Chapter I: HAVE had no difficulty in finding little Boris. The day after our

arrival, he appeared on the hotel terrace and began looking at the mountains through a telescope which stands outside, mounted on a swivel for the use of the tourists. I recognized him at once. A little girl, rather older than Boris, joined him after a short time. I was sitting near by in the drawing-room, of which the French window was standing open, and I did not lose a word of their conversation. Though I wanted very much to speak to him, I thought it more prudent to wait till I could make the acquaintance of the little girl’s mother--a Polish woman doctor, who is in charge of Boris and keeps very careful watch over him. Little Bronja is an exquisite creature; she must be about fifteen. She wears her fair hair in two thick plaits, which reach to her waist; the expression of her eyes and the sound of her voice are more angelic than human. I write down the two children’s conversation:

“Boris, Mamma had rather we didn’t touch the telescope. Won’t you come for a walk?”

“Yes, I will. No, I won’t.”

The two contradictory sentences were uttered in the same breath. Bronja only answered the second:

“Why not?”

“Because it’s too hot, it’s too cold.” He had come away from the telescope.

“Oh, Boris, do be nice! You know Mamma would like us to go out. Where’s your hat?”

“Vibroskomenopatof. Blaf blaf.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why do you say it?”

“So that you shouldn’t understand.”

“If it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t matter about not understanding it.”

“But if it did mean something, anyhow you wouldn’t be able to understand.”

“When one talks it’s in order to be understood.”

“Shall we play at making words in order to understand them only us?”

“First of all, try to speak good grammar.”

“My mamma can speak French, English, Roumanian, Turkish, Polish, Italoscope, Perroquese and Xixitou.”

All this was said very fast, in a kind of lyrical ecstasy. Bronja began to laugh.

“Oh, Boris, why are you always saying things that aren’t true?”

“Why do you never believe what I say?”

“I believe it when it’s true.”

“How do you know when it’s true? I believed _you_ the other day when you told me about the angels. I say, Bronja, do you think that, if I were to pray very hard, I should see them too?”

“Perhaps you’ll see them if you get out of the habit of telling lies, and if God wants to show them to you; but God won’t show them to you if you pray to him only for that. There are heaps of beautiful things we should see if we weren’t too naughty.”

“Bronja, you aren’t naughty; that’s why you can see the angels. I shall always be naughty.”

“Why don’t you try not to be? Shall we go to--” some place whose name I didn’t know--“and pray together to God and the Blessèd Virgin to help you not to be naughty?”

“Yes. No; listen--let’s take a stick; you shall hold one end and I the other. I will shut my eyes, and I promise not to open them until we get to the place.”

They walked away, and as they were going down the terrace steps I heard Boris again:

“Yes, no, not that end. Wait till I’ve wiped it.”

“Why?”

“I’ve touched it.”

Mme. Sophroniska came up to me as I was sitting alone, just finishing my early breakfast and wondering how I could enter into conversation with her. I was surprised to see that she was holding my last book in her hand; she asked me with the most affable smile whether it was the author whom she had the pleasure of speaking to; then she immediately launched upon a long appreciation of my book. Her judgment--both praise and criticism--seemed to me more intelligent than what I am accustomed to hearing, though her point of view is anything but literary. She told me she was almost exclusively interested in questions of psychology and in anything that may shed a new light on the human soul. “But how rare it is,” she added, “to find a poet, or dramatist or novelist, who is not satisfied with a ready-made psychology--” the only kind, I told her, that satisfies their readers.

Little Boris has been confided to her for the holidays by his mother. I took care not to let her know my reasons for being interested in him.

“He is very delicate,” said Mme. Sophroniska. “His mother’s companionship is not at all good for him. She wanted to come to Saas-Fée with us, but I would only consent to look after the child on condition that she left him entirely to my care; otherwise it would be impossible to answer for his being cured. Just imagine,” she went on, “she keeps the poor little thing in a state of continual excitement--the very thing to develop the worst kind of nervous troubles in him. She has been obliged to earn her living since his father’s death. She used to be a pianist and, I must say, a marvellous performer; but her playing was too subtle to please the ordinary public. She decided to take to singing at concerts, at casinos--to go on the stage. She used to take Boris with her to her dressing-room; I believe the artificial atmosphere of the theatre greatly contributed to upset the child’s balance. His mother is very fond of him, but to tell the truth it is most desirable that he shouldn’t live with her.”

“What is the matter with him exactly?” I asked.

She began to laugh:

“Is it the name of his illness you want to know? Oh, you wouldn’t be much the wiser if I were to give you a fine scientific name for it.”

“Just tell me what he suffers from.”

“He suffers from a number of little troubles, tics, manias, which are the sign of what people call a ‘nervous child,’ and which are usually treated by rest, open air and hygiene. It is certain that a robust organism would not allow these disturbances to show themselves. But if debility favours them, it does not exactly cause them. I think their origin can always be traced to some early shock, brought about by a circumstance it is important to discover. The sufferer, as soon as he becomes conscious of this cause, is half cured. But this cause, more often than not, escapes his memory, as if it were concealing itself in the shadow of his illness; it is in this refuge that I look for it, so as to bring it out into the daylight--into the field of vision, I mean. I believe that the look of a clear-sighted eye cleanses the mind, as a ray of light purifies infected water.”

I repeated to Sophroniska the conversation I had overheard the day before, from which it appeared to me that Boris was very far from being cured.

“It’s because I am far from knowing all that I need to know of Boris’s past. It’s only a short while ago that I began my treatment.”

“Of what does it consist?”

