PART TWO

We arrived at La Morinière the first days of July, having stayed in Paris only long enough to pay a brief round of visits and to send on provisions.

La Morinière, I have told you, is situated between Lisieux and Pont-l’Évêque, in the shadiest, wettest countryside I know. Countless gently curving foothills slope down to the broad Auge valley, which suddenly flattens out as it approaches the sea. No horizon; woods full of mystery; a few plowed fields, but mostly meadows, hilly pasturage where the thick grass is mowed twice a year, where the many apple trees mingle their shadows when the sun is low, where the herds graze untended; in each hollow, water: pond, pool or stream; you hear a continual trickling.

How well I remembered the house! its blue roofs, its brick and stone walls, its moats, the reflections in the sleeping water … It was an old house where we could have lodged more than a dozen; Marceline, three servants, myself occasionally helping, had all we could do to enliven one wing. Our old caretaker, whose name was Bocage, had already had some of the rooms made ready as best he could: the old furniture was awakened from its sleep of twenty years, everything had remained just as my memory saw it, the paneling not too ramshackle, the rooms easily habitable. To welcome us more festively Bocage had filled all the vases he had found with flowers. He had had the courtyard and the paths nearest the house weeded and raked. When we arrived the house was glowing in the sun’s last beams, and out of the valley before it had risen a motionless mist which veiled and revealed the river. Even before we arrived I suddenly recognized the smell of the grass; and when I heard, once again, the shrill cries of the swallows circling the house, all the past suddenly rose up as if it had been waiting for me and, recognizing me, sought to envelop my approach.

Within a few days the house became almost comfortable; I could have begun my work; I delayed, still listening as my past reminded me of itself, detail by detail, and soon after occupied by an emotion all too new: Marceline, a week after our arrival, confided that she was pregnant.

It seemed to me henceforth that I owed her a new care, that she was entitled to more tenderness; certainly in the period immediately after her disclosure I spent almost every moment of the day with her. We would go out and sit near the woods, on the bench where I once used to sit with my mother; here each moment came more voluptuously, each hour passed more imperceptibly. If no distinct recollection stands out from this period of my life, it is not because I am any the less grateful for it—but because everything in it mingled, dissolved into a consistent well-being, in which night melted into morning and the days were yoked to the days.

Gradually I took up my work again, my mind calm, alert, sure of its powers, regarding the future confidently and coolly, my will apparently chastened, apparently heeding the counsel of that temperate earth.

No doubt about it, I decided, the example of that earth, where everything is preparing for fruition, for the good harvest, must have the best influence upon me. I marveled at the serene future promised by those robust oxen, those fat cows in their opulent pastures. The apple trees planted in rows on the favorable hillsides heralded a splendid crop that summer; I dreamed of the rich burden of fruit beneath which their branches would soon be bending. From this orderly abundance, from this happy subservience, from this smiling cultivation, a harmony was being wrought, no longer fortuitous but imposed, a rhythm, a beauty at once human and natural, in which one could no longer tell what was most admirable, so intimately united into a perfect understanding were the fecund explosion of free nature and man’s skillful effort to order it. What would that effort be, I thought, without the powerful savagery it masters? What would be the savage energy of that overflowing sap without the intelligent effort which channels and discharges it, laughing, into profusion? —And I let myself dream of such lands where every force was so well controlled, every expenditure so compensated, every exchange so strict, that the slightest waste became evident; then, applying my dream to life, I sketched an ethic which would become a science of self-exploitation perfected by a disciplined intelligence.

Where had it gone, then, my old turmoil, where was it hiding? I felt so serene now that it might never have existed. The flood tide of my love had closed over it all.

Meanwhile old Bocage made a great show of zeal around us; he gave orders, advice, lectures; we were only too aware of his need to seem indispensable. In order not to offend him, I had to examine his accounts, listen to all his endless explanations. Even that was not enough; I was forced to accompany him around the estate. His sententious platitudes, his continual preaching, his obvious self-satisfaction and paraded honesty soon managed to exasperate me; he became increasingly insistent, and I would have employed any means to regain my leisure—when an unexpected event occurred, giving my relations with him a different character: one evening Bocage announced he was expecting his son Charles the next day.

I said, “Oh yes,” almost indifferently, having taken little interest hitherto in whatever children Bocage might have; then, seeing that my indifference affected him, that he was expecting some sign of interest and surprise from me, I asked, “Where has he been all this time?”

“On an experimental farm, near Alençon.”

“By now he must be nearly …” I continued, calculating the age of this son whose very existence I had never suspected, and speaking slowly enough to leave him time to interrupt me.

“Going on eighteen,” Bocage broke in. “He wasn’t much more than four when Madame your mother died. Oh, he’s a big fellow now; soon he’ll know more than his father.” And once Bocage had started, nothing could stop him again, however apparent my boredom might be.

The next day I thought no more about it until late in the afternoon, when Charles came to pay his respects to Marceline and me. He was a strapping, handsome boy, so rich in health, so supple and well built that even the dreadful city clothes he had put on in our honor could not spoil his looks; his shyness added little or nothing to his fine, high color. He seemed no more than fifteen, so childlike had the look in his eyes remained; he expressed himself quite easily, without false modesty, and unlike his father spoke only when he had something to say. I don’t remember what remarks we exchanged that first evening; I was so busy watching him I found nothing to say, and let Marceline do the talking. But the next day, for the first time, I did not wait for old Bocage’s arrival to walk up to the farm, where I knew work had begun on the pond.

This pond, the size of a small lake, was leaking; the leak had been found, and the spot had to be cemented. In order to do this the water was being drained for the first time in fifteen years. The pond was full of carp and tench, some very large, which never left the deepest parts. I was eager to stock our moat with these, and to give some to the workmen, so that on this occasion the work was turned into a fishing party; the whole farm was alive with excitement; some neighborhood children had come, mingling with the workmen. Marceline would join us later on herself.

The water level had already been sinking a long while by the time I arrived. Occasionally a great shudder ran over the surface, and the brown backs of the disturbed fish appeared. In puddles around the edges, wading children gathered a gleaming catch which they tossed into buckets of clear water. The pond, which the terror of the fish had thoroughly muddied, grew darker from moment to moment. There were more fish than anyone could have hoped; four farmers pulled them out by the handfuls. I was sorry Marceline had not yet appeared, and was about to run back and get her when several screams announced the first eels. No one could catch them; they slid between the men’s fingers. Charles, who till then had remained with his father on the bank, restrained himself no longer; he stripped off shoes, socks, jacket and vest, and then, rolling high his trousers and shirtsleeves, stepped determinedly into the mud. I followed right after.

“Well, Charles,” I called, “are you glad you came home yesterday?”

He made no reply, but glanced at me, laughing, already busy with his catch. I soon called him over to help me corner a huge eel; we joined hands to catch it. Then came another; the mud spattered our faces; sometimes we would suddenly step into a hole and the water would rise to our thighs; we were soon soaked through. In the heat of the sport we exchanged no more than a few shouts, a few phrases; but at the day’s end, I realized I was saying “tu” to Charles without quite knowing when I had begun. Working together had taught us more about each other than any long conversation. Marceline had not yet come, never did come, but already I no longer regretted her absence; it seemed to me she might have spoiled our fun a little.

The next day, I went back to the farm to look for Charles. We headed together for the woods.

Knowing so little about my own property and unconcerned to know more, I was amazed to learn that Charles knew not only the grounds but the various tenant farmers as well; I learned from him what I had barely suspected: I had six tenant farmers and might have realized sixteen to eighteen thousand francs a year in rents; if I made scarcely half that amount, it was because almost all the profits went into repairs and the payment of middlemen. The way Charles smiled when he glanced at the fields soon made me suspect that their yield was nowhere near so satisfactory as I had first supposed or as Bocage had led me to believe; I pressed Charles on this subject, delighted in the son by the purely practical intelligence which so exasperated me in the father. We continued our excursions day after day; the property was large, and when we had explored every corner of it, we started over again more methodically. Charles did not conceal his irritation at the sight of certain overgrown fields, stretches choked with bracken, thistles, sorrel; he managed to make me share his hatred for fallow land and to dream with him of a more highly organized kind of farming.

“But,” I questioned him at first, “who suffers from the low yield? Only the tenant, isn’t that right? No matter what he produces, the rent doesn’t change.”

Charles showed a touch of irritation. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he ventured to answer—and I immediately smiled. “By considering only income, you don’t realize your capital is deteriorating. Mistreating the soil makes it lose its value, little by little.”

“If a tenant could produce more under a better system, I doubt if he’d refuse to try it—I know these people, they’re too interested in profits not to make as much as they can.”

“You’re leaving out,” Charles went on, “the increase in labor force. Some of these fields are far away from the farms. If they were cultivated, they’d bring in little or nothing, but at least they wouldn’t go bad.”

And the conversation continued. Sometimes, as we tramped the fields for an hour, we seemed to be repeating the same things over and over, but I listened and, little by little, I learned.

“After all, it’s your father’s business,” I told him one day, losing patience.

