in hearing anything. La Pérouse grew vexed. Just then a van drove by, shaking the house and making the windows rattle.

“At this time of day,” I said, in the hopes of pacifying him, “the little noise that irritates you is drowned by the noise of the street....”

“Drowned for you, because you can’t distinguish it from the other noises,” he exclaimed with vehemence. “As for me, I hear it all the same. In spite of everything, I go on hearing it. Sometimes I am so exasperated by it that I make up my mind to speak to Azaïs or to the landlord.... Oh, I don’t suppose I shall get it to stop.... But, at any rate, I should like to know what it is.”

He seemed to reflect for a few moments, then went on: “It sounds something like a nibbling. I’ve done everything I can think of not to hear it. I pull my bed away from the wall. I put cotton wool in my ears. I hang my watch (you see, I’ve put a little nail there) just at the place where the pipe (I suppose) passes, so that its ticking may prevent my hearing the other noise.... But then it’s even more fatiguing, because I have to make an effort to distinguish it. Absurd, isn’t it? But I really prefer to hear it without any disguise, since I know it’s there all the same.... Oh! I oughtn’t to talk to you in this way. You see, I’m nothing but an old man now.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, and stayed for some time, as though sunk in a kind of dull misery. The sinister degradation of age is not so much attacking La Pérouse’s intelligence as the innermost depths of his nature. The worm lodges itself in the fruit’s core, I thought, as I saw him give way to his childish despair, and remembered him as he used to be, so firm--so proud. I tried to rouse him by speaking of Boris.

“Yes, his room is near mine,” said he, raising his head. “I’ll show it to you. Come along.”

He preceded me along the passage and opened a neighbouring door.

“The other bed you see there is young Bernard Profitendieu’s.” (I judged it useless to tell him that Bernard had left that very day, and would not be coming back to sleep in it.) He went on: “Boris likes having him as a companion and I think he gets on with him. But, you know, he doesn’t talk to me much. He’s very reserved.... I am afraid the child is rather unfeeling.”

He said this so sadly that I took upon myself to protest and to say that I could answer for his grandson’s warmheartedness.

“In that case, he might show it a little more,” went on La Pérouse.

“For instance, in the mornings, when he goes off to the _lycée_ with the others, I lean out of my window to see him go by. He knows I do.... Well, he never turns round.”

I wanted to explain to him that no doubt Boris was afraid of making a spectacle of himself before his schoolfellows and dreaded being laughed at; but at that moment a clamour arose from the courtyard below.

La Pérouse seized me by the arm and, in an altered, agitated voice:

“Listen! Listen!” he cried, “they are coming in.”

I looked at him. He had begun to tremble all over.

“Do the little wretches frighten you?” I asked.

“No, no,” he said in some confusion; “how could you think such a thing?...” Then, very quickly: “I must go down. Recreation only lasts a few minutes and you know I take preparation. Good-bye. Good-bye.”

He darted into the passage, without even shaking my hand. A moment later I heard him stumbling downstairs. I stayed for a few moments to listen, as I had no wish to go past the boys. I could hear them shouting, laughing and singing. Then a bell rang and silence was abruptly restored.

I went to see Azaïs and obtained permission for George to leave school in order to come and speak to me. He soon joined me in the same small room in which La Pérouse had received me a little while before.

As soon as he was in my presence, George thought fit to assume a jocular air. It was his way of concealing his embarrassment. But I wouldn’t swear that he was the more embarrassed of the two. He was on the defensive; for no doubt he expected to be sermonized. He seemed trying as hastily as possible to lay hold of anything he could use as a weapon against me, for, before I had opened my mouth, he enquired after Olivier, in such a bantering tone of voice, that I should have had the greatest pleasure in boxing his ears. He was in a position to score off me. His ironical eyes, the mocking curl of his lips all seemed to say: “I’m not afraid of you, you know.” I at once lost all my self-assurance and my one anxiety was to conceal the fact. The speech I had prepared suddenly struck me as inappropriate. I had not the prestige necessary to play the censor. At bottom, George amused me too much.

“I have not come to scold you,” I said at last; “I only want to warn you.” (And, in spite of myself, my whole face was smiling.)

“Tell me first whether it’s Mamma who has sent you?”