“Oh, simply in letting him talk. Every day I spend one or two hours with him. I question him, but very little. The important thing is to gain his confidence. I know a good many things already. I divine a good many others. But the child is still on the defensive; he is ashamed; if I insisted too strongly, tried to force his confidence too quickly, I should be going against the very thing I want to arrive at--a complete surrender. It would set his back up. So long as I shall not have vanquished his reserve, his modesty....”

An inquisition of this kind seemed to me so much in the nature of an assault that it was with difficulty I refrained from protesting; but my curiosity carried the day.

“Do you mean that you expect the child to make you any shameful revelations?”

It was she who protested.

“Oh, shameful? There’s no more shame in it than allowing oneself to be sounded. I need to know everything and particularly what is most carefully hidden. I must bring Boris to make a complete confession; until I can do that, I shall not be able to cure him.”

“You suspect then that he has a confession to make? Are you quite sure--forgive me--that you won’t yourself suggest what you want him to confess?”

“That is a preoccupation which must never leave me, and it is for that reason I work so slowly. I have seen clumsy magistrates who have unintentionally prompted a child to give evidence that was pure invention from beginning to end, and the child, under the pressure of the magistrate’s examination, tells lies in perfect good faith and makes people believe in entirely imaginary misdeeds. My part is to suggest nothing. Extraordinary patience is needed.”

“It seems to me that in such cases the value of the method depends upon the value of the operator.”

“I shouldn’t have dared say so. I assure you that after a little practice one gets extraordinarily clever at it; it’s a kind of divination--intuition, if you prefer. However, one sometimes goes off on a wrong track; the important thing is not to persist in it. Do you know how all our conversations begin? Boris starts by telling me what he has dreamt the night before.”

“How do you know he doesn’t invent?”

“And even if he did invent!... All the inventions of a diseased imagination reveal something.”

She was silent for a moment or two, and then: “‘_Invention_,’ ‘_diseased imagination_’ ... no, no, that’s not it. Words betray one’s meaning. Boris dreams aloud in my presence. Every morning he consents to remain during one hour in that state of semi-somnolence in which the images which present themselves to us escape from the control of our reason. They no longer group and associate themselves according to ordinary logic, but according to unforeseen affinities; above all, they answer to a mysterious inward compulsion--which is the very thing I want to discover; and the ramblings of this child are far more instructive than the most intelligent analysis of the most conscious of minds could be. Many things escape the reason, and a person who should attempt to understand life by merely using his reason would be like a man trying to take hold of a flame with the tongs. Nothing remains but a bit of charred wood, which immediately stops flaming.”

She was again silent and began to turn over the pages of my book.

“How very little you penetrate into the human soul!” she cried; then she laughed and added abruptly:

“Oh, I don’t mean you in particular; when I say _you_, I mean novelists in general. Most of your characters seem to be built on piles; they have neither foundations nor sub-soil. I really think there’s more truth to be found in the poets; everything which is created by the intelligence alone is false. But now I am talking of what isn’t my business.... Do you know what puzzles me in Boris? I believe him to be exceedingly pure.”

“Why should that puzzle you?”

“Because I don’t know where to look for the source of the evil. Nine times out of ten a derangement like his has its origin in some sort of ugly secret.”

“Such a one exists in every one of us, perhaps,” said I, “but it doesn’t make us all ill, thank Heaven!”

At that Mme. Sophroniska rose; she had just seen Bronja pass by the window.

“Look!” said she, pointing her out to me; “there is Boris’s real doctor. She is looking for me; I must leave you; but I shall see you again, shan’t I?”

For that matter, I understand what Sophroniska reproaches the novel for not giving her; but in this case, certain reasons of art escape her--higher reasons, which make me think that a good novelist will never be made out of a good naturalist.

I have introduced Laura to Mme. Sophroniska. They seem to take to each other, and I am glad of it. I have fewer scruples about keeping to myself when I know they are chatting together. I am sorry that Bernard has no companion of his own age; but at any rate the preparation for his examination keeps him occupied for several hours a day. I have been able to start work again on my novel.

III

EDOUARD EXPLAINS HIS THEORY OF THE NOVEL

NOTWITHSTANDING first appearances, and though each of them did his best, Uncle Edouard and Bernard were only getting on together fairly well. Laura was not feeling satisfied, either. How should she be? Circumstances had forced her to assume a part for which she was not fitted; her respectability made her feel uncomfortable in it. Like those loving and docile creatures who make the most devoted wives, she had need of the proprieties to lean on, and felt herself without strength now that she was without the frame of her proper surroundings. Her situation as regards Edouard seemed to her more and more false every day. What she suffered from most and what she found unendurable, if she let her mind dwell on it, was the thought that she was living at the expense of this protector--or rather that she was giving him nothing in exchange--or more exactly, that Edouard asked nothing of her in exchange, while she herself felt ready to give him everything. “Benefits,” says Tacitus, through the mouth of Montaigne, “are only agreeable as long as one can repay them”; no doubt this is only true of noble souls, but without question Laura was one of these. She, who would have liked to give, was on the contrary continually receiving, and this irritated her against Edouard. Moreover when she went over the past in her mind, it seemed to her that Edouard had deluded her by awakening a love in her which she still felt strong within her and then by evading this love and leaving it without an object. Was not that the secret motive of her errors--of her marriage with Douviers, to which she had resigned herself, to which Edouard had led her--and then of her yielding so soon after to the solicitations of the springtime? For she must needs admit it to herself, in Vincent’s arms it was still Edouard that she sought. And as she could not understand her lover’s coldness, she accused herself of being responsible for it, and imagined that she might have vanquished him, had she had more beauty or more boldness; and as she could not succeed in hating him, it was herself she upbraided and depreciated, denying herself all value, and refusing to allow herself any reason for existing or the possession of any virtue.