Charles blushed. “My father’s an old man,” he said. “He’s already got a lot to do making sure the leases are drawn up and the buildings repaired and the rents collected. It’s not his job to make reforms here.”

“What reforms would you propose?” I continued. But then he became evasive, claimed to have doubts; only by insisting could I force him to explain himself.

“Take away from the tenants every field they leave fallow,” was his final advice. “If the farmers leave part of their land unfarmed, that just proves they don’t need it all to pay you; or, if they try to keep it all, then raise the rents on their land. —They’re all lazy around here,” he added.

Of the six farms I found I owned, the one I preferred to visit was located on the hill overlooking La Morinière; it was called La Valterie, and its tenant was not a bad fellow; I enjoyed talking to him. Closer to La Morinière, a farm known as the “Château farm” was rented on a half-tenant system which left Bocage, in the landlord’s absence, owner of some of the cattle. Now that my doubts were awakened, I began to suspect honest Bocage himself if not of duping me at least of letting me be duped by others. A barn and a stable were reserved for me, it was true, but I soon realized they had been invented only so the tenant could feed his cows and horses on my hay and oats. Till now I had listened indulgently to the most unlikely stories Bocage told me from time to time: deaths, malformations, diseases—I believed everything. It had not yet occurred to me that as soon as one of the tenant’s cows fell sick it became mine, that as soon as one of my cows was thriving it became the tenant’s; however, a few unguarded remarks from Charles, a few observations of my own began to open my eyes; my mind, once alerted, worked fast.

Marceline, at my request, carefully checked all the accounts, but could discover no error in them; Bocage’s honesty took refuge there. —What was to be done? —Leave well enough alone. —But at least, secretly irritated, I now supervised the stock, though without letting it be too apparent.

I owned four horses and ten cows; enough to cause me some apprehension. Of the four horses, one was still called the “colt,” though it was over three years old; it was being broken in at the time; I had begun to take an interest in it, when one day I was informed that the animal was quite unruly, that nothing could be done with it, and that I had best get rid of it. As if I had offered some objection, the animal had been made to kick to pieces the front of a small cart, bloodying its hocks in the process.

I barely managed to keep my temper that day, and what restrained me was Bocage’s discomfort. After all, the man is weak not wicked, I thought, the tenants are to blame; but there’s no authority for them to heed.

I went out into the farmyard to see the colt. As soon as he heard me coming, a man who had been beating it began to caress the animal. I acted as if I had seen nothing. I knew little enough about horses, but this colt looked like a fine one to me; it was a light-bay half-breed with remarkably graceful lines; its eyes were very bright, the mane and tail almost blond. I made certain it was not hurt, ordered the scratches to be dressed and left without another word.

That evening, when I saw Charles again, I tried to find out what he thought of the colt.

“I think he’s gentle enough,” he told me; “but they don’t know how to handle him; they’ll turn him wild.”

“How would you handle him?”

“If Monsieur would let me have him for eight days, I’ll answer for that.”

“What will you do?”

“You’ll see.”

The next day Charles took the colt out to a corner of the meadow under a splendid walnut tree in a curve of the river; I took Marceline along. It is one of the scenes I remember best. Charles had tied the colt by a rope several yards long to a stake pounded into the ground. Excessively nervous, the colt had apparently struggled for some time; exhausted now, it was circling the stake more calmly; its surprisingly elastic trot was agreeable to watch, as seductive as a dance. Charles stood in the center of the circle, avoiding the rope each time around with a sudden leap, and aroused or calmed the colt with his voice; he held a long whip in one hand, but I never saw him use it. Everything about his appearance and movements, his youth and his enjoyment, gave his task the fervent look of pleasure. All at once, I don’t know how, he was riding the animal; it had slowed down, then stopped; Charles caressed it a moment, then suddenly I saw him astride it, sure of himself, scarcely holding on to its mane, laughing, bending over its neck, continuing to caress it. The colt had scarcely balked a moment; then it resumed its smooth trot, so handsome and supple that I envied Charles and told him so.

“Another few days’ training and the saddle won’t tickle him any more; in two weeks, Madame herself could mount him; he’ll be gentle as a lamb.”

He was telling the truth; a few days later, the horse let itself be caressed, saddled, led without mistrust; and even Marceline might have ridden it had her condition permitted such exercise.

“Monsieur should try him,” Charles told me.

I would never have done this alone, but Charles offered to saddle another farm horse for himself; the pleasure of accompanying him won me over.

How grateful I was to my mother for sending me to riding school when I was young! The distant memory of those first lessons came to my aid, and it did not seem so strange to be on horseback; in a few moments I felt no fear whatever and was quite at my ease. The horse Charles rode was heavier and not blooded at all, but handsome to look at; above all, Charles rode it well. We soon got into the habit of riding a little every day, preferring to start early in the morning through the grass still bright with dew; we reached the edge of the woods where the dripping hazels, shaken as we passed, soaked us through; suddenly the horizon opened; there was the broad Auge valley, and in the distance a suspicion of the sea. We stood for a moment, without dismounting; the dawning sun dyed, then dispersed, the mist; we returned at a brisk trot, lingering at the farm where work was just beginning; we savored that condescending pleasure of being ahead of the workers; then, as suddenly, we left them behind; I was back at La Morinière by the time Marceline was getting up. I returned drunk with air, dazed with speed, my limbs numb with a faint and voluptuous weariness, my spirits high, eager and fresh. Marceline approved, encouraged my whim. Still in boots, I brought to the bed where she lay expecting me a smell of wet leaves that she said she liked. And she listened to my accounts of our ride, the wakening of the fields, the work resuming. She seemed to take as much pleasure in hearing about my life as in living. —Soon I abused this pleasure too; our rides were extended, and sometimes I would not return until nearly noon.

Yet as often as I could I set aside the late afternoon and evening for the preparation of my lectures. I was pleased with my progress, and did not consider it out of the question that I might ultimately gather these lectures into a book. By a kind of natural reaction, even as my life was assuming an order and a shape, even as I delighted in ordering and shaping everything around me too, I grew increasingly enthusiastic about the crude morality of the Goths, and while throughout my lectures I insisted, with a boldness which was later a subject of some criticism, on exalting and even justifying savagery, I laboriously strove to master if not to suppress everything that might imply it around me and within me. To what lengths did I not carry this wisdom, or this folly?

Two of my tenants, eager to renew their leases, which would expire at Christmas, came to see me; they wanted me to sign the usual promissory lease. Bolstered by Charles’s assurances, excited by his daily conversations, I waited for the tenants with my mind made up. They, convinced I would find it difficult to replace them, first demanded a rent reduction. Their amazement was all the greater when I read them the lease I had drawn up myself, in which I not only refused to lower the rent but even confiscated certain fields which I had seen they put to no use whatever. At first they pretended to take the matter lightly: I must be joking. What could I want with those fields? They were worthless; and if nothing had been done with them, it was because nothing could be done … Then, finding I was quite serious, they insisted; so did I. They tried to frighten me by threatening to leave. That was what I had been waiting for: “Well, leave then, if that’s what you want! I’m not stopping you,” I told them, tearing up the promissory leases before their eyes.

So I was left with over two hundred acres on my hands. For some time now I had planned to entrust their management to Bocage, supposing it was indirectly to Charles that I would be giving it; I also intended to deal with the land myself; as it was, I really gave very little thought to the matter: it was the risk of the venture which attracted me. The tenants would not be leaving until Christmas; until then we certainly had time to make up our minds. I informed Charles; his immediate delight irritated me; he could not conceal it, and I realized once again how much too young he was. Already time was of the essence: it was the season when the early harvests leave the fields free for the early plowing. Traditionally, the departing tenant’s work is done alongside that of the incoming tenant, the former abandoning his holdings field by field as the harvest is brought in. I feared, as a kind of revenge, the animosity of the two tenants I had dismissed; on the contrary, they appeared to comply entirely with my demands (I learned only later the advantage this gave them). I profited by this opportunity to spend mornings and evenings on their fields, which were soon to revert to me. The autumn was beginning; I would have to hire more men in order to finish the plowing, the sowing; we had bought harrows, rollers, plows; I rode the colt over the land, supervising the work, enjoying my authority.

Meanwhile, in the neighboring fields, the apples were being harvested; they would fall, roll into the thick grass, abundant as never before; we did not have enough men to gather them; others came from the nearby villages, hired for eight days; Charles and I would occasionally entertain ourselves by helping them. Some of the men would beat the branches to bring down the late fruit; the apples that had fallen of themselves were harvested separately—overripe, often bruised, crushed in the high grass; you could not walk there without stepping on them. The odor rising from the meadow was pungent, sweetish, and mingled with the smell of the plowing.