“Yes and no. I have spoken about you to your mother; but that was some days ago. Yesterday I had a very important conversation about you with a very important person, whom you don’t know. He came to see me on purpose to talk about you. A _juge d’instruction_. It’s from him I’ve come. Do you know what a _juge d’instruction_ is?”

George had turned suddenly pale, and no doubt his heart had stopped beating for a moment. He shrugged his shoulders, it is true, but his voice trembled a little:

“Oh! all right! Out with it! What did old Profitendieu say?”

The youngster’s coolness took me aback. No doubt it would have been simpler to go straight to the point; but going straight to the point is a thing particularly foreign to my nature, whose irresistible bent is towards moving obliquely. In order to explain my conduct, which, though it afterwards appeared absurd to me, was quite spontaneous at the time, I must say that my last conversation with Pauline had greatly exercised me. I had immediately inserted the reflections it had suggested to me into my novel, putting them into the form of a dialogue, which exactly fitted in with certain of my characters. It very rarely happens that I make direct use of what occurs to me in real life, but for once I was able to take advantage of this affair of George’s; it was as though my book had been waiting for it, it came in so pat; I hardly had to alter one or two details.

But I did not give a direct account of this affair (I mean his stealing). I merely showed it--with its consequences--by glimpses, in the course of conversations. I had put down some of these in a note-book, which I had at that very moment in my pocket. On the contrary, the story of the false coins, as related by Profitendieu, did not seem to me capable of being turned to account. And no doubt that is why, instead of making immediately for this particular point, which was the main object of my visit, I tacked about.

“I first want you to read these few lines,” I said. “You will see why.” And I held him out my note-book, which I had opened at the page I thought might interest him.

I repeat it--this behaviour of mine now seems to me absurd. But in my novel, it is precisely by a similar reading that I thought of giving the youngest of my heroes a warning. I wanted to know what George’s reaction would be; I hoped it might instruct me ... and even as to the value of what I had written.

I transcribe the passage in question:

There was a whole obscure region in the boy’s character which attracted Audibert’s affectionate curiosity. It was not enough for him to know that young Eudolfe had committed thefts; he would have liked Eudolfe to tell him what had made him begin, and what he had felt on the occasion of his first theft. But the boy, even if he had been willing to confide in him, would no doubt have been incapable of explaining. And Audibert did not dare question him, for fear of inducing him to tell lies in self-defence.

One evening when Audibert was dining with Hildebrant, he spoke to him about Eudolfe--without naming him and altering the circumstances so that Hildebrant should not recognize him.

“Have you ever observed,” said Hildebrant, “that the most decisive actions of our life--I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future--are, more often than not, unconsidered?”

“I easily believe it,” replied Audibert. “Like a train into which one jumps without thinking, and without asking oneself where it is going. And more often than not, one does not even realize that the train is carrying one off, till it is too late to get down.”

“But perhaps the boy you are talking of has no wish to get down?”

“Not so far, doubtless. For the moment he is being carried along unresisting. The scenery amuses him, and he cares very little where he is going.”

“Do you mean to talk morals to him?”

“No indeed! It would be useless. He has been overdosed with morals till he is sick.”

“Why did he steal?”

“I don’t exactly know. Certainly not from real need. But to get certain advantages--not to be outdone by his wealthier companions--Heaven knows what all! Innate propensity--sheer pleasure of stealing.”

“That’s the worst.”

“Of course! Because he’ll begin again.”

“Is he intelligent?”

“I thought for a long time that he was less so than his brothers. But I wonder now whether I wasn’t mistaken, and whether my unfavourable impression was not caused by the fact that he does not as yet understand what his capabilities are. His curiosity has gone off the tracks--or rather, it is still in the embryonic state--still at the stage of indiscretion.”

“Will you speak to him?”

“I propose making him put in the scales, on the one hand the little profit his thefts bring him, and on the other what his dishonesty loses him: the confidence of his friends and relations, their esteem, mine amongst others ... things which can’t be measured and the value of which can be calculated only by the enormousness of the effort needed later to regain them. There are men who have spent their whole lives over it. I shall tell him, what he is still too young to realize--that henceforth if anything doubtful or unpleasant happens in his neighbourhood, it will always be laid to his door. He may find himself accused wrongfully of serious misdeeds and be unable to defend himself. His past actions point to him. He is marked. And lastly what I should like to say.... But I am afraid of his protestations.”

