Chapter XX: Edouard’s Journal 363 (6)

“Which doesn’t prevent me from being your best friend ... as you see.”

“And that’s what’s called wit in Paris,” said Lilian, who had joined them. “Take care, Robert; there’s nothing fades quicker.”

“Don’t be alarmed, dear lady; words only fade when they’re printed.”

They took their places in the car and drove off. As their conversation continued to be very witty, it is useless to record it here. They sat down to table on the terrace of a hotel overlooking a garden where the shades of night were gathering. Under cover of the evening, their talk grew slower and graver; urged on by Lilian and Robert, Vincent found himself at last the only speaker.

XVII

THE EVENING AT RAMBOUILLET

“I SHOULD take more interest in animals if I were less interested in men,” Robert had said. And Vincent had replied:

“Perhaps you think them too different. Every single one of the great discoveries in zoology has left its mark upon the study of man. The whole subject is interlinked and interdependent, and I believe that a novelist who also prides himself upon being a psychologist can never turn aside his eyes from the spectacle of nature and remain ignorant of her laws without paying for it. In the Goncourts’ Journal, which you gave me to read, I fell upon an account of a visit they paid to the Zoological houses in the Jardin des Plantes, in which your charming authors deplore Nature’s--or the Lord’s--lack of imagination. This paltry blasphemy merely serves to show up the stupidity and incomprehension of their small minds. On the contrary, what astonishing diversity! It seems as if Nature had essayed one after the other every possible manner of living and moving, as if she had taken advantage of every permission granted by matter and its laws. What a lesson can be read in the progressive abandonment of certain palæontological experiments which proved irrational and inelegant; the economy which has enabled some forms to survive explains why the others were abandoned. Botany is instructive, too. When I examine a plant, I observe that at the place where each leaf springs from the stem, a bud lies sheltered, which is capable in its turn of shooting into life the following year. When I remark that out of all these buds, two at most are destined to come to anything, and that by the very fact of their growth they condemn all the others to atrophy, I cannot help thinking that the case is the same with men. The buds which develop naturally are always the terminal buds--that is to say, those that are farthest away from the parent trunk. It is only by pruning or layering that the sap is driven back and so forced to give life to those germs which are nearest the trunk and which would otherwise have lain dormant. And in this manner, the most recalcitrant plants, which, if left to themselves, would no doubt have produced nothing but leaves, are induced to bear fruit. Oh! an orchard or a garden is an excellent school! and a horticulturist would often make the best of pedagogues! There is more to be learnt, if one can use one’s eyes, in a poultry-yard, or a kennel, or an aquarium, or a rabbit warren, or a stable, than in all your books, or even, believe me, in the society of men, where everything is more or less sophisticated.”

Then Vincent spoke of selection. He explained how in order to obtain the finest seedlings, the ordinary plan is to choose the most robust specimens; and then he told them of the fantastic experiment of one audacious horticulturist, who, out of a horror of routine--it really seemed almost like a challenge--took it into his head, on the contrary, to select the most weakly--with the result that he obtained blooms of incomparable beauty.

Robert, who had at first listened with only half an ear, like a person who merely expects to be bored, now made no attempt to interrupt. His attention delighted Lilian, who took it as a compliment to her lover.

“You ought to tell us,” said she, “of what you were saying the other day about fish and their power of accommodation to the different amounts of salt in the sea.... That was it, wasn’t it?”

“Except for certain regions,” went on Vincent, “the sea’s degree of saltness is pretty constant; and marine fauna as a rule tolerates only very slight variations of density. But the regions I was telling you about are nevertheless not uninhabited; the regions I mean are those which are subject to intense evaporation and in which, therefore, the proportion of water to salt is greatly reduced--or, on the contrary, those where the constant inflow of fresh water dilutes the salt and, so to speak, un-salts the sea--those that are near the mouths of great rivers, or such enormous currents as the Gulf Stream. In such regions the animals called _stenohaline_ grow enfeebled to the point of perishing; and as they become incapable of defending themselves, they inevitably fall a prey to the animals called _euryhaline_, so that the _euryhalines_ live by choice on the confines of the great currents, where the density of the water varies and where the _stenohalines_ meet their death. You understand, don’t you, that the _stenos_ are those which can exist only in water whose degree of saltness is unvarying; whilst the _eurys_....”