The autumn was advancing. The mornings of the last fine days are the freshest, the clearest. Sometimes the moist air made the distances blue and even more remote, so that a ride became a journey; the country seemed larger; sometimes, on the other hand, the abnormal transparency of the air brought the horizon very close—a wingbeat away. I don’t know which circumstance made me more listless. My work was nearly completed; at least I decided it was, in order to dare neglect it the more. The time I no longer spent at the farm I spent with Marceline. Together we would go out to the garden; we walked slowly, she trailing beside me, hanging on my arm; we would sit down on a bench overlooking the valley, which the evening filled with light. Marceline had a tender way of leaning against my shoulder; and we would stay there until dark, feeling the day dissolve in us, without movement, without speech.

Just as a breath of wind sometimes ripples smooth water, the slightest emotion could be read on Marceline’s face; deep within herself she listened to the mysterious stirring of a new life; I bent over her as over a deep, clear pool which revealed, as far as one could see, nothing but love. Ah, if that was still happiness, I know I tried to hold onto it then, as one vainly tries to hold escaping water in one’s cupped hands; yet already I sensed, close to our happiness, something besides happiness, which certainly stained my love, but as the autumn stains …

The autumn was advancing. The grass, wetter each morning, no longer dried under the branches at the edge of the woods; in the first light of day, it was white. The ducks splashed in the moat, fiercely beating their wings; sometimes they would all rise together, honking loudly, and circle the tower of La Morinière. One morning they vanished: Bocage had penned them up. Charles explained that they were shut away every autumn during the migrating season. And a few days later, the weather changed. Suddenly, one evening, a high wind blew in from the sea, strong and unwavering, bringing with it the north, the rain, sweeping away the migrant birds. Marceline’s condition, the demands of moving, the first arrangements for my lectures, would have sent us to the city soon in any case. The bad weather, beginning early, drove us away.

Work on the farm, it is true, was to call me back in November. I had been very annoyed to learn of Bocage’s winter plans; he announced his desire to send Charles back to the experimental farm where, Bocage claimed, he still had a great deal to learn; I talked to him for a long time, using every argument within reach, but failed to make him yield; at the very most he agreed to shorten these studies somewhat so that Charles could return a little sooner. Bocage made no secret of the fact that it would be difficult to manage the two newly vacated farms, but he had his eye, he informed me, on two very reliable farmers whom he intended to employ; the terms were too novel in this part of the country to augur much in their favor, but it was I, he kept saying, who had made the choice. —This conversation took place toward the end of October. In the first days of November, we returned to Paris.

II

We moved to the rue S—–, near Passy. The apartment, which had been found for us by one of Marceline’s brothers and which we had been able to inspect on our last trip through Paris, was much larger than the one my father had left me, and Marceline was rather worried not only by the higher rent but also by the many expenses such an establishment would involve. I countered all her fears with a factitious horror of anything temporary; I forced myself to believe in this reasoning, and exaggerated it on purpose. Certainly the cost of furnishing the new apartment would exceed our income for the year, but I counted on increasing our already considerable wealth by my lectures, by the publication of my book and even, how foolishly! by the new profits from my farms. I therefore spared no expense, telling myself each time that I was merely forming another tie to control any roving impulse I might feel, or feared to feel.

The first days, from morning to night, our time was spent shopping; and though Marceline’s brother very obligingly volunteered later on to spare us some of the task, Marceline was soon feeling worn out. Then, instead of the rest she should have had once we were settled in, she was obliged to receive visit after visit; the out-of-the-way places we had lived hitherto made such calls all the more frequent now, and Marceline, unaccustomed to society, did not know how to shorten the visits and dared not close her door altogether; I would find her, by evening, utterly exhausted; and if I wasted no anxiety on a weariness whose cause I quite understood, at least I tried to diminish it by receiving in her stead, which I found rather tiresome, and sometimes by returning the calls myself, which I found altogether so.

I have never been a brilliant talker; the wit and frivolity of Parisian salons is something I could not enjoy; yet I had spent a good deal of time in some of them—but how long ago! What had happened since? With other people, I felt dull, sad, inept, both boring and bored. I was singularly unlucky in that none of you, whom I regarded as my only real friends, was in Paris; nor would you be returning for a long time. Could I have talked to you better? Would you have understood me better, perhaps, than I did myself? But what did I know of all that was growing within me, all that I am telling you today? The future looked quite certain, and never had I supposed myself more its master.

And even if I had been wiser, what recourse against myself could I have found in Hubert, Didier, Maurice, in so many others whom you know and judge as I do. I soon realized, unfortunately, the impossibility of making myself understood. From our very first conversations, I was more or less obliged by them to act a part—either to resemble the man they thought I still was, or else appear to be pretending; so to make things easier, I acted as if I had the thoughts and tastes they attributed to me. You cannot be sincere and at the same time seem so.

I was less reluctant to resume my professional connections, but in talking to archaeologists and philologists I had little more pleasure and no more emotion than in leafing through a good historical dictionary. At first I hoped to find a more direct understanding of life in the novelists and poets I knew—but if they possessed such a thing, they certainly kept it hidden; most of them, it seemed to me, did not live at all, were content with the appearance of life, and to them life itself seemed no more than a tiresome hindrance to writing. I could not blame them for this; nor do I assert that the mistake was not my own … Moreover, what did I mean by … living? —That is precisely what I wanted them to tell me. —The ones I met talked quite cleverly about life’s various events, never about their causes.

As for the philosophers, whose role might have been to instruct me, I had long known what to expect of them; mathematicians or neo-Kantians, they kept as far as possible from troublesome reality, and were no more concerned with life than the algebrist with the existence of the quantities he is measuring.

Coming home to Marceline, I made no attempt to conceal the tedium of these encounters. “They’re all alike,” I told her, “and each repeats the next. Whenever I talk to one, it seems to me I’m talking to several.”

“But my dear,” Marceline answered, “you can’t ask each one to be different from all the rest.”

“The more they’re like each other, the less they’re like me.” And I continued more wearily: “Not one of them has managed to be sick. They’re alive, they seem to be alive and not to know it. As a matter of fact, since I’ve been with them, I’ve stopped being alive myself. Take today, for example. What did I do today? I must have left about nine this morning: there was scarcely time to do a little reading before then—the one good moment of the day. Your brother met me at the lawyer’s, and after we left the office he went with me to the upholsterers; I had him on my hands at the cabinetmaker’s too, and only got rid of him at Gaston’s; I had lunch in the neighborhood with Philippe, then I met Louis, who had an appointment with me at a café; we went together to Théodore’s ridiculous lecture, which I had to compliment him on when it was over; and to get out of his invitation for Sunday I had to go with him to Arthur’s; Arthur took me to a watercolor show, and then I left cards at Albertine’s and Julie’s. I get home exhausted and find you just as tired as I am, after calls from Adeline, Marthe, Jeanne and Sophie. And now, tonight, when I review the whole day’s occupations, I feel it’s been so futile, so empty that I’d like to turn back the clock and start over again, hour by hour—and I’m so miserable I could cry.”

Yet I couldn’t have said what I meant by living, nor whether my longing for a more spacious and exposed life, a life less constrained and less concerned for others, was not the very secret of my uneasiness—a secret which seemed so much more mysterious: the secret of a Lazarus, for I was still a stranger among the others, like a man raised from the dead. At first I felt only a painful confusion; but soon a very different emotion appeared. I had taken no pride, I repeat, in the publication of the work which brought me so much praise. Was it pride I was feeling now? perhaps; but at least there was no trace of vanity in it. Actually, and for the first time, it was an awareness of my own worth: what separated me, what distinguished me from the rest was what mattered; what no one but I said or could say—that was what I had to say.

My lectures began soon afterward; on the strength of the subject, I charged that first hour with all my new passion. Discussing the decline of Latin civilization, I described artistic culture as rising like a secretion to the surface of a people, at first a symptom of plethora, the superabundance of health, then immediately hardening, calcifying, opposing any true contact of the mind with nature, concealing beneath the persistent appearance of life the diminution of life, forming a rind in which the hindered spirit languishes, withers and dies. Finally, carrying my notion to its conclusion, I said that Culture, born of life, ultimately kills life.

The historians found fault with what they called my tendency to generalize too readily. Others criticized my method; those who complimented me were those who had understood me least.

It was as I was leaving my lecture room that I saw Ménalque again for the first time. I had never seen much of him, and shortly before my marriage he had set off on another of those remote expeditions which kept him away for over a year at a time. In the past I had never liked him much; he seemed arrogant and took no interest in my life. I was therefore amazed to see him at my first lecture. His very insolence, which had first kept us apart, now pleased me, and I found his smile all the more charming because I knew it was not habitual. Lately an absurd, a shameful, lawsuit with scandalous repercussions had given the newspapers a convenient occasion to besmirch his name; those whom his scorn and superiority offended seized this opportunity for their revenge; and what irritated them most was that he seemed quite unaffected.

“You have to let other people be right,” was his answer to their insults. “It consoles them for not being anything else.”

But Society was outraged, and those who, as the saying goes, “respect themselves” felt obliged to cut him, thereby requiting his contempt. For me this was another inducement: drawn to him by a secret influence, I approached Ménalque and embraced him warmly in front of everyone.