“You would like to say?...”

“That what he has done has created a precedent, and that if some resolution is required for a first theft, for the ensuing ones nothing is needed but to drift with the current. All that follows is mere _laisser aller_.... What I should like to say is, that a first movement, which one makes almost without thinking, often begins to trace a line which irrevocably draws our figure, and which our after effort will never be able to efface. I should like ... but no, I shan’t know how to speak to him.”

“Why don’t you write down our conversation of this evening? You could give it him to read.”

“That’s an idea,” said Audibert. “Why not?”

I did not take my eyes off George while he was reading; but his face showed no signs of what he was thinking.

“Am I to go on?” he asked, preparing to turn the page.

“There’s no need. The conversation ends there.”

“A great pity.”

He gave me back the note-book, and in a tone of voice that was almost playful:

“I should have liked to know what Eudolfe says when he has read the note-book.”

“Exactly. I want to know myself.”

“Eudolfe is a ridiculous name. Couldn’t you have christened him something else?”

“It’s of no importance.”

“Nor what he answers either. And what becomes of him afterwards?”

“I don’t know yet. It depends upon you. We shall see.”

“Then if I understand right, _I_ am to help you go on with your book. No, really, you must admit that....”

He stopped as if he had some difficulty in expressing his ideas.

“That what?” I said to encourage him.

“You must admit that you’d be pretty well sold,” he went on, “if Eudolfe....”

He stopped again. I thought I understood what he meant and finished his sentence for him:

“If he became an honest boy?... No, my dear.” And suddenly the tears rose to my eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder. But he shook it off:

“For after all, if he hadn’t been a thief, you wouldn’t have written all that.”

It was only then that I understood my mistake. In reality, George was flattered at having occupied my thoughts for so long. He felt interesting. I had forgotten Profitendieu; it was George who reminded me of him.

“And what did your _juge d’instruction_ say to you?”

“He commissioned me to warn you that he knew you were circulating false coins....”

George changed colour again. He understood denials would be useless, but he muttered indistinctly:

“I’m not the only one.”

“... and that if you and your pals don’t stop your traffickings at once, he’ll be obliged to arrest you.”

George had begun by turning very pale. Now his cheeks were burning. He stared fixedly in front of him and his knitted brows drew two deep wrinkles on his forehead.

“Good-bye,” I said, holding out my hand. “I advise you to warn your companions as well. As for you, you won’t be offered a second chance.”

He shook my hand silently and left the room without looking round.

On re-reading the pages of _The Counterfeiters_ which I showed George, I thought them on the whole rather bad. I transcribe them as George read them, but all this chapter must be rewritten. It would be better decidedly to speak to the child. I must discover how to touch him. Certainly, at the point he has reached, it would be difficult to bring Eudolfe (George is right; I must change his name) back into the path of honesty. But I mean to bring him back; and whatever George may think, this is what is most interesting, because it is most difficult. (Here am I reasoning like Douviers!) Let us leave realistic novelists to deal with the stories of those who drift.

As soon as he got back to the class-room, George told his two friends of Edouard’s warnings. Everything his uncle had said about his pilferings slipped off the child’s mind, without causing him the slightest emotion; but, when it came to the false coins, which ran the risk of getting them into trouble, he saw the importance of getting rid of them as quickly as possible. Each of the three boys had on him a certain number which he intended disposing of the next free afternoon. Ghéridanisol collected them and hurried off to throw them down the drains. That same evening he warned Strouvilhou, who immediately took his precautions.

XVII

ARMAND AND OLIVIER

THAT same evening, while Edouard was talking to his nephew George, Olivier, after Bernard had left him, received a visit from Armand.

Armand Vedel was unrecognizable; shaved, smiling, carrying his head high; he was dressed in a new suit, which was rather too smart and looked perhaps a trifle ridiculous; he felt it and showed that he felt it.

“I should have come to see you before, but I’ve had so much to do lately!... Do you know that I’ve actually become Passavant’s secretary? or, if you prefer it, the editor of his new review. I won’t ask you to contribute, because Passavant seems rather worked up against you. Besides the review is decidedly going more and more to the left. That’s the reason it has begun by dropping Bercail and his pastorals....”