“Are the pickles,” interrupted Robert,[3] who always referred everything back to himself, and only took an interest in that part of a theory which he could turn to account.

“Most of them are ferocious,” added Vincent gravely.

“I told you it was better than any novel!” cried Lilian, ecstatically.

Vincent seemed transfigured--indifferent to the impression he was making. He was extraordinarily grave and went on in a lower tone as if he were talking to himself:

“The most astonishing discovery of recent times--at any rate the one that has taught me most--is the discovery of the photogenic apparatus of deep-sea creatures.”

“Oh, tell us about it!” cried Lilian, letting her cigarette go out and her ice melt on her plate.

“You know, no doubt, that the light of day does not reach very far down into the sea. Its depths are dark ... huge gulfs, which for a long time were thought to be uninhabited; then people began dragging them, and quantities of strange animals were brought up from these infernal regions--animals that were blind, it was thought. What use would the sense of sight be in the dark? Evidently they had no eyes; they wouldn’t, they couldn’t have eyes. Nevertheless, on examination it was found to people’s amazement that some of them _had_ eyes; that they almost all had eyes, and sometimes antennæ of extraordinary sensibility into the bargain. Still people doubted and wondered: why eyes with no means of seeing? Eyes that are sensitive--but sensitive to what?... And at last it was discovered that each of these animals which people at first insisted were creatures of darkness, gives forth and projects before and around it its _own_ light. Each of them shines, illuminates, irradiates. When they were brought up from the depths at night and turned out on to the ship’s deck, the darkness blazed. Moving, many-coloured fires, glowing, vibrating, changing--revolving beacon-lamps--sparkling of stars and jewels--a spectacle, say those who saw it, of unparalleled splendour.”

Vincent stopped. No one spoke for a long time.

“Let’s go home,” said Lilian suddenly; “I’m cold.”

Lady Lilian took her seat beside the chauffeur, so as to be sheltered by the glass screen. The two men at the back of the open carriage carried on their own conversation. Robert had hardly spoken during the whole of the dinner; he had listened to Vincent talking; now it was his turn.

“Fish like us, my dear boy, perish in calm waters,” said he to begin with, giving his friend a thump on the shoulder. He allowed himself a few familiarities with Vincent, but would not have suffered him to reciprocate them; for that matter, Vincent was not disposed to. “Do you know, I think you’re simply splendid! What a lecturer you’d make! Upon my word, you ought to quit doctoring. I really can’t see you prescribing laxatives and having no company but the sick. A chair of comparative biology, or something of that sort is what you want.”

“Yes,” said Vincent, “I have sometimes thought so.”

“Lilian ought to be able to manage it. She could get her friend the Prince of Monaco to interest himself in your researches. It’s his line, I believe. I must speak to her about it.”

“She has suggested it already.”

“Oh, so I see there’s no possibility of doing you a service,” said he, pretending to be vexed. “Just as I wanted to ask you one for myself, too.”

“It’s your turn to be in my debt. You think I’ve got a very short memory.”

“What? You’re still thinking of that five thousand francs? But you’ve paid it back, my dear fellow. You owe me nothing at all now--except a little friendship, perhaps.” He added these words in a voice that was almost tender, and with one hand on Vincent’s arm. “I want to appeal to it now.”

“I am listening,” said Vincent.

But at that, Passavant immediately protested, as if the impatience were Vincent’s, and not his own:

“Goodness me! What a hurry you’re in! Between this and Paris there’s time enough surely.”

Passavant was particularly skilful in the art of fathering his own words--and anything else he preferred to disown--on other people. He made a feint of dropping his subject, like an angler who, for fear of startling his trout, makes a long cast with his bait and then draws it in again by imperceptible degrees.

“A propos, thank you for sending me your brother. I was afraid you had forgotten.”

Vincent made a gesture and Robert went on:

“Have you seen him since?... Not had time, eh?... Then it’s odd you shouldn’t have asked me yet how the interview went off. At bottom, you don’t in the least care. You don’t take the faintest interest in your brother. What Olivier thinks and feels, what he is, what he wants to be, never concerns you in the least....”