Seeing with whom I was talking, the last bores withdrew; I remained alone with Ménalque. After the irritating criticisms and the inept compliments, his few words about my lecture were a relief. “You’re burning what you once worshipped,” he said. “Which is a good thing. You’re catching fire late, but that means there’s all the more to feed the flames with. I’m not yet sure I understand you completely; you interest me. It isn’t easy for me to talk, but I’d like to talk to you. Have dinner with me tonight.”

“Dear Ménalque,” I answered, “you seem to forget I’m a married man.”

“Yes, that’s right,” he continued. “The friendly way you came up to me just now made me forget you aren’t free.”

I was afraid of seeming weak even more than of having offended him, and I promised I would join him after dinner.

In Paris, where he was always en passage, Ménalque stayed at a hotel; for this visit he had had several rooms furnished as an apartment; his own servants waited on him, and he took his meals, like his life, alone; he had covered the walls and the furniture, whose commonplace ugliness offended him, with fabrics he had brought back from Nepal—he claimed he was adding a patina of dirt before giving them to some museum. I had been so eager to join him that I found him still at table when I went in, and apologized for interrupting his meal. “But I have no intention of interrupting it,” he said. “I trust you’ll allow me to finish. If you had come to dinner, I could have offered you Shiraz, the wine that Hafiz sang about, but now it’s too late; you have to drink Shiraz on an empty stomach; at least you’ll have some liqueurs, won’t you?”

I accepted, assuming he would join me, and when only one glass was brought, I showed my surprise.

“Forgive me,” he said, “I almost never drink them.”

“Are you afraid of getting drunk?”

“Oh, quite the contrary! I happen to regard sobriety as a more powerful intoxication—in which I keep my lucidity.”

“While you serve drinks to others?”

He smiled. “I can’t ask everyone to reflect my virtues. It’s enough to discover my vices in them.”

“At least you smoke?”

“Just as rarely. Smoking’s an impersonal, negative intoxication, and too easy to come by; I want an exaltation in my drunkenness, not a diminution of life. Let’s not talk about that. Do you know where I’ve just been? Biskra! When I heard you had been there not long before, I tried to track you down. Why would he have come to Biskra, this blind scholar, this bookworm? As a rule I’m only discreet about the secrets people tell me; what I find out on my own is endlessly fascinating, I must admit. So I questioned, searched, nosed out whatever I could. My indiscretion served some purpose, since it made me want to see you again; and since instead of the routine pedant I used to see in you, I know I’m seeing now … you tell me what.”

I felt myself blushing. “What did you find out about me, Ménalque?”

“Do you want to hear? Oh, don’t worry—you know our friends well enough to know I can’t talk about you to anyone. You saw how well they understood your lecture!”

“But I still don’t see,” I said rather testily, “why that means I can talk better to you than to the rest. Come on, what is it you found out about me?”

“First of all, you had been sick.”

“But that has nothing to …”

“Oh, that’s already very important. Then I was told you liked to go out alone, without a book (and that’s when I began to wonder) or, when you weren’t alone, accompanied by certain children in preference to your wife. Don’t blush now, or I won’t tell you the rest.”

“Tell it without looking at me.”

“One of the children—his name was Moktir, I believe—more attractive than most, more predatory than all of them—seemed to have a lot to say; I enticed him, Michel, I bought his confidence, which as you know isn’t easy—I think he was lying even when he said he wasn’t lying any more … You’ll tell me if what he said about you is the truth.” Meanwhile Ménalque had stood up and taken out of a drawer a tiny box which he opened. “Were these scissors yours?” he asked, handing me something shapeless, rusty, blunted, twisted; yet I had no difficulty recognizing the sewing scissors Moktir had filched from me.

“Yes; those are the ones—they belonged to my wife.”

“He claims he took them from you while you weren’t looking, one day when you were alone with him in your room; but that’s not the interesting part; he also claims that at the very moment he hid them in his burnous, he realized you were spying on him in the mirror and caught the reflection of your eyes watching him. You saw the theft and said nothing! Moktir seemed very surprised by that silence … So was I.”

“I’m just as surprised by what you’re telling me now: you mean he knew I was watching him?”

“That’s not the point; you were trying to outwit him; that’s a game children always win. You thought you caught him and you were the one who got caught … That’s not the point. What I want you to explain is your silence.”

“I’d like an explanation myself.”

Neither of us spoke for some time. Ménalque, who was walking up and down the room, absentmindedly lit a cigarette, then threw it away at once. “There is,” he continued, “a ‘sense,’ the others would say, a ‘sense’ you seem to be lacking, my dear Michel.”

“You mean a ‘moral sense,’ ” I said, trying to smile.

“No, just a sense of property.”

“You don’t seem to have much of one yourself.”

“I have so little that nothing you see here belongs to me; not even, or especially not, the bed I sleep on. I have a horror of comfort; possessions invite comfort, and in their security a man falls asleep; I love life enough to try to live wide awake, and so, even among all my treasures, I cherish a sense of the precarious, by which I provoke or at least arouse my life. I can’t say I love danger, but I love a life of risk, I want life to demand of me, at every moment, all my courage, all my happiness, and all my health.”

“Then why do you find fault with me?”

“My dear Michel, you don’t understand me at all! And just when I was foolish enough to try making a profession of faith!… If I don’t bother about other people’s approval or disapproval, Michel, it’s not to approve or disapprove in my turn; the words have no meaning for me. I was talking too much about myself just now; thinking you understood me carried me away … All I meant was that for a man without a sense of property you seem to own a great deal; that’s a serious matter.”

“What is the great deal that I own?”

“Nothing, if you take that tone about it … But aren’t you beginning your lecture series? Don’t you have an estate in Normandy? Didn’t you just move into an apartment—and a luxurious one—in Passy? You’re married. Aren’t you expecting a child?”

“All of which,” I said, provoked, “simply proves I’ve managed to make my life more ‘dangerous,’ as you would say, than yours.”

“Yes, simply,” Ménalque repeated ironically. Then turning suddenly and holding out his hand: “All right, goodbye; that’s enough for tonight, and saying anything more won’t help. But we’ll see each other soon.”

Some time passed before I saw him again.

New work, new worries preoccupied me; an Italian scholar sent me some unpublished documents he was editing, and I studied them exhaustively for my course. Realizing my first lecture had been misunderstood made me want to cast the rest in a different, more powerful form; thus I was led to offer as doctrine what I had first ventured as no more than an ingenious hypothesis. How many dogmatists owe their strength to the accident that their hints were not understood! In my own case, I confess I cannot tell how much stubbornness mingled with a natural need for assertion. The new things I had to say seemed the more urgent the more difficult it was for me to say them and, above all, to make them understood.

But how pale the phrases became, alas, in the face of action! Was not Ménalque’s life, his slightest gesture, a thousand times more eloquent than my learning? How well I understood then that almost every ethical teaching of the great philosophers of antiquity was a teaching by example as much as—even more than—by words!

It was in my own home that I saw Ménalque again, nearly three weeks after our first meeting. It was toward the end of a large party. To avoid continual disturbance, Marceline and I preferred to hold an open house every Thursday evening—which made it easier to have a closed one the other days of the week. Every Thursday, then, the people who called themselves our friends would come; the spaciousness of our rooms made it possible to receive in great numbers, and the party often lasted very late. I think what attracted people most was Marceline’s exquisite grace, and the pleasure of talking to each other. As for myself, after the second such evening, I had nothing more to say, nothing more to listen to, and found it difficult to conceal my boredom. I would wander from the den to the living room, from the library to the hall, sometimes detained by a phrase overheard, noticing little and glancing about almost at random.

Antoine, Étienne and Godefroy, sprawled in my wife’s delicate armchairs, were discussing the latest vote in the Chambre des Députés. Hubert and Louis were carelessly handling and creasing some fine engravings from my father’s collection. In the den, Mathias, in order to pay closer attention to Léonard, had set down his still-smoldering cigar on a rosewood tabletop. A glass of curaçao had spilled on the rug. Albert’s muddy shoes, shamelessly resting on a couch, were staining the upholstery. And the dust we were all breathing was made up of the dreadful erosion of things … I was seized by a furious impulse to push all my guests out of the house. Furniture, fabrics, engravings, everything lost all its value for me at the first blemish—things stained, things infected by disease and somehow marked by mortality. I longed to protect everything, to put it all under lock and key for myself alone. How lucky Ménalque is, I thought, owning nothing! It’s because I want to save things that I suffer. What does it all really matter?

In a small, softly lit salon entered through a glass door, Marceline received only her most intimate friends; she was propped up on some cushions, looking dreadfully pale and so exhausted that I was suddenly alarmed, and I resolved this would be our last party. It was already late. I was about to glance at my watch when I felt in my vest-pocket … Moktir’s little scissors. Why had he stolen them, just to spoil them right away, to destroy them?

At that moment, someone tapped my shoulder; I whirled around—it was Ménalque. He was almost the only man there in evening dress. He had just arrived, and he asked me to introduce him to my wife; I certainly would not have done so of my own accord. Ménalque was elegant, almost handsome; an enormous drooping mustache, already gray, cut across his pirate’s face; the cold fire of his gaze evinced more courage and will than kindness. He was no sooner standing in front of Marceline than I realized she didn’t like him. After he had exchanged a few commonplaces with her, I led him into the den.