Let us add further that this camping-out style of life, necessitated by the arrangement of the rooms, though it might seem amusing to her companions, hurt her delicacy in many sensitive places. And she could see no issue to the situation, which yet was one it would be difficult to prolong.

The only scrap of comfort and joy Laura was able to find in her present life, was by inventing for herself the duties of god-mother or elder sister towards Bernard. The worship of a youth so charming touched her; the adoration he paid her prevented her from slipping down that slope of self-contempt and loathing which may lead even the most irresolute creature to the extremest resolutions. Bernard, every morning that he was not called off before daybreak by an expedition into the mountains (for he loved early rising), used to spend two good hours with her reading English. The examination he was going up for in October was a convenient excuse.

It cannot be said that his secretarial duties took up much of his time. They were ill-defined. When Bernard undertook them he imagined himself already seated at a desk, writing from Edouard’s dictation, or copying out his manuscripts. Now Edouard never dictated, and his manuscripts, such as they were, remained at the bottom of his trunk; Bernard was free every hour of the day; but it only lay with Edouard to make more calls upon Bernard, who was most anxious to have his zeal made use of, so that Bernard was not particularly distressed by his want of occupation, or by the feeling that he was not earning his living--which, thanks to Edouard’s munificence, was a very comfortable one. He was quite determined not to let himself be embarrassed by scruples. He believed, I dare not say in Providence, but at any rate in his star, and that a certain amount of happiness was due to him, as the air is to the lungs which breathe it; Edouard was its dispenser in the same way as the sacred orator, according to Bossuet, is the dispenser of divine wisdom. Moreover Bernard considered the present state of affairs as merely temporary, and was convinced that some day he would be able to acquit his debt, as soon as he could bring to the mint the uncoined riches whose abundance he felt in his heart. What vexed him more was that Edouard made no demand upon certain gifts which he felt within himself and which it seemed to him Edouard lacked. “He doesn’t know how to make use of me,” thought Bernard, who thereupon checked his self-conceit and wisely added: “Worse luck!”

But then what was the reason of this uncomfortable feeling between Edouard and Bernard? Bernard seems to me to be one of those people who find their self-assurance in opposition. He could not endure that Edouard should have any ascendancy over him and, rather than yield to his influence, rebelled against it. Edouard, who never dreamed of coercing him, was alternately vexed and grieved to feel him so restive and so constantly on the alert to defend--or, at any rate, to protect--himself. He came to the pitch of doubting whether he had not committed an act of folly in taking away with him these two beings, whom he seemed only to have united in order that they should league together against him. Incapable of penetrating Laura’s secret sentiments, he took her reserve and her reticence for coldness. It would have made him exceedingly uncomfortable if he had been able to see more clearly; and Laura understood this; so that her unrequited love spent all its strength in keeping hidden and silent.

Tea-time found them as a rule all assembled in the big sitting-room; it often happened that, at their invitation, Mme. Sophroniska joined them, generally on the days when Boris and Bronja were out walking. She left them very free in spite of their youthfulness; she had perfect confidence in Bronja and knew that she was very prudent, especially with Boris, who was always particularly amenable with her. The country was quite safe; for of course there was no question of their adventuring on to the mountains, or even of their climbing the rocks near the hotel. One day when the two children had obtained leave to go to the foot of the glacier, on condition they did not leave the road, Mme. Sophroniska, who had been invited to tea, was emboldened, with Bernard’s and Laura’s encouragement, to beg Edouard to tell them about his next novel--that is, if he had no objection.

“None at all; but I can’t tell you its story.”

And yet he seemed almost to lose his temper when Laura asked him (evidently a tactless question) what the book would be like?

“Nothing!” he exclaimed; then, immediately and as if he had only been waiting for this provocation: “What is the use of doing over again what other people have done already, or what I myself have done already, or what other people might do?”

Edouard had no sooner uttered these words than he felt how improper, how outrageous and how absurd they were; at any rate they seemed to him improper and absurd; or he was afraid that this was how they would strike Bernard.

Edouard was very sensitive. As soon as he began talking of his work, and especially when other people made him talk of it, he seemed to lose his head.

He had the most perfect contempt for the usual fatuity of authors; he snuffed out his own as well as he could; but he was not unwilling to seek a reinforcement of his modesty in other people’s consideration; if this consideration failed him, modesty immediately went by the board. He attached extreme importance to Bernard’s esteem. Was it with a view to conquering this that, when Bernard was with him, he set his Pegasus prancing? It was the worst way possible. Edouard knew it; he said so to himself over and over again; but in spite of all his resolutions, as soon as he was in Bernard’s company, he behaved quite differently from what he wished, and spoke in a manner which immediately appeared absurd to him (and which indeed was so). This might almost make one suppose that he loved Bernard?... No; I think not. But a little vanity is quite as effectual in making us pose as a great deal of love.

“Is it because the novel, of all literary _genres_, is the freest, the most _lawless_,” held forth Edouard, “... is it for that very reason, for fear of that very liberty (the artists who are always sighing after liberty are often the most bewildered when they get it), that the novel has always clung to reality with such timidity? And I am not speaking only of the French novel. It is the same with the English novel; and the Russian novel, for all its throwing off of constraints, is a slave to resemblance. The only progress it looks to is to get still nearer to nature. The novel has never known that ‘formidable erosion of contours,’ as Nietzsche calls it; that deliberate avoidance of life, which gave style to the works of the Greek dramatists, for instance, or to the tragedies of the French XVIIth century. Is there anything more perfectly and deeply human than these works? But that’s just it--they are human only in their depths; they don’t pride themselves on appearing so--or, at any rate, on appearing real. They remain works of art.”