“I’m sorry for the review,” said Olivier.

“And that’s why, on the other hand, it has accepted my _Nocturnal Vase_, which, by the bye, is, without your permission, to be dedicated to you.”

“I’m sorry for me.”

“Passavant even wished my work of genius to open the first number; but my natural modesty, which was severely tried by his encomiums, was opposed to this. If I were not afraid of fatiguing a convalescent’s ears, I would give you an account of my first interview with the illustrious author of _The Horizontal Bar_, whom I had only known up till then through you.”

“I have nothing better to do than to listen.”

“You don’t mind smoke?”

“I’ll smoke myself to show you.”

“I must tell you,” began Armand, lighting a cigarette, “that your desertion left our beloved Count somewhat in a fix. Let it be said, without flattery, that it isn’t easy to replace such a bundle of gifts, virtues, qualities as are united in your....”

“Get on,” interrupted Olivier, exasperated by this heavy-footed irony.

“Well, to get on, Passavant wanted a secretary. He happened to know a certain Strouvilhou, whom I happen to know myself, because he is the uncle of a certain individual in the school, who happened to know Jean Cob-Lafleur, whom you know.”

“Whom I don’t know,” said Olivier.

“Well, my boy, you ought to know him. He’s an extraordinary fellow; a kind of faded, wrinkled, painted baby, who lives on cocktails and writes charming verses when he’s drunk. You’ll see some in our first number. So Strouvilhou had the brilliant idea of sending him to Passavant, to take your place. You can imagine his entry into the Rue de Babylone mansion. I must tell you that Cob-Lafleur’s clothes are covered with stains; that he has flowing flaxen locks, which fall upon his shoulders; and that he looks as if he hadn’t washed for a week. Passavant, who always wants to be master of the situation, declares that he took a great fancy to Cob-Lafleur. Cob-Lafleur has a gentle, smiling, timid way with him. When he chooses he can look like Banville’s Gringoire. In a word, Passavant was taken by him and was on the point of engaging him. I must tell you that Lafleur hasn’t got a penny piece.... So he gets up to take leave:--‘Before leaving, Monsieur le Comte, I think it’s only right to inform you that I have a few faults.’--‘Which of us has not?’--‘And a few vices. I smoke opium.’--‘Is that all?’ says Passavant, who isn’t to be put off by a little thing of that kind; ‘I’ve got some excellent stuff to offer you.’--‘Yes, but when I smoke it, I completely lose every notion of spelling.’ Passavant took this for a joke, forced a laugh and held out his hand. Lafleur goes on:--‘And then I take hasheesh.’--‘I have sometimes taken it myself,’ says Passavant.--‘Yes, but when I am under the influence of hasheesh, I can’t keep from stealing.’ Passavant began to see then that he was being made a fool of; and Lafleur, who was set going by now, rattled on, impulsively:--‘And besides, I drink ether; and then I tear everything to bits--I smash everything I can lay my hands on,’ and he seizes a glass vase and makes as if he were going to throw it into the fire. Passavant just had time to snatch it out of his hands.--‘Much obliged to you for warning me.’”

“And he chucked him out?”

“Yes; and watched out of the window to see Lafleur didn’t drop a bomb into the cellar as he left.”

“But why did Lafleur behave so? From what you say, he was really in need of the place.”

“All the same, my dear fellow, you must admit that there are people who feel impelled to act against their interest. And then, if you want to know, Lafleur ... well, Passavant’s luxury disgusted him--his elegance, his amiable manners, his condescension, his affectation of superiority. Yes; it turned his stomach. And I add that I perfectly understand him.... At bottom, your Passavant makes one’s gorge rise.”

“Why do you say ‘your Passavant’? You know quite well that I’ve given him up. And then why have you accepted his place, if you think him so disgusting?”

“For the very reason that I like things that disgust me ... to start with my own delightful--or disgusting--self. And then, in reality, Cob-Lafleur suffers from shyness; he wouldn’t have said any of all that if he hadn’t felt ill at ease.”

“Oh! come now!”

“Certainly. He was ill at ease, and he was furious at being made to feel ill at ease by someone he really despises. It was to conceal his shyness that he bluffed.”

“I call it stupid.”

“My dear fellow, everyone can’t be as intelligent as you are.”