“Reproaching me?” asked Vincent.

“Upon my soul, yes. I can’t understand--I can’t swallow your indifference. When you were ill at Pau, it might pass; you could only think of yourself; selfishness was part of the cure. But now.... What! you have growing up beside you a young nature quivering with life, a budding intelligence, full of promise, only waiting for a word of advice, of encouragement....”

He forgot as he spoke that he too had a brother.

Vincent, however, was no fool; the very exaggeration of this attack showed him that it was not sincere and that his companion’s indignation was merely brought forward to pave the way for something else. He waited in silence. But Robert stopped short suddenly; he had just surprised in the glimmer of Vincent’s cigarette a curious curl of his lip, which he took for irony; now there was nothing in the world he was more afraid of than being laughed at. And yet, was it really that which made him change his tone? I wonder whether the sudden intuition of a kind of connivance between Vincent and himself.... He assumed an air of perfect naturalness and started again in the tone of “there’s no need of any pretence with you”:

“Well, I had a most delightful conversation with young Olivier. I like the boy exceedingly.”

Passavant tried to catch Vincent’s expression (the night was not very dark); but he was looking fixedly in front of him.

“And now, my dear Molinier, the service I wished to ask you....”

But, here again, he felt the need of marking time, something like an actor who drops his part for a moment with the assurance that he has his audience well in hand, and wishes to prove that he has, both to himself and to them. He bent forward therefore to Lilian, and speaking in a loud voice as if to accentuate the confidential character of what he had been saying, and of what he was going to say:

“Are you sure, dear lady, that you aren’t catching cold? We have a rug here that’s doing nothing....”

Then, without waiting for an answer, he sank back into the corner of the carriage beside Vincent, and lowering his voice once more:

“This is what it is. I want to take your brother away with me this summer. Yes; I tell you so frankly; what’s the use of beating about the bush between us two?... I haven’t the honour of being acquainted with your parents and of course they wouldn’t allow Olivier to come away with me unless you were to intervene on my behalf. No doubt you’ll find a way of disposing them in my favour. You know what they’re like, I suppose, and you’ll be able to get round them. You’ll do this for me, won’t you?”

He waited a moment, and then, as Vincent kept silent, went on:

“Look here, Vincent.... I’m leaving Paris soon.... I don’t know for where as yet. I absolutely must have a secretary.... You know I’m founding a review. I have spoken about it to Olivier. He seems to me to have all the necessary qualities.... But I don’t want to look at it merely from my own selfish point of view: I also think that this will be an opportunity for him to show all his qualities. I have offered him the place of editor.... Editor of a review at his age!... You must admit that it’s unusual.”

“So very unusual, that I’m afraid my parents may be rather alarmed by it,” said Vincent at last, turning his eyes on him and looking at him fixedly.

“Yes; you’re no doubt right. Perhaps it would be better not to mention that. You might just put forward the interest and advantage it would be for him to go travelling with me, eh? Your parents must understand that at his age one wants to see the world a bit. At any rate, you’ll arrange it with them, won’t you?”

He took a breath, lighted another cigarette, and went on without changing his tone:

“And since you’re going to be so nice, I’ll try and do something for you. I think I can put you on to a thing which promises to turn out quite exceptionally.... A friend of mine in the highest banking circles is keeping it open for a few privileged persons. But please don’t mention it; not a word to Lilian. In any case I can only dispose of a very limited number of shares; I can’t offer them both to her and you... Your last night’s fifty thousand francs?...”

“I have already disposed of them,” answered Vincent rather shortly, for he remembered Lilian’s warning.

“All right, all right....” rejoined Robert quickly, as though he were a little piqued; “I’m not insisting.” Then with the air of saying: “I can’t be offended with you,” he added: “If you change your mind, send me word at once ... because after five o’clock to-morrow evening, it’ll be too late.”

Vincent’s admiration for the Comte de Passavant had become much greater since he had ceased to take him seriously.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Robert here makes a pun impossible to translate. _Dessalé_ (literally _unsalted_) is a slang expression meaning something like _unscrupulous_.