Edouard had got up, and, for fear of seeming to give a lecture, began to pour out the tea as he spoke; then he moved up and down, then squeezed a lemon into his cup, but, nevertheless, continued speaking:

“Because Balzac was a genius, and because every genius seems to bring to his art a final and conclusive solution, it has been decreed that the proper function of the novel is to rival the _état-civil_.[4] Balzac constructed his work; he never claimed to codify the novel; his article on Stendhal proves it. Rival the _état-civil_! As if there weren’t enough fools and boors in the world as it is! What have I to do with the _état-civil_? _L’état c’est moi!_ I, the artist; civil or not, my work doesn’t pretend to rival anything.”

Edouard, who was getting excited--a little factitiously, perhaps--sat down. He affected not to look at Bernard; but it was for him that he was speaking. If he had been alone with him, he would not have been able to say a word; he was grateful to the two women for setting him on.

“Sometimes it seems to me there is nothing in all literature I admire so much as, for instance, the discussion between Mithridate and his two sons in Racine; it’s a scene in which the characters speak in a way we know perfectly well no father and no sons could ever have spoken in, and yet (I ought to say for that very reason) it’s a scene in which all fathers and all sons can see themselves. By localizing and specifying one restricts. It is true that there is no psychological truth unless it be particular; but on the other hand there is no art unless it be general. The whole problem lies just in that--how to express the general by the particular--how to make the particular express the general. May I light my pipe?”

“Do, do,” said Sophroniska.

“Well, I should like a novel which should be at the same time as true and as far from reality, as particular and at the same time as general, as human and as fictitious as _Athalie_, or _Tartuffe_ or _Cinna_.”

“And ... the subject of this novel?”

“It hasn’t got one,” answered Edouard brusquely, “and perhaps that’s the most astonishing thing about it. My novel hasn’t got a subject. Yes, I know, it sounds stupid. Let’s say, if you prefer it, it hasn’t got _one_ subject ... ‘a slice of life,’ the naturalist school said. The great defect of that school is that it always cuts its slice in the same direction; in time, lengthwise. Why not in breadth? Or in depth? As for me I should like not to cut at all. Please understand; I should like to put everything into my novel. I don’t want any cut of the scissors to limit its substance at one point rather than at another. For more than a year now that I have been working at it, nothing happens to me that I don’t put into it--everything I see, everything I know, everything that other people’s lives and my own teach me....”

“And the whole thing stylized into art?” said Sophroniska, feigning the most lively attention, but no doubt a little ironically. Laura could not suppress a smile. Edouard shrugged his shoulders slightly and went on:

“And even that isn’t what I want to do. What I want is to represent reality on the one hand, and on the other that effort to stylize it into art of which I have just been speaking.”

“My poor dear friend, you will make your readers die of boredom,” said Laura; as she could no longer hide her smile, she had made up her mind to laugh outright.

“Not at all. In order to arrive at this effect--do you follow me?--I invent the character of a novelist, whom I make my central figure; and the subject of the book, if you must have one, is just that very struggle between what reality offers him and what he himself desires to make of it.”

“Yes, yes; I’m beginning to see,” said Sophroniska politely, though Laura’s laugh was very near conquering her. “But you know it’s always dangerous to represent intellectuals in novels. The public is bored by them; one only manages to make them say absurdities and they give an air of abstraction to everything they touch.”

“And then I see exactly what will happen,” cried Laura; “in this novelist of yours you won’t be able to help painting yourself.”

She had lately adopted in talking to Edouard a jeering tone which astonished herself and upset Edouard all the more that he saw a reflection of it in Bernard’s mocking eyes. Edouard protested:

“No, no. I shall take care to make him very disagreeable.”

Laura was fairly started.

“That’s just it; everybody will recognize you,” she said, bursting into such hearty laughter that the others were caught by its infection.

“And is the plan of the book made up?” enquired Sophroniska, trying to regain her seriousness.

“Of course not.”

“What do you mean? Of course not!”

“You ought to understand that it’s essentially out of the question for a book of this kind to have a plan. Everything would be falsified if anything were settled beforehand. I wait for reality to dictate to me.”

“But I thought you wanted to abandon reality.”

“My novelist wants to abandon it; but I shall continually bring him back to it. In fact that will be the subject; the struggle between the facts presented by reality and the ideal reality.”

The illogical nature of his remarks was flagrant--painfully obvious to everyone. It was clear that Edouard housed in his brain two incompatible requirements and that he was wearing himself out in the desire to reconcile them.

“Have you got on far with it?” asked Sophroniska politely.

“It depends on what you mean by far. To tell the truth, of the actual book not a line has been written. But I have worked at it a great deal. I think of it every day and incessantly. I work at it in a very odd manner, as I’ll tell you. Day by day in a note-book, I note the state of the novel in my mind; yes, it’s a kind of diary that I keep as one might do of a child.... That is to say, that instead of contenting myself with resolving each difficulty as it presents itself (and every work of art is only the sum or the product of the solutions of a quantity of small difficulties), I set forth each of these difficulties and study it. My note-book contains, as it were, a running criticism of my novel--or rather of the novel in general. Just think how interesting such a note-book kept by Dickens or Balzac would be; if we had the diary of the _Education Sentimentale_ or of _The Brothers Karamazof_!--the story of the work--of its gestation! How thrilling it would be ... more interesting than the work itself....”