“You said that last time, too.”

“What a memory!”

Olivier was determined to hold his ground.

“I try,” said he, “to forget your jokes. But last time you did at last talk to me seriously. You said things I can’t forget.”

Armand’s eyes grew troubled. He went off into a forced laugh.

“Oh, old fellow, last time I talked to you as you wanted to be talked to. You called for something in a minor key, so, in order to please you, I played my lament, with a soul like a corkscrew and anguish à la Pascal.... It can’t be helped, you know. I’m only sincere when I’m cracking jokes.”

“You’ll never make me believe that you weren’t sincere when you talked to me as you did that day. It’s now that you are playing a part.”

“Oh, simplicity! What a pure angelic soul you possess! As if we weren’t all playing parts more or less sincerely and consciously. Life, my dear fellow, is nothing but a comedy. But the difference between you and me is that I know I am playing a part, whilst....”

“Whilst ...” repeated Olivier aggressively.

“Whilst my father, for instance, not to speak of you, is completely taken in when he plays at being a pastor. Whatever I say or do, there’s always one part of myself which stays behind, and watches the other part compromise itself, which laughs at and hisses it, or applauds it. When one is divided in that way, how is it possible to be sincere? I have got to the point of ceasing to understand what the word means. It can’t be helped; when I’m sad, I seem so grotesque to myself that it makes me laugh; when I’m cheerful, I make such idiotic jokes that I feel inclined to cry.”

“You make me feel inclined to cry too, my dear boy. I didn’t think you were in such a bad way.”

Armand shrugged his shoulders and went on in a totally different tone of voice:

“To console you, should you like to know the contents of our first number? Well, there’s my _Nocturnal Vase_; four songs by Cob-Lafleur; a dialogue by Jarry; some prose poems by young Ghéridanisol, one of our boarders; and then _The Flat Iron_, a vast essay in general criticism, in which the tendencies of the review will be more or less definitely laid down. Several of us have combined together to produce this _chef-d’œuvre_.”

Olivier, not knowing what to say, objected clumsily:

“No _chef-d’œuvre_ was ever produced by several people together.”

Armand burst out laughing:

“But, my dear fellow, I said it was a _chef-d’œuvre_ as a joke. It isn’t a _chef-d’œuvre_; it isn’t anything at all. And, for that matter, what does one mean by _chef-d’œuvre_? That’s just what _The Flat Iron_ tries to get to the bottom of. There are heaps of works one admires on faith, just because everyone else does, and because no one so far has thought of saying--or dared to say--that they were stupid. For instance, on the first page of this number, we are going to give a reproduction of the _Monna Lisa_, with a pair of moustaches stuck on to her face. You’ll see! The effect is simply staggering.”

“Does that mean you consider the _Monna Lisa_ a stupidity?”

“Not at all, my dear fellow. (Though I don’t think it as marvellous as all that.) You don’t understand me. The thing that’s stupid is people’s admiration for it. It’s the habit they have got of speaking of what are called _chefs-d’œuvre_ with bated breath. The object of _The Flat Iron_ (it’s to be the name of the review too) is to make this reverence appear grotesque--to discredit it.... Another good plan is to hold up to the reader’s admiration something absolutely idiotic (my _Nocturnal Vase_ for instance) by an author who is absolutely senseless.”

“Does Passavant approve of all this?”

“He’s very much amused by it.”

“I see I did well to retire.”

“Retire!... Sooner or later, old man, willynilly, one always has to end by retiring. This wise reflection naturally leads me to take my leave.”

“Stop a moment, you old clown.... What made you say just now that your father played the part of pastor? Don’t you think he is in earnest?”

“My revered father has so arranged his life that he hasn’t the right now--or even the power--not to be in earnest. Yes, it’s his profession to be in earnest. He’s a professor of earnestness. He inculcates faith; it’s his _raison d’être_; it’s the rôle he has chosen and he must go through with it to the very end. But as for knowing what goes on in what he calls his ‘inner consciousness’ ... it would be indiscreet to enquire. And I don’t think he ever enquires himself. He manages in such a way that he never has time to. He has crammed his life full of a lot of obligations which would lose all meaning if his conviction failed; so that in a manner they necessitate his conviction and at the same time keep it going. He imagines he believes, because he continues to act as if he did. If his faith failed, my dear fellow, why, it would be a catastrophic collapse! And reflect, that at the same time my family would cease to have anything to live on. That’s a fact that must be taken into consideration, old boy. Papa’s faith is our means of subsistence. So that to come and ask me if Papa’s faith is genuine, is not, you must admit, a very tactful proceeding on your part.”