I had heard that very morning of his new assignment from the Colonial Ministry; several newspapers, reviewing his adventurous career in connection with it, seemed to forget their recent calumnies and could not find compliments enough to praise him. They vied with each other in exaggerating the services rendered to the nation, to all humanity, by the profitable discoveries of his latest expeditions, just as if he undertook nothing except with humanitarian intent; instances of his abnegation, dedication and intrepidity were extolled as if such praises should be regarded as a recompense.

I began to congratulate him, but he interrupted me at the first words: “What—you too, dear Michel? At least you didn’t insult me first,” he said. “Leave such nonsense to the newspapers. They seem amazed today that a man of discredited tastes can still have any virtues at all. I cannot apply to myself the distinctions and the reservations they insist on making—I exist only as a whole man. I lay claim to nothing but my own nature, and the pleasure I take in an action is my clue to its propriety.”

“That can take you far,” I answered.

“I mean it to,” Ménalque went on. “If only these people around us could be convinced. But most of them believe they get nothing good out of themselves except by constraint; they’re only pleased with themselves when they’re under duress. If there’s one thing each of them claims not to resemble it’s … himself. Instead he sets up a model, then imitates it; he doesn’t even choose the model—he accepts it ready-made. Yet I’m sure there’s something more to be read in a man. People dare not—they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry—I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don’t find themselves at all. I hate all this moral agoraphobia—it’s the worst kind of cowardice. You can’t create something without being alone. But who’s trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that’s the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that’s just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.”

I let Ménalque talk on; what he was saying was precisely what I had said to Marceline the month before, and I ought to have approved of it. Why, then, out of what cowardice, did I break in and repeat word for word the sentence with which Marceline had interrupted me then: “But my dear Ménalque, you can’t ask each one to be different from all the rest.”

Ménalque suddenly fell silent, stared at me strangely, and then, just when Eusèbe was coming up to say goodbye, turned his back quite rudely and began talking to Hector.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, my remark seemed idiotic to me; and I particularly regretted it might make Ménalque think I felt threatened by his meaning. It was late; my guests were leaving. When the room was almost empty, Ménalque came up to me again: “I can’t leave you this way,” he said. “I probably misunderstood what you said. At least let me think I did.”

“No,” I answered. “You didn’t misunderstand me. But what I said was meaningless, and as soon as I said it I began suffering from its stupidity, and especially from feeling it would make you identify me with the very people you were describing, the ones who are just as hateful to me—believe me—as they are to you. If there’s one thing I detest it’s a man of principles.”

“You’re right,” Ménalque answered, laughing, “he’s the most detestable kind of person in the world. You can’t expect any kind of sincerity from him, for he only does what his principles have ordered him to do, or else he considers what he does as a transgression. The minute I suspected you might be such a man, I felt my words freeze on my lips. And my disappointment at that moment showed me how fond of you I was; I wanted to be wrong—not in my affection, but in my judgment of you.”

“And it’s true, your judgment wasn’t the right one.”

“No, it couldn’t be,” he said, suddenly seizing my hand. “Listen, I’m leaving Paris soon, but I’d like to see you again. This time my trip will be longer and more dangerous than the others; I don’t know when I’ll be coming back. I’m planning to start in two weeks; no one knows I’m leaving so soon—I’m telling you in confidence. I leave at dawn, and the night before such a departure is always one of terrible anxiety for me. Prove you’re not a man of principles—can I count on you to spend that last night with me?”

“But we’ll see each other again before that,” I said, rather surprised.

“No. During these two weeks I won’t even be in Paris. Tomorrow I leave for Budapest; in six days’ time I have to be in Rome, and then Madrid: I want to embrace certain friends once more before leaving Europe.”

“Of course, then, I’ll keep that vigil with you.”

“And we’ll drink the wine of Shiraz,” Ménalque said.

Several days after this evening, Marceline’s health began to decline. I’ve already told you she was often tired; but she refused to complain, and because I attributed this fatigue to her condition, I thought it quite natural and did not become concerned. Our old doctor—a fool or an ignoramus—had been overly reassuring from the first. New symptoms, however, accompanied by fever, convinced me to consult Dr. Tr—–, then regarded as the leading specialist in the city. He was amazed I had not called him sooner, and prescribed a strict regimen Marceline should already have been following for some time. By foolhardy resolution, she had been overextending herself; from now on until the date of her confinement, around the end of January, she was to keep to her chaise longue. Probably alarmed and suffering more than she would admit, Marceline complied quite meekly with the most wearisome instructions; a kind of religious resignation broke the will which had sustained her till now, so that her condition grew suddenly worse during the next few days.

I nursed her with even more care, and reassured her as best I could, repeating the words of Dr. Tr—– himself, who saw nothing very serious in her condition; but the violence of her apprehensions ended by alarming me as well. How dangerously, already, our happiness rested on hope! and on a hope whose future was so uncertain! I who originally had savored only the past, might at some point have been seduced by the sudden delights of the Moment, I reasoned—but the future dims the present even more than the present dimmed the past; ever since our night in Sorrento, all my love, all my life had been projected onto the future.

Meanwhile the evening came which I had promised to spend with Ménalque; and despite my reluctance to abandon Marceline for a whole winter’s night, I did my best to convince her of the formality of the occasion, the seriousness of my promise. She was feeling a little better that evening, yet I was uneasy; a nurse took my place at her bedside. But once I was out in the street, my anxiety gained new strength; I scoffed at it, struggled against it, annoyed at being unable to free myself. Thus I worked myself into a state of extreme tension, of singular exaltation, at once very different from, yet very close to, the painful anxiety which had produced it, but even closer to happiness. It was late; I was walking fast, taking huge strides; snow was beginning to fall heavily; I was glad to breathe at last a keener air, to struggle with the cold; happy against the wind, the night, the snow; I savored my own energy.

Ménalque, who heard me coming, appeared on the landing. He had been waiting for me impatiently. He was pale, seemed rather tense. He helped me out of my coat, and made me change my wet boots for some soft Persian slippers. On a tray near the fire were set out some sweetmeats. Two lamps lit the room, though not so brightly as the fire on the hearth. Ménalque immediately asked after Marceline’s health. To simplify matters, I answered that she was doing very nicely.

“And you’re expecting your child soon?” he went on.

“In two months.”

Ménalque leaned toward the fire as if to hide his face. He said nothing, and remained silent so long that I was finally embarrassed, uncertain what to say in my turn. I stood up, took a few steps, then went over to him and rested my hand on his shoulder. As if he were thinking aloud he murmured, “A man has to choose. What matters is to know what he wants.”

“Do you mean you don’t want to leave?” I asked him, uncertain of his meaning.

“So it seems.”

“Why hesitate, then?”

“What’s the use? You who have a wife and child—you stay. Of the thousand forms of life, each of us can know only one. Envying another man’s happiness is madness: you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it. Happiness isn’t something that comes ready-made, to order. I’m leaving tomorrow; I know—I’ve tried to cut my happiness to my own measure. You keep your fireside happiness.”

“I’ve cut my happiness to my measure too!” I exclaimed. “But I’ve grown. And now my happiness is too tight for me. Sometimes I’m almost strangled by it.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to it!” Ménalque said; then he turned and stood up in front of me, staring into my eyes, and when I found nothing to say, he smiled a little sadly: “We imagine we possess, and we are possessed,” he went on. “Pour yourself some Shiraz, dear Michel; you won’t taste it often; and try some of those candied rose petals the Persians serve with it. This one night I want to drink with you, to forget I’m leaving tomorrow, to talk as if this night would last forever. Do you know why our poetry today and especially our philosophy are such dead issues? Because they’ve cut themselves off from life. Now, Greece idealized on life’s own level: an artist’s life was already a poetic achievement; a philosopher’s life was an enactment of his philosophy; and when they were a part of life that way, instead of ignoring each other, philosophy could nourish poetry, poetry express philosophy, and together achieve an admirable persuasiveness. Today beauty no longer acts; and action no longer bothers about being beautiful; and wisdom operates on the sidelines.”

“Why,” I asked, “since you live your wisdom, why don’t you write your memoirs?—or simply,” I went on, seeing him smile, “what you remember of your travels?”

“Because I don’t want to remember,” he answered. “If I did, I might keep the future from happening by letting the past encroach upon it. I create each hour’s newness by forgetting yesterday completely. Having been happy is never enough for me. I don’t believe in dead things. What’s the difference between no longer being and never having been?”