Edouard vaguely hoped that someone would ask him to read these notes. But not one of the three showed the slightest curiosity. Instead:

“My poor friend,” said Laura, with a touch of sadness, “it’s quite clear that you’ll never write this novel of yours.”

“Well, let me tell you,” cried Edouard impetuously, “that I don’t care. Yes, if I don’t succeed in writing the book, it’ll be because the history of the book will have interested me more than the book itself--taken the book’s place; and it’ll be a very good thing.”

“Aren’t you afraid, when you abandon reality in this way, of losing yourself in regions of deadly abstraction and of making a novel about ideas instead of about human beings?” asked Sophroniska kindly.

“And even so!” cried Edouard with redoubled energy. “Must we condemn the novel of ideas because of the groping and stumbling of the incapable people who have tried their hands at it? Up till now we have been given nothing but novels with a purpose parading as novels of ideas. But that’s not it at all, as you may imagine. Ideas ... ideas, I must confess, interest me more than men--interest me more than anything. They live; they fight; they perish like men. Of course it may be said that our only knowledge of them is through men, just as our only knowledge of the wind is through the reeds that it bends; but all the same the wind is of more importance than the reeds.”

“The wind exists independently of the reed,” ventured Bernard. His intervention made Edouard, who had long been waiting for it, start afresh with renewed spirit:

“Yes, I know; ideas exist only because of men; but that’s what’s so pathetic; they live at their expense.”

Bernard had listened to all this with great attention; he was full of scepticism and very near taking Edouard for a mere dreamer; but during the last few moments he had been touched by his eloquence and had felt his mind waver in its breath; “But,” thought Bernard, “the reed lifts its head again as soon as the wind has passed.” He remembered what he had been taught at school--that man is swayed by his passions and not by ideas. In the mean time Edouard was going on:

“What I should like to do is something like the art of fugue writing. And I can’t see why what was possible in music should be impossible in literature....”

To which Sophroniska rejoined that music is a mathematical art, and moreover that Bach, by dealing only with figures and by banishing all pathos and all humanity, had achieved an abstract _chef d’œuvre_ of boredom, a kind of astronomical temple, open only to the few rare initiated. Edouard at once protested that, for his part, he thought the temple admirable, and considered it the apex and crowning point of all Bach’s career.

“After which,” added Laura, “people were cured of the fugue for a long time to come. Human emotion, when it could no longer inhabit it, sought a dwelling place elsewhere.”

The discussion tailed off in an unprofitable argument. Bernard, who until then had kept silent, but who was beginning to fidget on his chair, at last could bear it no longer; with extreme, even exaggerated deference, as was his habit whenever he spoke to Edouard, but with a kind of sprightliness, which seemed to make a jest of his deference:

“Forgive me, sir,” said he, “for knowing the title of your book, since I learnt it through my own indiscretion--which however you have been kind enough to pass over. But the title seemed to me to announce a story.”

“Oh, tell us what the title is!” said Laura.

“Certainly, my dear Laura, if you wish it.... But I warn you that I may possibly change it. I am afraid it’s rather deceptive.... Well, tell it them, Bernard.”

“May I?... _The Counterfeiters_,” said Bernard. “But now _you_ tell us--who are these Counterfeiters?”

“Oh dear! I don’t know,” said Edouard.

Bernard and Laura looked at each other and then looked at Sophroniska. There was a long sigh; I think it was drawn by Laura.

In reality, Edouard had in the first place been thinking of certain of his fellow novelists when he began to think of _The Counterfeiters_, and in particular of the Comte de Passavant. But this attribution had been considerably widened; according as the wind blew from Rome or from elsewhere, his heroes became in turn either priests or free-masons. If he allowed his mind to follow its bent, it soon tumbled headlong into abstractions, where it was as comfortable as a fish in water. Ideas of exchange, of depreciation, of inflation, etc., gradually invaded his book (like the theory of clothes in Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_) and usurped the place of the characters. As it was impossible for Edouard to speak of this, he kept silent in the most awkward manner, and his silence, which seemed like an admission of penury, began to make the other three very uncomfortable.

“Has it ever happened to you to hold a counterfeit coin in your hands?” he asked at last.

“Yes,” said Bernard; but the two women’s “No” drowned his voice.

“Well, imagine a false ten-franc gold piece. In reality it’s not worth two sous. But it will be worth ten francs as long as no one recognizes it to be false. So if I start from the idea that....”

“But why start from an idea?” interrupted Bernard impatiently. “If you were to start from a fact and make a good exposition of it, the idea would come of its own accord to inhabit it. If I were writing _The Counterfeiters_ I should begin by showing the counterfeit coin--the little ten-franc piece you were speaking of just now.”

So saying, he pulled out of his pocket a small coin, which he flung on to the table.

“Just hear how true it rings. Almost the same sound as the real one. One would swear it was gold. I was taken in by it this morning, just as the grocer who passed it on to me had been taken in himself, he told me. It isn’t quite the same weight, I think; but it has the brightness and the sound of a real piece; it is coated with gold, so that, all the same, it is worth a little more than two sous; but it’s made of glass. It’ll wear transparent. No; don’t rub it; you’ll spoil it. One can almost see through it, as it is.”

Edouard had seized it and was considering it with the utmost curiosity.

“But where did the grocer get it from?”

“He didn’t know. He thinks he has had it in his drawer some days. He amused himself by passing it off on me to see whether I should be taken in. Upon my word, I was just going to accept it! But as he’s an honest man, he undeceived me; then he let me have it for five francs. He wanted to keep it to show to what he calls ‘amateurs.’ I thought there couldn’t be a better one than the author of _The Counterfeiters_; and it was to show you that I took it. But now that you have examined it, give it back to me! I’m sorry that the reality doesn’t interest you.”