“I thought you lived chiefly on what the school brings in.”

“Yes; there’s some truth in that. But that’s not very tactful either--to cut me short in my lyrical flights.”

“And you then? Don’t you believe in anything?” asked Olivier sadly, for he was fond of Armand, and his ugliness pained him.

“_Jubes renovare dolorem_.... You seem to forget, my dear friend, that my parents wanted to make a pastor of me. They nourished me on pious precepts--fed me up with them, if I may say so.... But finally they were obliged to recognize that I hadn’t the vocation. It’s a pity. I might have made a first-class preacher. But my vocation was to write _The Nocturnal Vase_.”

“You poor old thing! If you knew how sorry I am for you!”

“You have always had what my father calls ‘a heart of gold’ .... I won’t trespass on it any longer.”

He took up his hat. He had almost left the room, when he suddenly turned round:

“You haven’t asked after Sarah?”

“Because you could tell me nothing that I haven’t heard from Bernard.”

“Did he tell you that he had left the pension?”

“He told me that your sister Rachel had requested him to leave.”

Armand had one hand on the door handle; with his walking-stick in the other, he pushed up the portière. The stick went into a hole in the portière and made it bigger.

“Account for it how you will,” said he, and his face became very grave. “Rachel is, I believe, the only person in the world I love and respect. I respect her because she is virtuous. And I always behave in such a way as to offend her virtue. As for Bernard and Sarah, she had no suspicions. It was I who told her the whole thing.... And the oculist said she wasn’t to cry! It’s comic!”

“Am I to think you sincere now?”

“Yes, I think the most sincere thing about me is a horror--a hatred of everything people call Virtue. Don’t try to understand. You have no idea what a Puritan bringing-up can do to one. It leaves one with an incurable resentment in one’s heart ... to judge by myself,” he added, with a jarring laugh.

He put down his hat and went up to the window. “Just look here; on the inside of my lip?”

He stooped towards Olivier and lifted up his lip with his finger.

“I can’t see anything.”

“Yes, you can; there; in the corner.”

Olivier saw a whitish spot near the corner. A little uneasily: “It’s a gum-boil,” he said to reassure Armand.

But Armand shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t talk nonsense--such a serious fellow as you! A gum-boil’s soft and it goes away. This is hard and gets larger every week. And it gives me a kind of bad taste in my mouth.”

“Have you had it long?”

“It’s more than a month since I first noticed it. But as the _chef-d’œuvre_ says: ‘_Mon mal vient de plus loin_....’”

“Well, old boy, if you’re anxious about it, you had better consult a doctor.”

“You don’t suppose I needed your advice for that.”

“What did he say?”

“I didn’t need your advice to say to myself that I ought to consult a doctor. But all the same, I didn’t consult one, because if it’s what I think, I prefer not to know it.”

“It’s idiotic.”

“Isn’t it stupid? But so human, my friend, so human....”

“The idiotic thing is not to be treated for it.”

“So that when one _is_ treated, one can always say: ‘Too late!’ That’s what Cob-Lafleur expresses so well in one of his poems which you’ll see in the review:

_‘Il faut se rendre à l’évidence;_
_Car, dans ce bas monde, la danse_
_Précède souvent la chanson.’”_

“One can make literature out of anything.”

“Just so; out of anything. But, dear friend, it’s not so easy as all that. Well, good-bye.... Oh! there’s one thing more I wanted to tell you. I’ve heard from Alexandre.... Yes, you know--my eldest brother, who ran away to Africa. He began by coming to grief over his business and running through all the money Rachel sent him. He’s settled now on the banks of the Casamance; and he has written to say that things are doing well and that he’ll soon be able to pay everything back.”

“What kind of a business?”

“Heaven knows! Rubber, ivory, Negroes perhaps ... a lot of odds and ends.... He has asked me to go out to him.”

“Will you go?”