--Translator’s note.]

XVIII

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: SECOND VISIT TO LA PÉROUSE

_Two o’clock._ Lost my suit-case. Serves me right. There was nothing in it I cared about but my journal. But I cared about that too much. In reality, very much amused by the adventure. All the same, I should like to have my papers back again. Who will read them?... Perhaps now that I have lost them, I exaggerate their importance. The book I have lost came to an end with my journey to England. When I was over there, I used another one, which I shall give up writing in, now that I am back in France. I shall take good care not to lose this one, in which I am writing now. It is my pocket-mirror. I cannot feel that anything that happens to me has any real existence until I see it reflected here. But since my return I seem to be walking in a dream. What a miserable uphill affair my conversation with Olivier was! And I had been looking forward to it with such joy.... I hope it has left him as ill-satisfied as it has me--as ill-satisfied with himself as with me. I was no more able to talk than to get him to talk. Oh, how difficult the slightest word is, when it involves the whole assent of the whole being! When the heart comes into play, it numbs and paralyses the brain.

_Seven o’clock._ Found my suit-case; or at any rate the person who took it. The fact that he is Olivier’s most intimate friend makes a link between us which it rests only with me to tighten. The danger is that anything unexpected amuses me so intensely that I lose sight of my goal.

Seen Laura. My desire to oblige people becomes more acute if there is a difficulty to be encountered, if a struggle has to be waged with convention, banality and custom.

Visit to old La Pérouse. It was Madame de La Pérouse who opened the door to me. I have not seen her for more than two years; she recognized me, however, at once. (I don’t suppose they have many visitors.) She herself for that matter is very little changed; but (is it because I have a prejudice against her?) I thought her features harder, her expression sourer, her smile falser than ever.

“I am afraid Monsieur de La Pérouse is in no state to receive you,” said she at once, with the obvious desire of getting me to herself; then, taking advantage of her deafness in order to answer before I had questioned her:

“No, no; you’re not disturbing me in the least. Do come in.”

She showed me into the room where La Pérouse gives his music lessons, the two windows of which look on to the courtyard. And as soon as she had got me safely inside:

“I am particularly glad to have a word with you alone. Monsieur de La Pérouse--I know what an old and faithful friend of his you are--is in a state which causes me great anxiety. Couldn’t you persuade him to take more care of himself? He listens to you; as for me, I might as well talk to the winds.”

And thereupon she entered upon an endless series of recriminations: the old gentleman refuses to take care of himself, simply in order to annoy her; he does everything he oughtn’t to do and nothing that he ought; he goes out in all weathers and will never consent to put on a muffler; he refuses to eat at meals--“Monsieur isn’t hungry”--and nothing she can contrive tempts his appetite; but at night, he gets up and turns the kitchen upside down, cooking himself some mess or other.

I have no doubt the old lady didn’t invent anything; I could make out from her tale that it was her interpretation alone which gave an offensive meaning to the most innocent little facts and that reality had cast a monstrous shadow on the walls of her narrow brain. But does not her old husband on his side misinterpret all his wife’s attentions? She thinks herself a martyr, while he takes her for a torturer. As for judging them, understanding them, I give it up; or rather, as always happens, the better I understand them, the more tempered my judgment of them becomes. But this remains--that here are two beings tied to each other for life and causing each other abominable suffering. I have often noticed with married couples how intolerably irritating the slightest protuberance of character in the one may be to the other, because in the course of life in common it continually rubs up against the same place. And if the rub is reciprocal, married life is nothing but a hell.

Beneath her smoothly parted black wig, which makes the features of her chalky face look harder still, with her long black mittens, from which protrude little claw-like fingers, Madame de La Pérouse has the appearance of a harpy.

“He accuses me of spying on him,” she continued. “He has always needed a great deal of sleep; but at night he makes a show of going to bed, and then when he thinks I am fast asleep, he gets up again; he muddles about among his old papers, and sometimes stays up till morning reading his late brother’s letters and crying over them. And he wants me to bear it all without a word!”

Then she went on to complain that he wanted to make her go into a home; which would be all the more painful to her, she added, as he was quite incapable of living alone and doing without her care. This was said in a tearful tone, which was only too obviously hypocritical.