“Yes, it does”; said Edouard, “but it disturbs me too.”

“That’s a pity,” rejoined Bernard.

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL

_Tuesday evening._--Sophroniska, Bernard and Laura have been questioning me about my novel. Why did I let myself go to speak of it? I said nothing but stupidities. Interrupted fortunately by the return of the two children. They were red and out of breath, as if they had been running. As soon as she came in, Bronja fell into her mother’s arms; I thought she was going to burst into sobs.

“Mamma!” she cried, “do scold Boris. He wanted to undress and lie down in the snow without any clothes on.”

Sophroniska looked at Boris, who was standing in the door-way, his head down, his eyes with a look in them of almost hatred; she seemed not to notice the little boy’s strange expression, but with admirable calm:

“Listen, Boris,” she said. “That’s a thing you mustn’t do in the evening. If you like we’ll go there to-morrow morning; first of all you must begin with bare feet....”

She was gently stroking her daughter’s forehead; but the little girl suddenly fell on the ground and began rolling about in convulsions. It was rather alarming. Sophroniska lifted her and laid her on the sofa. Boris stood motionless, watching the scene with a dazed, bewildered expression.

Sophroniska’s methods of education seem to me excellent in theory, but perhaps she miscalculates the children’s powers of resistance.

“You behave,” said I, when I was alone with her a little later (after the evening meal I had gone to enquire after Bronja, who was too unwell to come downstairs), “as if good were always sure to triumph over evil.”

“It is true,” she said, “I firmly believe that good must triumph. I have confidence.”

“And yet, through excess of confidence you might make a mistake....”

“Every time I have made a mistake, it has been because my confidence was not great enough. To-day, when I allowed the children to go out, I couldn’t help showing them I was a little uneasy. They felt it. All the rest followed from that.”

She had taken my hand.

“You don’t seem to believe in the virtue of convictions.... I mean in their power as an active principle.”

“You are right,” I said laughing. “I am not a mystic.”

“Well, as for me,” she cried in an admirable burst of enthusiasm, “I believe with my whole soul that without mysticism nothing great, nothing fine can be accomplished in this world.”

Discovered the name of Victor Strouvilhou in the visitors’ book. From what the hotel-keeper says, he must have left Saas-Fée two days before our arrival, after staying here nearly a month. I should have been curious to see him again. No doubt Sophroniska talked to him. I must ask her about him.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: The state records of each individual citizen, in which are noted the legal facts of his existence.]

IV

BERNARD AND LAURA

“I WANTED to ask you, Laura,” said Bernard, “whether you think there exists anything in this world that mayn’t become a subject of doubt.... So much so, that I wonder whether one couldn’t take doubt itself as a starting point; for that, at any rate, will never fail us. I may doubt the reality of everything, but not the reality of my doubt. I should like.... Forgive me if I express myself pedantically--I am not pedantic by nature, but I have just left the _lycée_, and you have no idea what a stamp is impressed on the mind by the philosophical training of our last year; I will get rid of it I promise you.”

“Why this parenthesis? You would like...?”

“I should like to write a story of a person who starts by listening to everyone, who consults everyone like Panurge, before deciding to do anything; after having discovered that the opinions of all these people are contradictory in every point, he makes up his mind to consult no one but himself, and thereupon becomes a person of great capacity.”

“It’s the idea of an old man,” said Laura.

“I am more mature than you think. A few days ago I began to keep a note-book, like Edouard; I write down an opinion on the right hand page, whenever I can write the opposite opinion, facing it, on the left hand page. For instance, the other evening Sophroniska told us that she made Bronja and Boris sleep with their windows open. Everything she said in support of this régime seemed to us perfectly reasonable and convincing, didn’t it? Well, yesterday in the smoking-room, I heard that German professor who has just arrived maintain the contrary theory, which seemed to me, I must admit, more reasonable still and better grounded. The important thing during sleep, said he, is to restrict as much as possible all expenditure and the traffic of exchanges in which life consists--carburation, he called it; it is only then that sleep becomes really restorative. He gave as example the birds who sleep with their heads under their wings, and the animals who snuggle down when they go to sleep, so as to be hardly able to breathe at all; in the same way, he said, the races that are nearest to nature, the peasants who are least cultivated, stuff themselves up at night in little closets; and Arabs, who are forced to sleep in the open, at any rate cover their faces up with the hood of their burnous. But to return to Sophroniska and the two children she is bringing up, I come round to thinking she is not wrong after all, and that what is good for others would be harmful for these two, because, if I understand rightly, they have the germs of tubercle in them. In short, I said to myself.... But I’m boring you.”

“Never mind about that. You said to yourself...?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“Now, now, that’s naughty. You mustn’t be ashamed of your thoughts.”

“I said to myself that nothing is good for everyone, but only relatively to some people; that nothing is true for everyone, but only relatively to the person who believes it is; that there is no method and no theory which can be applied indifferently to all alike; that if, in order to act, we must make a choice, at any rate we are free to choose; and that if we aren’t free to choose, the thing is simpler still; the belief that becomes truth for me (not absolutely, no doubt, but relatively to me) is that which allows me the best use of my strength, the best means of putting my virtues into action. For I can’t prevent myself from doubting, and at the same time I loathe indecision. The soft and comfortable pillow Montaigne talks of, is not for my head, for I’m not sleepy yet and I don’t want to rest. It’s a long way that leads from what I thought I was to what perhaps I really am. I am afraid sometimes that I got up too early in the morning.”