“I would to-morrow, if it weren’t for my military service. Alexandre is a kind of donkey, something in my style. I think I should get on with him very well.... Here! would you like to see? I’ve got his letter with me.”

He took an envelope out of his pocket, and several sheets of note-paper out of the envelope; he chose one, and held it out to Olivier.

“There’s no need to read it all. Begin here.”

Olivier read:

“For the last fortnight, I have been living in company with a singular individual whom I have taken into my hut. The sun of these parts seems to have touched him in the upper story. I thought at first it was delirium, but there’s no doubt it’s just plain madness. This curious young man is about thirty years old, tall, strong, good-looking, and certainly ‘a gentleman,’ to judge from his manners, his language, and his hands, which are too delicate ever to have done any rough work. The strange thing about him is that he thinks himself possessed by the devil--or rather, as far as I can make out, he thinks he _is_ the devil. He must have had some odd adventure or other, for when he is dreaming or half dozing, a state into which he often falls (and then he talks to himself as if I weren’t there) he continually speaks of hands being cut off, and as at those times he gets extremely excited and rolls his eyes in an alarming manner, I take care that there shall be no weapons within reach. The rest of the time, he is a good fellow and an agreeable companion--which I appreciate, as you can imagine, after months of solitude. Besides which, he is of great assistance to me in my work. He never speaks of his past life, so that I can’t succeed in discovering who he can be. He is particularly interested in plants and insects, and sometimes in his talk shows signs of being remarkably well educated. He seems to like staying with me and doesn’t speak of leaving; I have decided to let him stay as long as he likes. I was wanting a help; all things considered, he has come just in the nick of time.

“A hideous Negro who came up the Casamance with him, and to whom I have talked a little, speaks of a woman who was with him, and who, I gather, must have been drowned in the river one day when their boat upset. I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that my companion had had a finger in the accident. In this country, if one wants to get rid of anyone, there is a great choice of means, and no one ever asks a question. If one day I learn anything more, I’ll write it to you--or rather I’ll tell you about it when you come out. Yes, I know, there’s your service.... Well, I’ll wait. For you may be sure that if ever you want to see me again, you will have to make up your mind to come out. As for me, I want to come back less and less. I lead a life here which I like and which suits me down to the ground. My business is flourishing, and that badge of civilization--the starched collar--appears to me a straight waistcoat which I shall never be able to endure again.

“I enclose a money order which you can do what you like with. The last was for Rachel. Keep this for yourself....”

“The rest isn’t interesting,” said Armand.

Olivier gave the letter back without saying anything. It never occurred to him that the murderer it spoke of was his brother. Vincent had given no news of himself for a long time; his parents thought he was in America. To tell the truth, Olivier did not trouble much about him.

XVIII

“THE STRONG MEN”

IT WAS only a month later that Boris heard of Bronja’s death from Madame Sophroniska, who came to see him at the pension. Since his friend’s last sad letter, Boris had been without news. Madame Sophroniska came into Madame Vedel’s drawing-room one day when he was sitting there, as was his habit during recreation hour, and as she was in deep mourning, he understood everything before she said a word. They were alone in the room. Sophroniska took Boris in her arms and they cried together. She could only repeat: “My poor little thing.... My poor little thing ...” as if Boris was the person to be pitied, and as though she had forgotten her own maternal grief in the presence of the immense grief of the little boy.

Madame Vedel, who had been told of Madame Sophroniska’s arrival, came in, and Boris, still convulsed with sobs, drew aside to let the two ladies talk to each other. He would have liked them not to speak of Bronja. Madame Vedel, who had not known her, spoke of her as she would of any ordinary child. Even the questions which she asked seemed to Boris tactless and commonplace. He would have liked Sophroniska not to answer them and it hurt him to see her exhibiting her grief. He folded his away and hid it like a treasure.

It was certainly of him that Bronja was thinking when, a few days before her death, she said to her mother:

“Do tell me, Mamma.... What is meant exactly by an _idyll_?”

These words pierced Boris’s heart and he would have liked to be the only one to hear them.

Madame Vedel offered her guest tea. There was some for Boris, too; he swallowed it hastily as recreation was finishing; then he said good-bye to Sophroniska, who was leaving next day for Poland on business.