Whilst she was continuing her grievances, the drawing-room door opened gently behind her and La Pérouse came in, without her hearing him. At his wife’s last words he smiled at me ironically, and touched his head with his hand to signify she was mad. Then, with an impatience--a brutality even--of which I should not have thought him capable, and which seemed to justify the old woman’s accusations (but it was due too to his having to raise his voice to a shout in order to make himself heard):

“Come, Madam,” he cried, “you ought to understand that you are tiring this gentleman with your talk. He didn’t come to see you. Leave the room.”

The old lady protested that the arm-chair she was sitting in was her own and that she was not going to quit it.

“In that case,” went on La Pérouse with a grim chuckle, “_we_ will leave _you_.” Then, turning to me, he repeated in gentler tones, “come, let us leave her.”

I made a sketchy and embarrassed bow, and followed him into the next room--the same one in which I had paid him my last visit.

“I am glad you heard her,” he said; “that’s what it’s like the whole day long.”

He shut the window.

“There’s such a noise in the street, one can’t hear oneself speak. I spend my time shutting the windows and Madame de La Pérouse spends hers opening them again. She declares she’s stifling. She always exaggerates. She refuses to realize that it’s hotter out of doors than in. And yet I’ve got a little thermometer; but when I show it to her, she says that figures prove nothing. She wants to be right even when she knows she’s wrong. Her main object in life is to annoy me.”

He himself, while he was speaking, seemed to me a little off his balance; he went on with growing excitement:

“Everything she does amiss in life she sets down as a grievance against me. All her judgments are warped. I’ll just explain to you how it is: You know our impressions of outside images come to us reversed and that there’s an apparatus in our brains which sets them right again. Well, Madame de La Pérouse has no such apparatus for setting them right. In her brain they _remain_ upside down. You can see for yourself how painful it is.”

It was certainly a great relief to him to explain himself and I took care not to interrupt him. He went on:

“Madame de La Pérouse has always eaten much too much. Well, now she makes out that it’s I who eat too much. If she sees me presently with a bit of chocolate (it’s my chief nourishment) she’ll be certain to mutter, ‘Munching again!...’ She spies on me. She accuses me of getting up in the night to eat on the sly, because she once surprised me making myself a cup of chocolate in the kitchen.... What am I to do? When I see her opposite me at table, falling ravenously upon her food, as she does, it takes away my appetite entirely. Then she declares I’m pretending to be fastidious just to torment her.”

He paused, and then in a sort of lyrical outburst:

“Her reproaches amaze me!... For instance, when she is suffering from her sciatica, I condole with her. Then she stops me, shrugs her shoulders and says: ‘Don’t pretend you have a heart.’ Everything I do or say is in order to give her pain.”

We had seated ourselves, but all the time he was speaking, he kept getting up and sitting down again, in a state of morbid restlessness.

“Would you believe that in each of these rooms there are some pieces of furniture which belong to her and others to me? You saw her just now with her arm-chair. She says to the charwoman, when she’s doing the room, “No, that’s Monsieur’s chair; don’t touch that.” And the other day, when by mistake I put a bound music-book on a little table which belongs to her, Madam knocked it on to the ground. Its corners were broken.... Oh, it can’t last much longer.... But, listen....”

He seized me by the arm, and lowering his voice:

“I have taken steps. She is continually threatening me if I ‘go on!’ to take refuge in a home. I have set aside a certain sum of money which ought to be enough to pay for her at Sainte-Périne’s; I hear it’s an excellent place. The few lessons I still give, bring me in hardly anything. In a little time I shall be at the end of my resources; I should be forced to break into this sum--and I’m determined not to. So I have made a resolution.... It will be in a little over three months. Yes; I have fixed the date. If you only knew what a relief it is to think that every hour it draws nearer.”

He had bent towards me; he bent closer still:

“And I have put aside a Government bond. Oh, it’s not much. But I couldn’t do more. Madame de La Pérouse doesn’t know about it. It’s in my bureau in an envelope directed to you, with the necessary instructions. I know nothing about business, but a solicitor whom I consulted, told me that the interest could be paid directly to my grandson, until he is of age, and that then he would have the security. I thought it wouldn’t be too great a tax on your friendship to ask you to see that this is done. I have so little confidence in solicitors!... And even, if you wished to make me quite easy, you would take charge of the envelope at once.... You will, won’t you?... I’ll go and fetch it.”