“Afraid?”

“No; I’m afraid of nothing. But, d’you know, I have already changed a great deal; that is, my mind’s landscape is not at all what it was the day I left home; since then I have met you. As soon as I did that I stopped putting my freedom first. Perhaps you haven’t realized that I am at your service.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, you know quite well. Why do you want to make me say it? Do you expect a declaration?... No, no; please don’t cloud your smile, or I shall catch cold.”

“Come now, my dear boy, you are not going to pretend that you are beginning to love me.”

“Oh, I’m not beginning,” said Bernard. “It’s you who are beginning to feel it, perhaps; but you can’t prevent me.”

“It was so delightful for me not to have to be on my guard with you. And now, if I’ve got to treat you like inflammable matter and not dare go near you without taking precautions.... But think of the deformed, swollen creature I shall soon be. The mere look of me will be enough to cure you.”

“Yes, if it were only your looks that I loved. And then, in the first place, I’m not ill; or if it is being ill to love you, I prefer not to be cured.”

He said all this gravely, almost sadly; he looked at her more tenderly than ever Edouard had done, or Douviers, but so respectfully that she could not take umbrage. She was holding an English book they had been reading, on her lap, and was turning over its pages absently; she seemed not to be listening, so that Bernard went on without too much embarrassment:

“I used to imagine love as something volcanic--at all events the love I was destined to feel. Yes; I really thought I should only be able to love in a savage, devastating way, à la Byron. How ill I knew myself! It was you, Laura, who taught me to know myself; so different from what I thought I was! I was playing the part of a dreadful person and making desperate efforts to resemble him. When I think of the letter I wrote my supposed father before I left home, I feel very much ashamed, I assure you. I took myself for a rebel, an outlaw, who tramples underfoot everything that opposes his desire; and now here I find that when I am with you I have no desires. I longed for liberty as the supreme good, and no sooner was I free, than I bowed myself to your.... Oh, if you only knew how maddening it is to have in one’s head quantities of phrases from great authors, which come irresistibly to one’s lips when one wants to express a sincere feeling. This feeling of mine is so new to me that I haven’t yet been able to invent a language for it. Let’s say it isn’t love, since you dislike that word; let’s call it devotion. It’s as though this liberty which seemed to me so infinite, had had limits set to it by your laws. It’s as though all the turbulent and unformed things that were stirring within me, were dancing an harmonious round, with you for their centre. If one of my thoughts happens to stray from you, I leave it.... Laura, I don’t ask you to love me--I’m nothing but a schoolboy; I’m not worth your notice; but everything I want to do now is in order to deserve your ... (oh! the word is frightful!) ... your esteem....”

He had gone down on his knees before her, and though she had at first drawn her chair away a little, Bernard’s forehead was on her dress, and his arms thrown back behind him, in sign of adoration; but when he felt Laura’s hand laid upon his forehead, he seized the hand and pressed his lips to it.

“What a child you are, Bernard! I am not free, either,” she said, taking away her hand. “Here! Read this.”

She took from her bodice a crumpled piece of paper, which she held out to Bernard.

Bernard saw the signature first of all. As he feared, it was Felix Douviers’. One moment he kept the letter in his hand without reading it; he raised his eyes to look at Laura. She was crying. Then Bernard felt one more bond burst in his heart--one of the secret ties which bind each one of us to himself, to his selfish past. Then he read:

MY BELOVED LAURA,

In the name of the little child who is to be born, and whom I swear to love as if I were its father, I beseech you to come back. Don’t think that any reproaches will meet you here. Don’t blame yourself too much--that is what hurts me most. Don’t delay. My whole soul awaits you, adores you, is laid humbly at your feet.

Bernard was sitting on the floor in front of Laura, but it was without looking at her that he asked:

“When did you get this?”

“This morning.”

“I thought he knew nothing about it. Did you write and tell him?”

“Yes; I told him everything.”

“Does Edouard know this?”

“He knows nothing about it.”

Bernard remained silent a little while with downcast head; then turning towards her once more:

“And ... what do you mean to do now?”

“Do you really ask?... Return to him. It is with him that my place is--with him that I ought to live. You know it.”

“Yes,” said Bernard.

There was a very long silence. Bernard broke it:

“Do you believe one can love someone else’s child as much as one’s own, really?”

“I don’t know if I believe it, but I hope it.”

“For my part, I believe one can. And, on the contrary, I don’t believe in what people call so foolishly ‘the blood speaking.’ I believe this idea that the blood speaks is a mere myth. I have read somewhere that among certain tribes of South Sea Islanders, it is the custom to adopt other people’s children, and that these adopted children are often preferred to the others. The book said--I remember it quite well--‘made more of.’ Do you know what I think now?... I think that my supposed father, who stood in my father’s place, never said or did anything that could let it be suspected that I was not his real son; that in writing to him as I did, that I had always felt the difference, I was lying; that, on the contrary, he showed a kind of predilection for me, which I felt perfectly, so that my ingratitude towards him was all the more abominable; and that I behaved very ill to him. Laura, my friend, I should like to ask you.... Do you think I ought to beg his pardon and go back to him?”

“No,” said Laura.

“Why not? Since you are going back to Douviers?”

“You were telling me just now, that what was true for one is not true for another. I feel I am weak; you are strong. Monsieur Profitendieu may love you; but from what you have told me, you are not of the kind to understand each other.... Or, at any rate, wait a little. Don’t go back to him worsted. Do you want to know what I really think?--that it is for me and not for him that you are proposing it--to get what you called ‘my esteem.’ You will only get it, Bernard, if I feel you are not seeking for it. I can only care for you as you are naturally. Leave repentance to me. It is not for you, Bernard.”