I was angered, finally, by these remarks which were too far ahead of my own thoughts; I wanted to draw back, to stop him, but could not find a way to contradict his words, and besides I was even more annoyed with myself than with Ménalque. So I said nothing. He, pacing back and forth like a caged animal, then bending over the fire, kept silent a long while, then blurted out, “If only our wretched brains could really embalm our memories! But memories don’t keep well. The delicate ones wither, the voluptuous ones rot, the most delicious ones are the most dangerous later on. The things you repent were delicious once …”

Another long silence, and then he went on: “Regret, remorse, repentance—they’re all former joys, reversed. I don’t like looking back, and I leave my past behind me the way a bird leaves its shady tree in order to fly away. I tell you, Michel, each joy still awaits us, but must find the bed empty, must be the only one, so that we come to it like a widower. Oh Michel, each joy is like manna in the desert, which spoils from one day to the next; or like water from the fountain of Ameles which Plato says no pitcher could preserve. Let each moment carry away whatever it has brought.”

Ménalque talked on much longer; I cannot repeat here everything he said; yet many of his phrases were etched into my mind, the more deeply because I wanted to forget them; not that they told me much that was new, but they suddenly laid bare my own mind: thoughts I had covered with so many veils I almost believed they were smothered. And so the vigil passed.

When, in the morning, after accompanying Ménalque to the train that took him away, I walked home alone to rejoin Marceline, I was filled with a hideous melancholy, with hatred of Ménalque’s cynical joy; I wanted it to be false—I tried to deny it. I grew angry at having been unable to answer him; angry at having spoken words that made him doubt my love, my happiness. And I clung to my doubtful happiness, my “fireside happiness” as he called it; I could not protect it from my anxiety, but I told myself that anxiety was the food of love. I yearned toward the future where already I saw my new baby smiling at me; because of that child my spirits were strengthened, renewed. Already I was walking with a firm step.

But when I returned that morning, an unaccustomed disorder alarmed me as soon as I went in. The nurse met me and in carefully chosen words reported that my wife had suffered painful spasms during the night, though she did not think she had begun labor yet; feeling very ill, she had sent for the doctor, and the latter, though he had come at once in the middle of the night, had not yet left his patient; then, seeing me turn pale, I suppose, she tried to reassure me, telling me that everything was much better now, that … I rushed to Marceline’s room.

The room was dimly lit, and at first I could make out only the doctor, whose hand was held up for silence; then, in the shadows, a figure I did not recognize. Anxiously, without a sound, I approached the bed. Marceline’s eyes were closed; she was so terribly pale that at first I thought she was dead; but without opening her eyes she turned her head toward me. In a dark corner of the room, the unknown figure was putting away or hiding various objects; I glimpsed shiny instruments, surgical cotton; I saw or thought I saw a bloodstained sheet … I felt faint and almost fell into the doctor’s arms; he supported me. I understood; I was afraid of understanding.

“The baby?” I asked anxiously.

He shrugged sadly. —Without realizing what I was doing, I flung myself against the bed, sobbing. Ah, the sudden future! The ground had given way under my feet; before me was nothing but an empty hole into which I stumbled headlong.

Here everything dissolves in shadowy recollections. Yet Marceline seemed at first to recover quite rapidly. The New Year’s vacation allowed me some respite, and I could spend almost every hour of the day at her side, where I read, wrote or read aloud to her quietly. I never left the house without bringing her flowers when I returned. I recalled the tender care she had lavished on me when I had been ill, and surrounded her with so much love that sometimes she smiled at me as if she were happy. Not a word was spoken about the sad accident which had destroyed our hopes.

Then phlebitis set in; and when that began to subside, an embolism suddenly kept Marceline between life and death. It happened at night; I can still see myself leaning over her, feeling my own heart stopping and starting with hers. How many nights of vigil I spent there! my eyes stubbornly fixed upon her, hoping by the strength of love to insinuate a little of my own life into hers. And if I no longer thought much about happiness, my one sad satisfaction was to see Marceline smile occasionally.

My lectures had begun again. Where did I find the strength to prepare them, to deliver them? My memory is vague, and I don’t know how the weeks went by. Yet I want to tell you one little incident:

It happened one morning, soon after the embolism; I am sitting with Marceline, who seems to be feeling a little better, but strict immobility is still prescribed; she cannot even raise her arms. I bend down to give her something to drink, and when she is through and I am still leaning over her, in a voice her emotion makes still weaker she asks me to open a box she indicates with her eyes alone; it is over there, on the table; I open it; it is full of ribbons, bits of cloth, worthless ornaments. What does she want? I bring it to the bed and take out each object one by one. Is it this? this?… No; not yet; and I sense she’s growing a trifle uneasy. “Oh, Marceline, is it this little rosary you want?” She tries to smile. “Are you afraid I’m not taking enough care of you?”

“Oh my dear!” she murmurs. —And I remember our conversation in Biskra, her timid reproach when I rejected what she called “God’s help.”

I continue a little harshly: “I did manage to get well by myself.”

“I prayed for you so much,” she answers. She says this tenderly, mournfully; I recognize an imploring anxiety in her eyes. I take the rosary and slip it into the weakened hand lying on the sheet at her side. A loving, tearful glance rewards me, but I cannot respond; I linger another moment, not knowing what to do, embarrassed; finally, unable to bear any more, I say, “Goodbye for now,” and leave the room, hostile, as if I had been driven out.

Meanwhile the embolism had been followed by serious complications; the dreadful blood clot, which the heart had rejected, exhausted and congested her lungs, obstructed her breathing, which was now labored and wheezing. Sickness had entered Marceline, henceforth inhabited her, marked her, soiled her. She was a tainted thing.

III

The weather was turning mild. Once my lectures were over I moved Marceline to La Morinière, the doctor assuring me that all immediate danger was past and that, to complete her recovery, nothing was more necessary than better air. I myself needed rest badly. The virtually unassisted night watches I had insisted on keeping, the prolonged anxiety, and above all the kind of physical sympathy which, at the time of Marceline’s embolism, had reproduced the dreadful spasms of her heart in mine—all this had exhausted me as if I myself had been sick.

I should have preferred taking Marceline to the mountains; but she pleaded to return to Normandy, insisted that no climate could be better for her, and reminded me of the two farms I had rather recklessly undertaken to manage. She convinced me that I had assumed responsibility for them, that I owed it to myself to make them succeed. The moment we arrived, she urged me to have a look at the fields … I suspect there was a good deal of abnegation in her friendly prodding; fear that I might feel tied to her by the care she still required, and not free enough … Yet Marceline was recovering; blood had brought fresh color to her cheeks, and nothing reassured me more than to see her smile less wanly; I could leave her without apprehension.

I therefore returned to the farms. The first hay was being cut. The air heavy with pollen, with perfume, went to my head at once like some powerful drink. I felt I had not breathed for a year, or had breathed only dust, so gently did the atmosphere enter my lungs. From the slope where I was sitting, half intoxicated, I overlooked La Morinière; I saw its blue roofs, the sleeping waters of its moat; around it, mown fields and others where the grass was still high; beyond them the curve of the stream; farther still, the woods where I had gone riding the preceding autumn with Charles. The sound of singing I had been hearing for several minutes grew nearer; it was the haymakers coming home, rakes or pitchforks on their shoulders. These workmen, almost all of whom I recognized, reminded me with a start that I was not here as a delighted tourist, but as their employer. I went up to them, smiling and asking after each man at length. That very morning Bocage had managed to inform me as to the state of the crops; moreover his frequent letters had kept me informed about even the most trivial matters at the farms. The prospect was not so bad—much better than Bocage had at first led me to expect. Yet a number of important decisions depended on my presence, and for several days I managed everything to the best of my ability, taking no pleasure in the task but propping, on this semblance of work, my disheveled life.

Once Marceline was well enough to receive visitors, some friends came to stay with us. Their affectionate, staid society appealed to Marceline, but sent me out of the house all the more readily. I preferred the company of the farm people; it seemed to me that I had more to learn from them—not that I asked them so many questions; no; indeed I can scarcely express the kind of pleasure I took in being with them: it was as if I could feel through them; and while the conversation of our friends was already entirely familiar before they opened their mouths, the mere sight of these laborers caused me a continual amazement.

If at first they seemed to answer my questions with all the condescension I had avoided in putting them, they soon grew more tolerant of my presence. I felt I was coming closer to them. Not content to oversee their work, I wanted to watch them at play; their clumsy thoughts were of no interest to me, but I shared their meals, I listened to their jokes, lovingly observed their pleasures. It was the same kind of sympathy that had made my heart respond to Marceline’s spasms, an immediate echo of each alien sensation, not vague in the least but exact, acute. I felt in my own arms the stiffness of the mower’s; I was weak with his weariness; the mouthful of cider he drank slaked my thirst; I felt it slide down his throat; one day, sharpening his scythe, a man cut his thumb deeply: I felt the pain of it, to the bone.

And I seemed to be learning about the land with more than my eyes alone—I felt it now, by some sense of touch to which this strange sympathy of mine set no limits.

Bocage’s presence embarrassed me: when he came I had to play the landowner, a role I no longer enjoyed. I still gave what orders were necessary and directed the men in my own way, but I no longer rode through the fields on horseback lest I seem to be looking down on them. Yet despite all my precautions to keep them from feeling constrained by my presence, I remained with them, as before, perversely inquisitive. Each of their lives held a mystery—it still seemed to me that something was hidden. What did they do when I was no longer there? I refused to believe they had nothing better to do, and I ascribed to each a man a secret I was determined to learn. I lurked, prowled, stalked. I deliberately attached myself to the crudest natures, as if out of such darkness I expected to be shown the way by a sudden light.