The whole world seemed a desert to him. His mother was too far away and always absent; his grandfather too old; even Bernard, with whom he was beginning to feel at home, had gone away.... His was a tender soul; he had need of someone at whose feet he could lay his nobility, his purity, as an offering. He was not proud enough to take pleasure in pride. He had loved Bronja too much to be able to hope that he would ever again find that reason for loving which he had lost in her. Without her, how could he believe in the angels he longed to see? Heaven itself was emptied.

Boris went back to the schoolroom as one might cast oneself into hell. No doubt he might have made a friend of Gontran de Passavant; Gontran is a good, kind boy, and they are both exactly the same age; but nothing distracts him from his work. There is not much harm in Philippe Adamanti either; he would be quite willing to be fond of Boris; but he is under Ghéridanisol’s thumb to such an extent that he does not dare have a single feeling of his own; he follows Ghéridanisol’s lead, and Ghéridanisol is always quickening his pace; and Ghéridanisol cannot endure Boris. His musical voice, his grace, his girlish look--everything about him exasperates him. The very sight of Boris seems to inspire him with that instinctive aversion which, in a herd, makes the strong fall ruthlessly upon the weak. It may be that he has listened to his cousin’s teaching and that his hatred is somewhat theoretical, for in his mind it assumes the shape of reprobation. He finds reasons for being proud of his hatred. He realizes and is amused by Boris’s sensitiveness to this contempt of his, and pretends to be plotting with George and Phiphi, merely in order to see Boris’s eyes grow wide with a kind of anxious interrogation.

“Oh, how inquisitive the fellow is!” says George then. “Shall we tell him?”

“Not worth while. He wouldn’t understand.”

“He wouldn’t understand.” “He wouldn’t dare.” “He wouldn’t know how.” They are constantly casting these phrases at him. He suffers horribly from being kept out of things. He cannot understand, indeed, why they give him the humiliating nick-name of “Wanting”; and is indignant when he understands. What would not he give to be able to prove that he is not such a coward as they think.

“I cannot endure Boris,” said Ghéridanisol one day to Strouvilhou. “Why did you tell me to let him alone? He doesn’t want to be let alone as much as all that. He is always looking in my direction.... The other day he made us all split with laughter because he thought that a woman togged out in her bearskin meant wearing her furs. George jeered at him, and when at last Boris took it in I thought he was going to howl.”

Then Ghéridanisol pressed his cousin with questions and finally Strouvilhou gave him Boris’s _talisman_ and explained its use.

A few days later, when Boris went into the schoolroom, he saw this paper, whose existence he had almost forgotten, lying on his desk. He had put it out of his mind with everything else that related to the “magic” of his early childhood, of which he was now ashamed. He did not at first recognize it, for Ghéridanisol had taken pains to frame the words of the incantation

“GAS ... TELEPHONE ... ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND
ROUBLES.”

with a large red and black border adorned with obscene little imps, who, it must be owned, were not at all badly drawn. This decoration gave the paper a fantastic--an infernal appearance, thought Ghéridanisol--which he calculated would be likely to upset Boris.

Perhaps it was done in play, but it succeeded beyond all expectation. Boris blushed crimson, said nothing, looked right and left, and failed to see Ghéridanisol, who was watching him from behind the door. Boris had no reason to suspect him, and could not understand how the talisman came to be there; it was as though it had fallen from heaven--or rather, risen up from hell. Boris was old enough to shrug his shoulders, no doubt, at these schoolboy bedevilments; but they stirred troubled waters. Boris took the talisman and slipped it into his pocket. All the rest of the day, the recollection of his “magic” practices haunted him. He struggled until evening with unholy solicitations and then, as there was no longer anything to support him in his struggle, he fell.

He felt that he was going to his ruin, sinking further and further away from Heaven; but he took pleasure in so falling--found in his very fall itself the stuff of his enjoyment.

And yet, in spite of his misery, in the depths of his dereliction, he kept such stores of tenderness, his companions’ contempt caused him suffering so keen, that he would have dared anything, however dangerous, however foolhardy, for the sake of a little consideration.

An opportunity soon offered.

After they had been obliged to give up their traffic in false coins, Ghéridanisol, George and Phiphi did not long remain unoccupied. The ridiculous pranks with which they amused themselves for the first few days were merely stop-gaps. Ghéridanisol’s imagination soon invented something with more stuff to it.