“I almost get to like my name when I hear it on your lips. Do you know what my chief horror was at home? The luxury. So much comfort, so many facilities.... I felt myself becoming an anarchist. Now, on the contrary, I think I’m veering toward conservatism. I realized that the other day because of the indignation that seized me when I heard the tourist at the frontier speak of his pleasure in cheating the customs. ‘Robbing the State is robbing no one,’ he said. My feeling of antagonism made me suddenly understand what the State was. And I began to have an affection for it, simply because it was being injured. I had never thought about it before. ‘The State is nothing but a convention,’ he said, too. What a fine thing a convention would be that rested on the bona fides of every individual! ... if only there were nothing but honest folk. Why, if anyone were to ask me to-day what virtue I considered the finest, I should answer without hesitation--honesty. Oh, Laura! I should like all my life long, at the very smallest shock, to ring true, with a pure, authentic sound. Nearly all the people I have known ring false. To be worth exactly what one seems to be worth--not to try to seem to be worth more.... One wants to deceive people, and one is so much occupied with seeming, that one ends by not knowing what one really is.... Forgive me for talking like this. They are my last night’s reflections.”

“You were thinking of the little coin you showed us yesterday. When I go away....”

She could not finish her sentence; the tears rose to her eyes and in the effort she made to keep them back, Bernard saw her lips tremble.

“Then you are going away, Laura ...” he went on sadly. “I am afraid that when I no longer feel you near me, I shall be worth nothing at all--or hardly anything.... But, tell me--I should like to ask you ... would you be going away--would you have made this confession, if Edouard ... I don’t know how to say it ...” (and as Laura blushed), “if Edouard had been worth more? Oh, don’t protest. I know so well what you think of him.”

“You say that, because yesterday you caught me smiling at what he said; you immediately jumped to the conclusion that we were judging him in the same way. But it’s not so. Don’t deceive yourself. In reality I don’t know what I think of him. He is never the same for long together. He is attached to nothing, but nothing is more attractive than his elusiveness. He is perpetually forming, unforming, re-forming himself. One thinks one has grasped him.... Proteus! He takes the shape of what he loves, and oneself must love him to understand him.”

“You love him. Oh, Laura! it’s not of Douviers I feel jealous, nor of Vincent; it’s of Edouard.”

“Why jealous? I love Douviers; I love Edouard, but differently. If I am to love you, it must be with yet another love.”

“Laura, Laura, you don’t love Douviers. You feel affection for him, pity, esteem; but that’s not love. I think the secret of your sadness (for you are sad, Laura) is that life has divided you; love has only consented to take you, incomplete; you distribute among several what you would have liked to give to one only. As for me, I feel I am indivisible; I can only give the whole of myself.”

“You are too young to speak so. You cannot tell yet whether life will not ‘divide’ you too, as you call it. I can only accept from you the ... devotion which you offer me. The rest will have its exigencies and will have to be satisfied elsewhere.”

“Can it be true? Do you want to disgust me beforehand with myself and with life, too?”

“You know nothing of life. Everything is before you. Do you know what my mistake was? To think there was nothing more for me. It was when I thought, alas! that there was nothing more for me, that I let myself go. I lived that last spring at Pau as if I were never to see another--as if nothing mattered any more. I can tell you now, Bernard, now that I’ve been punished for it--Never despair of life!”

Of what use is it to speak so to a young creature full of fire? And indeed Laura was hardly speaking to Bernard. Touched by his sympathy, and almost in spite of herself, she was thinking aloud in his presence. She was unapt at feigning, unapt at self-control. As she had yielded a moment ago to the impulsive feeling which carried her away whenever she thought of Edouard, and which betrayed her love for him, so now she had given way to a certain tendency to sermonize, which she had no doubt inherited from her father. But Bernard had a horror of recommendations and advice, even if they should come from Laura; his smile told her as much and she went on more calmly:

“Are you thinking of keeping on as Edouard’s secretary when you go back to Paris?”

“Yes, if he is willing to employ me; but he gives me nothing to do. Do you know what would amuse me? To write that book of his with him; for he’ll never write it alone; you told him so yesterday. That method of working he described to us seemed to me absurd. A good novel gets itself written more naïvely than that. And first of all, one must believe in one’s own story--don’t you think so--and tell it quite simply? I thought at one time I might help him. If he had wanted a detective, I might perhaps have done the job. He could have worked on the facts that my police work would have furnished him.... But with an idea-monger there’s nothing doing. When I’m with him, I feel that I have the soul of a reporter. If he sticks to his mistaken ways, I shall work on my own account. I must earn my living. I shall offer my services to a newspaper. Between times I shall write verses.”

“For when you are with reporters, you’ll certainly feel yourself the soul of a poet.”

“Oh! don’t laugh at me. I know I’m ridiculous. Don’t rub it in too much.”

“Stay with Edouard; you’ll help him; and let him help you. He is very good.”

The luncheon bell rang. Bernard rose. Laura took his hand:

“Just one thing--that little coin you showed us yesterday ... in remembrance of you, when I go away”--she pulled herself together and this time was able to finish her sentence--“would you give it me?”

“Here it is,” said Bernard, “take it.”

V

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: CONVERSATION WITH SOPHRONISKA

_C’est ce qui arrive de presque toutes les maladies de l’esprit
humain qu’on se flatte d’avoir guéries. On les répercute seulement,
comme on dit en médecine, et on leur en substitue d’autres._

SAINTE-BEUVE (_Lundis_, I, p. 19)