He trotted out in his usual fashion and came back with a large envelope in his hand.

“You’ll excuse me for having sealed it; for form’s sake,” said he. “Take it.”

I glanced at it and saw under my name the words “To be opened after my death” written in printed letters.

“Put it in your pocket quick, so that I may know it’s safe. Thank you.... Oh, I was so longing for you to come!...”

I have often experienced that, in moments as solemn as this, all human emotion is transformed into an almost mystic ecstasy, into a kind of enthusiasm, in which my whole being is magnified, or rather liberated from all selfishness, as though dispossessed of itself and depersonalized. Those who have never experienced this will certainly not understand me. But I felt that La Pérouse understood. Any protestation on my part would have been superfluous, would have seemed unbecoming, I thought, and I contented myself with pressing the hand which he gave me. His eyes were shining with a strange brightness. In his free hand, in which he had at first been holding the envelope, was another piece of paper.

“I have written his address down here. For I know now where he is. At Saas-Fée. Do you know it? It’s in Switzerland. I looked for it on the map, but I couldn’t find it.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a little village near the Matterhorn.”

“Is it very far?”

“Not so far but that I might perhaps go there.”

“Really? Would you really?... Oh, how good you are!” said he. “As for me, I’m too old. And besides, I can’t because of his mother.... All the same, I think....” He hesitated for a word, then went on: “that I should depart more easily, if only I had been able to see him.”

“My poor friend.... Everything that is humanly possible to do to bring him to you, I will do. You shall see little Boris, I promise you.”

“Thank you!... Thank you!”

He pressed me convulsively in his arms.

“But promise me that you won’t think of...”

“Oh, that’s another matter,” said he, interrupting me abruptly. Then immediately and as if he were trying to prevent me from going on by distracting my attention:

“What do you think, the other day, the mother of one of my pupils insisted on taking me to the theatre! About a month ago. It was a matinée at the _Théâtre Français_. I hadn’t been inside a theatre for more than twenty years. They were giving _Hernani_ by Victor Hugo. You know it? It seems that it was very well acted. Everybody was in raptures. As for me, I suffered indescribably. If politeness hadn’t kept me there, I shouldn’t have been able to stay it out.... We were in a box. My friends did their best to calm me. I wanted to apostrophize the audience. Oh! how can people? How can people?...”

Not understanding at first what it was he objected to, I asked:

“You thought the actors very bad?”

“Of course. But how can people represent such abominations on the stage?... And the audience applauded. And there were children in the theatre--children, brought there by their parents, who knew the play.... Monstrous! And that, in a theatre subsidized by the State!”

The worthy man’s indignation amused me. By now I was almost laughing. I protested that there could be no dramatic art without a portrayal of the passions. In his turn, he declared that the portrayal of the passions must necessarily be an undesirable example. The discussion continued in this way for some time; and as I was comparing this portrayal of the passions to the effect of letting loose the brass instruments in an orchestra:

“For instance, the entry of the trombones in such and such a symphony of Beethoven’s which you admire....”

“But I don’t, I don’t admire the entry of the trombones,” cried he, with extraordinary violence. “Why do you want to make me admire what disturbs me?”

His whole body was trembling. The indignant--the almost hostile tone of his voice surprised me and seemed to astonish even himself, for he went on more calmly:

“Have you observed that the whole effect of modern music is to make bearable, and even agreeable, certain harmonies which we used to consider discords?”

“Exactly,” I rejoined. “Everything must finally resolve into--be reduced to harmony.”

“Harmony!” he repeated, shrugging his shoulders. “All that I can see in it is familiarization with evil--with sin. Sensibility is blunted; purity is tarnished; reactions are less vivid; one tolerates; one accepts....”

“To listen to you, one would never dare wean a child.”

But he went on without hearing me: “If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one’s youth, one’s greatest indignation would be for what one has become.”