One man in particular attracted me: tall, rather handsome, not stupid but guided solely by instinct; he did nothing save on the spur of the moment, yielded to every passing impulse. He was not from this part of the country, but had been hired for the time being. An excellent worker for two days, he would be dead drunk the third. One night I crept down to the barn to have a look at him; he lay sprawling in the hay; his sleep was the heavy trance of intoxication. How long I stared at him!… Then one day he vanished as he had come. By what roads, I wondered. That same evening I heard that Bocage had fired him. I sent for Bocage in a rage.

“I hear you’ve fired Pierre,” I began. “Can you tell me why?”

Somewhat startled by my anger, which I was nonetheless doing my best to control, he answered: “But Monsieur wouldn’t want to keep a dirty drunk like that on the place—he was spoiling all the best workmen.”

“I know which men I want to keep here better than you do.”

“A tramp! No one even knows where he comes from. It gave the place a bad name. How would Monsieur like it if he set the barn on fire some night?”

“That’s my business, and it’s my farm as well. I mean to run it the way I choose. In the future, be sure you give me your reasons before you send anyone away.”

Bocage, I have said, had known me as a child; however sharp the tone of my words, he was too fond of me to be really annoyed. And in fact he did not take me seriously enough. The Normandy peasant too often remains unconcerned by actions whose motives he cannot understand—that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit. Bocage regarded this argument as no more than a whim of mine.

I had no desire, though, to end the discussion with a reproach, and feeling that I had been too hard on him, I tried to find something else to say. “Your son Charles will be coming home soon, won’t he?” I managed to ask, after a moment’s silence.

“I thought Monsieur had forgotten all about him,” Bocage replied, still wounded.

“Forget him, Bocage! How could I forget him, after all the things we did together last year? As a matter of fact, I’m counting on him to help me with the farms.”

“Monsieur is very kind. Charles will be home in a week’s time.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it, Bocage.” And I sent him off.

Bocage came close to the truth: I had not forgotten Charles, of course, but my interest in him was very slight. How can I explain that after so intense a friendship I no longer felt more than a peevish curiosity about him? The answer is that my tastes were no longer those of the year before. My two farms, I had to admit to myself, no longer interested me so much as the workmen I employed on them; and if I was to spend my time among these people, Charles’s presence would be a hindrance. He was much too reasonable, much too respectable. So in spite of the deep feeling I attached to his memory, I rather dreaded his return.

He returned. How right I had been to dread, and how right Ménalque was to reject all memories! Instead of Charles, into the room walked a ridiculous Monsieur under an even more ridiculous bowler. Lord, how he had changed! Embarrassed, uneasy, I nonetheless tried not to spoil his evident pleasure in seeing me again; but even his pleasure vexed me by its clumsiness and what I took to be a certain insincerity. I had received him in the salon, and at that hour of the afternoon I couldn’t see his face clearly; but when the lamps were brought in I noticed with disgust that he had let his whiskers grow.

Our conversation that evening was rather dull; for about eight days afterward, as I knew he would be at the farms continually, I avoided them and confined myself to my desk and to the company of my guests. Then, as soon as I began going out again, I was absorbed by an altogether new occupation.

Woodcutters had invaded the woods. Every year, some of the timber on the estate was sold; divided into twelve equal lots, the woods annually furnished, along with some full-size trees, the twelve-year growth that was cut up for faggots.

This work was done in winter and then, according to the terms of their contract, the woodcutters were to have cleared the lot before spring. But the negligence of old Heurtevent, the contractor, was so great that sometimes spring came and the lot was still covered with fallen trees; then the delicate new shoots had to creep through the dead branches, and when the woodcutters finally cleared the ground, many of the saplings were destroyed.

That year old Heurtevent’s laxness was worse than we had feared. In the absence of any competing bids, I had had to lease the lot to him at a very low price; and so, certain of his profit, he was very slow about clearing what had cost him so little. From week to week he postponed the job, offering one excuse after another—the lack of workmen, the bad weather, a sick horse, other commitments … The consequence was that by midsummer, nothing had been cleared away.

What would have enraged me the year before left me quite calm now; I certainly saw the damage Heurtevent was causing, but the devastated woods were beautiful, and I wandered through them with delight, spying on the game I found there, startling the vipers and sometimes sitting for a long time on one of the fallen trunks that seemed still alive and was sending out a few green sprigs from its wounds.

Then, suddenly, in the second week of August, Heurtevent decided to send his men. Six came at once, claiming they would finish the whole job in ten days. The lot to be cleared was almost adjacent to La Valterie; to speed their work, I arranged to have the men’s meals brought from the farm. The man given this job was a yokel named Bute, who had returned a complete wreck from his military service—I refer to his mind, for his body was in magnificent condition; he was one of my farmhands with whom I most enjoyed talking. And now I could see more of him without visiting the farm. For it was precisely at this time that I began going out again. And for several days I scarcely left the woods, returning to La Morinière only for meals, and often late for them. I pretended to be overseeing the work, but in truth saw only the workmen.

Sometimes two of Heurtevent’s sons joined this crew of six men: one about twenty, the other fifteen, both lanky, bowlegged, hard-featured boys. They had a foreign look, and I learned later on that their mother was Spanish. I was surprised at first that she could have come such a distance, but Heurtevent, a rolling stone in his youth, had apparently married her in Spain. For this reason he was regarded disapprovingly in the neighborhood. The first time I noticed the younger boy, I remember, was a rainy day; he was alone, perched on a cartload of faggots, lying back among the branches and singing, or rather bawling, a strange kind of chant I had never heard in this region. The cart horses knew the road and followed it without any guidance. I cannot describe the effect that song produced on me, for I had heard its like only in Africa. The boy seemed to be in a trance, and might have been drunk; when I passed, he didn’t even glance at me. The next day I found out this was Heurtevent’s son. It was in order to see him again, or at least in the hope of seeing him, that I lingered in the woods now. They were soon cleared. The Heurtevent boys came only three times. They seemed proud, and I could not get a word out of them.

Bute, on the contrary, enjoyed talking; I managed to make it clear that he could say whatever he pleased, at which point he lost no time undressing the region. Greedily I brooded over my mystery. At one and the same time it exceeded my hopes and failed to satisfy me. Was this what simmered beneath appearances? or was it perhaps only one more hypocrisy, one more deception? What if it was! And I questioned Bute as I had questioned the shapeless chronicles of the Goths. His stories gave off a murky vapor, a touch of brimstone which was already going to my head and which I uneasily inhaled. From him I learned first of all that Heurtevent was sleeping with his daughter. I was afraid of stopping the flow of confidences by giving the slightest sign of disapproval, so I merely smiled, curiosity urging me on. “And the mother? Doesn’t she have anything to say about it?”

“The mother! She’s been dead twelve years now … He used to beat her.”

“How many are there in the family?”

“Five children. You saw the oldest son and the youngest. There’s another about sixteen, a weakling who wants to be a priest. The older daughter already has two children by her father …”

And little by little I learned many other things which made the house of Heurtevent into a lurid, sulfurous place around which my helpless imagination circled like a blowfly: one night, the older son tried to rape a young servant girl, and when she put up a struggle the father intervened in his son’s behalf, holding her down with his enormous hands; meanwhile the second boy, on the floor above, continued tenderly reciting his prayers and the youngest, a witness to the drama, enjoyed it all. As for the rape, I suppose it hadn’t been very difficult, for Bute also told me that soon afterward the girl, having taken a liking to such things, had tried to seduce the little priest.

“And hasn’t succeeded?” I asked.

“He’s still holding out, but it won’t be long now,” Bute answered.

“Didn’t you say there was another daughter?”

“…  who takes whatever she can get; and for nothing. When she really wants it, she’s willing to pay. Except you can’t do it in the house—the father would beat your head in. He says people can do what they want under their own roof—but not outsiders. Pierre—that farmhand you fired—didn’t talk about it much, but one night he only got out of there with a dent in his head. And since then you do it in the woods.”

“Have you had a try?” I asked, with an encouraging glance.

He lowered his eyes for form’s sake and said, sniggering: “Once in a while.” Then, suddenly looking up: “Old Bocage’s boy too.”

“What boy is that?”

“Alcide, the one who sleeps at the farm. Monsieur doesn’t know who I mean?”

I was utterly amazed to learn that Bocage had another son.

“That’s right,” Bute went on. “Last year he was still at his uncle’s. But it’s odd that Monsieur hasn’t met him yet in the woods. He goes out poaching almost every night.”

Bute had said these last words in a lower voice. He stared at me, and I realized I had to smile. Satisfied, he went on: “Monsieur knows perfectly well what’s going on. Anyway the woods are so big it doesn’t do much harm.”