It was impossible to start on a teleological argument; I tried to bring him back to his own ground:

“But you don’t pretend to restrict music to the mere expression of serenity, do you? In that case, a single chord would suffice--a perfect and continuous chord.”

He took both my hands in his, and in a burst of ecstasy, his eyes rapt in adoration, he repeated several times over:

“A perfect and continuous chord; yes, yes; a perfect and continuous chord.... But our whole universe is a prey to discord,” he added sadly.

I took my leave. He accompanied me to the door and as he embraced me, murmured again:

“Oh! How long shall we have to wait for the resolution of the chord?”

SECOND PART

SAAS-FÉE

I

FROM BERNARD TO OLIVIER

Monday

MY DEAR OLD OLIVIER,

First I must tell you that I’ve cut the “bachot.” I expect you understood as much when I didn’t turn up. I shall go in for it next October. An unparalleled opportunity to go travelling was offered me. I jumped at it and I’m not sorry I did. I had to make up my mind at once--without taking time to reflect--without even saying good-bye to you. A propos, my travelling companion tells me to say how sorry he is he had to leave without seeing you again. For do you know who carried me off? You’ve guessed it already.... It was Edouard--yes! that same uncle of yours, whom I met the very day he arrived in Paris, in rather extraordinary and sensational circumstances, which I’ll tell you about some day. But everything in this adventure is extraordinary, and when I think of it my head whirls. Even now, I can hardly believe it is true and that I am really here in Switzerland with Edouard and.... Well! I see I must tell you the whole story, but mind you tear my letter up and never breathe a word about it to a soul.

Just think, the poor woman your brother Vincent abandoned, the one you heard sobbing outside your door (I must say, it was idiotic of you not to open it) turns out to be a great friend of Edouard’s and moreover is actually a daughter of Vedel’s and a sister of your friend Armand’s. I oughtn’t to be writing you all this, because a woman’s honour is at stake, but I should burst if I didn’t tell someone.... So, once more, don’t breathe a word! You know that she married recently; perhaps you know that shortly after her marriage she fell ill and went for a cure to the South of France. That’s where she met Vincent--in the sanatorium at Pau. Perhaps you know that, too. But what you don’t know is that there were consequences. Yes, old boy! She’s going to have a child and it’s your clumsy ass of a brother’s fault. She came back to Paris and didn’t dare show herself to her parents; still less go back to her husband. And then your brother, as you know, chucked her. I’ll spare you my comments; but I can tell you that Laura Douviers has not uttered a word against him, either of reproach or resentment. On the contrary, she says all she can think of to excuse his conduct. In a word, she’s a very fine woman, with a very beautiful nature. And another very fine person is Edouard. As she didn’t know what to do or where to go, he proposed taking her to Switzerland; and at the same time he proposed that I should go with them, because he didn’t care about travelling _tête à tête_, as he is only on terms of friendship with her. So off we started. It was all settled in a jiffy--just time to pack one’s suit-case and for me to get a kit (for you know I left home without a thing). You can’t imagine how nice Edouard was about it; and what’s more he kept repeating all the time that it was I who was doing him a service. Yes, really, old boy, you were quite right, your uncle’s perfectly splendid.

The journey was rather troublesome, because Laura got very tired and her condition (she’s in her third month) necessitated a great deal of care; and the place where we had settled to go (it would be too long to explain why) is rather difficult to get at. Besides, Laura very often made things more complicated by refusing to take precautions; she had to be forced; she kept repeating that an accident was the best thing that could happen to her. You can imagine how we fussed over her. Oh, Olivier, how wonderful she is! I don’t feel the same as I did before I knew her, and there are thoughts which I no longer dare put into words and impulses which I check, because I should be ashamed not to be worthy of her. Yes, really, when one is with her, one feels forced, as it were, to think nobly. That doesn’t prevent the conversation between the three of us from being very free--Laura isn’t at all prudish--and we talk about anything; but I assure you that when I am with her, there are heaps of things I don’t feel inclined to scoff at any more and which seem to me now very serious.

You’ll be thinking I’m in love with her. Well, old boy, you aren’t far wrong. Crazy, isn’t it? Can you imagine me in love with a woman who is going to have a child, whom naturally I respect and wouldn’t venture to touch with my finger-tip? Hardly on the road to becoming a rake, am I?...

When we reached Saas-Fé, after no end of difficulties (we had a carrying chair for Laura, as it’s impossible to get here by driving), we found there were only two rooms available in the hotel--a big one with two beds, and a little one, which it was settled with the hotel-keeper should be for me--for Laura passes as Edouard’s wife, so as to conceal her identity; but every night she sleeps in the little room and I join Edouard in his. Every morning there’s a regular business carrying things backwards and forwards, for the sake of the servants. Fortunately the two rooms communicate, so that makes it easier.

We’ve been here six days; I didn’t write to you sooner because I was rather in a state of bewilderment to begin with, and I had to get straight with myself. I am only just beginning to find my bearings.

Edouard and I have already done one or two little excursions in the mountains. Very amusing; but to tell the truth, I don’t much care for this country. Edouard doesn’t either. He says the scenery is “declamatory.” That’s exactly it.

The best thing about the place is the air--virgin air, which purifies one’s lungs. And then we don’t want to leave Laura alone for too long at a time, for of course she can’t come with us. The company in the hotel is rather amusing. There are people of all sorts of nationalities. The person we see most of is a Polish woman doctor, who is spending the holidays here with her daughter and a little boy she is in charge of. In fact, it’s because of this little boy that we have come here. He’s got a kind of nervous illness, which the doctor is treating according to a new method. But what does the little fellow most good (he’s really a very attractive little thing) is that he’s madly in love with the doctor’s daughter, who is a year or two older than he and the prettiest creature I have ever seen in my life. They never leave each other from morning till night. And they are so charming together that no one ever thinks of chaffing them.

I haven’t worked much and not opened a book since I left; but I’ve thought a lot. Edouard’s conversation is extraordinarily interesting. He doesn’t speak to me much personally, though he pretends to treat me as his secretary; but I listen to him talking to the others; especially to Laura, with whom he likes discussing his ideas. You can’t imagine how much I learn by it. There are days when I say to myself that I ought to take notes; but I think I can remember it all. There are days when I long for you madly; I say to myself that it’s you who ought to be here; but I can’t be sorry for what’s happened to me, nor wish for anything to be different. At any rate, you may be sure that I never forget it’s thanks to you that I know Edouard and that it’s to you I owe my happiness. When you see me again, I think you’ll find me changed; I remain, nevertheless, and more faithfully and devotedly than ever

Your friend.

P.S. _Wednesday._ We have this moment come back from a tremendous expedition. Climbed the Hallalin--guides, ropes, glaciers, precipices, avalanches, etc. Spent the night in a refuge in the middle of the snows, packed in with other tourists; needless to say we didn’t sleep a wink. The next morning we started before dawn.... Well, old boy, I’ll never speak ill of Switzerland again. When one gets up there, out of sight of all culture, of all vegetation, of everything that reminds one of the avarice and stupidity of men, one feels inclined to shout, to sing, to laugh, to cry, to fly, to dive head foremost into the sky, or to fall on one’s knees. Yours

Bernard.

Bernard was much too spontaneous, too natural, too pure--he knew too little of Olivier, to suspect the flood of hideous feelings his letter would raise in his friend’s heart--a kind of tidal wave, in which pique, despair and rage were mingled. He felt himself supplanted in Bernard’s affection and in Edouard’s. The friendship of his two friends left no room for his. One sentence in particular of Bernard’s letter tortured him--a sentence which Bernard would never have written had he imagined all that Olivier read into it: “In the same room,” he repeated to himself--and the serpent of jealousy unrolled its abominable coils and writhed in his heart. “They sleep in the same room!” What did he not imagine? His mind filled with impure visions which he did not even try to banish. He was not jealous in particular either of Edouard or of Bernard; but of the two. He pictured each of them in turn or both simultaneously, and at the same time envied them. He received the letter one forenoon. “Ah! so that’s how it is ...” he kept saying to himself all the rest of the day. That night the fiends of hell inhabited him. Early next morning he rushed off to Robert’s. The Comte de Passavant was waiting for him.

II

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: LITTLE BORIS