I showed so little annoyance that soon after this, Bute, reassured and eager, I suppose, to settle some old scores with Bocage, showed me, in a certain glade, the snares set by Alcide and then took me to a place where I was almost sure to catch him. At the top of a rise in the thicket that formed the edge of the woods, there was a gap through which Alcide was in the habit of slipping at around six o’clock. Here Bute and I, delighted by our stratagem, stretched a copper wire, perfectly concealed. Then, having made me swear not to give him away, Bute went off, not wanting to compromise himself. I lay down on the slope; I waited.

And for three nights I waited in vain. I was beginning to think Bute had tricked me. The fourth evening, at last, I heard light footsteps approaching. My heart began pounding, and at that moment I learned the poacher’s voluptuous dread. The snare was so well set that Alcide walked right into it. I saw him suddenly pitch forward, his ankle caught. He tried to get up but fell again, struggling like a trapped animal. But I had hold of him by then. He was a nasty-looking boy, green-eyed, towheaded, weasel-faced. He gave me a couple of kicks and then, immobilized, tried to bite my hands; when that proved futile he began pouring out a stream of the most extraordinary abuse I had ever heard. In the end I could stand it no longer and burst out laughing. At that he suddenly stopped, peered up at me and said, in a lower voice, “You bastard, you’ve crippled me!”

“Let’s have a look.”

He pulled his sock down over his boot and showed his ankle, on which I could barely make out a faint pinkish line. “That’s nothing.”

He smiled a little, and then, slyly: “I’ll tell my father you’re the one who sets the snares.”

“But it’s one of your own!”

“I don’t mean you set this one.”

“How do you know?”

“You couldn’t do it that well. Let me see how you do it.”

“You teach me.”

That evening I came in very late for dinner, and because no one knew where I had been, Marceline was distressed. But I didn’t tell her I had set six snares, and that far from scolding Alcide I had given him ten sous.

The next day, making the rounds with him, I had the diversion of finding two rabbits caught in our snares; naturally I let him have them. The hunting season hadn’t yet begun—what would he do with this game, which couldn’t be sold publicly without getting him into trouble? Alcide refused to tell me. Finally I learned, from Bute again, that Heurtevent was the receiver and his youngest son the go-between. Was this the means by which I could learn more about this savage family? With what passion I continued poaching!

I met Alcide every evening; we caught a great many rabbits and even, once, a roebuck that still showed some faint signs of life. I’m still horrified when I remember Alcide’s delight in killing it. We put the carcass in a safe place where the Heurtevent boy could come and find it during the night.

From then on I no longer cared much for going out by day, when the cleared woods attracted me so much less. I even tried to work; a pathetic, purposeless work—for when my lectures had ended I had refused to renew my appointment—thankless work from which I was abruptly distracted by the slightest song, the slightest sound in the countryside; every cry became for me a summons. How many times I jumped up from my desk to the window, to see nothing at all! How many times I dashed outside … The only attention of which I was capable was that of my five senses.

But once night fell—and night, even at this season, fell quickly—that was our time, whose beauty I had never suspected until then; and I stole out of the house the way thieves steal in. I had developed the eyesight of a night bird; I marveled at the richer, higher grass, the thicker foliage. Night magnified everything, opened everything, made the earth distant and every surface deep. The smoothest path seemed dangerous. Everywhere I sensed awakening whatever lived a life of darkness.

“Where does your father think you are right now?”

“Minding the cows, in the stable.”

I knew that Alcide slept there, up near the pigeons and the hens; locked in at night, he managed to escape through a hole in the roof; his clothes retained the warm smell of fowls.

Then quite suddenly, as soon as the game was collected, he vanished into the night as though through a trapdoor, without a gesture, without even mentioning the next night’s meeting. I knew that before returning to the farm, where the dogs never barked at him, he would find young Heurtevent and give him his catch. But where? I never managed to find out: bribes, threats, tricks, all failed; the Heurtevents wouldn’t let anyone near them. And I don’t know which was the greater triumph of my madness: to pursue a stupid mystery which forever receded before me, or perhaps to invent the mystery out of my own curiosity. —But what was it Alcide did when he left me? Did he actually sleep at the farm? Or only allow the farmer to think so? No matter how I compromised myself, I succeeded only in lessening his respect without increasing his confidence; which infuriated and at the same time depressed me.

Once he had vanished, I felt terribly alone, and tramped home through the dew-soaked fields drunk on darkness and the wild, anarchic life around me, drenched, muddy, covered with leaves. From far away, in the sleeping house, I seemed to be guided, as though by a calm beacon, by the lamp in my study where Marceline supposed I was working away, or by the night light in Marceline’s bedroom. I had persuaded her that without these nocturnal expeditions I could not fall asleep. It was the truth: I despised my bed, and would have preferred the barn.

Game was abundant that year. Rabbits, hares, pheasants filled the snares. After three nights, seeing that everything was going well, Bute decided to join us.

On our sixth night of poaching we found only two of our twelve traps: a raid had been made during the day. Bute asked me for a hundred sous to buy copper wire, the ordinary kind being useless.

The next day I had the pleasure of seeing my ten snares in Bocage’s house, and I was even obliged to approve his zeal. The worst of it was that the year before, I had recklessly promised ten sous for each snare discovered: I now had to give Bocage a hundred. Meanwhile, with his hundred sous Bute bought more copper wire. Four days later, the same events; ten new traps were expropriated. Again, a hundred sous to Bute, and a hundred to Bocage. And when I congratulated him he answered, “it’s not me you should thank, Monsieur, it’s Alcide.”

“Oh …” But too much astonishment might ruin everything. I controlled myself.

“Yes,” Bocage went on, “Monsieur understands. I’m not a young man any more, and the farm takes up too much of my time. The boy keeps an eye on the woods for me; he knows them like the back of his hand—he’s sharp, that boy of mine, he knows just where to look for the traps, and he finds them too.”

“I can believe that, Bocage.”

“So out of the ten sous Monsieur gives me, I let him have five on each trap.”

“He certainly deserves it. Imagine, twenty snares in five days! He does his job well. The poachers had better watch out—I suppose they’ll lie low now.”

“Oh no, Monsieur, the more you pick up, the more you find. Game is bringing a good price this year, and for the few sous it costs them …”

I had been so thoroughly taken that I almost thought Bocage was part of the ring. And what infuriated me about the business was not so much Alcide’s triple-dealing as seeing him fool me this way. Besides, what were he and Bute doing with the money? I didn’t have a clue—I would never know anything about such creatures. They would always lie, would cheat me for the sake of cheating me. That night it wasn’t a hundred sous but ten francs I gave to Bute: I warned him that they were the last, and that if the traps were stolen again, it would be just too bad.

The next day, Bocage came to see me; he appeared very embarrassed; I immediately became more so. What had happened? Bocage informed me that Bute had not come back to the farm until after daybreak—and dead drunk; at Bocage’s first words Bute had insulted him in filthy language, and then had attacked and beaten him.

“So I came to find out,” Bocage said, “if Monsieur will authorize me (and he lingered slightly on the word), authorize me to fire him.”

“Let me think it over, Bocage. I’m very sorry to hear he was disrespectful to you. I understand. Come back in two hours. I’ll decide by then.”

Bocage left.

To keep Bute was painfully unfair to Bocage; to dismiss him was to risk his revenge. Well, whatever came of it, I was the only guilty party. And as soon as Bocage returned I told him: “You can tell Bute we don’t want to see him around here any more.”

Then I waited. What was Bocage doing? What was Bute saying? —And only that evening did I hear rumors of the scandal. Bute had talked. I first realized this by the screams coming from Bocage’s house—it was young Alcide being beaten. Bocage would be coming; he came—I heard his old footsteps, and my heart pounded even harder than when I had been poaching. An unbearable moment! A lot of fine feelings would have to be trotted out, and I would be obliged to take Bocage seriously. What explanations could I invent? How badly I would do it all! If only I could have given up my part … Bocage came in. I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. It was ridiculous: I had to make him start all over. Finally I managed to make out this much: He believed that Bute alone was guilty. The incredible truth escaped him: that I had given Bute ten francs—for what? He was too much of a Normandy peasant to conceive of such a thing. Bute must have stolen the ten francs, that was all; by claiming I had given them to him, he was merely proving himself a liar as well as a thief; it was a way of covering up, and Bocage wasn’t the man to believe such a story. There was no more mention of poaching. If Bocage had beaten Alcide, it was because the boy had spent the night out.

So I was saved! In Bocage’s eyes, at least, everything was all right. What a fool Bute was! That evening, I must admit, I didn’t have much of a desire to go out poaching.

I had supposed then that everything was over, but an hour later Charles appeared. He looked anything but friendly—as he came toward me it occurred to me that he was even more of a bore than his father. To think that just a year before …

“Well, Charles, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”

“If Monsieur wanted to see me, I was down at the farm. All you had to do was come there—but I don’t spend my time in the woods at night.”

“Ah, your father told you …”

“My father told me nothing because my father knows nothing. Why should he have to learn, at his age, that Monsieur is making a fool of him?”

“Watch out, Charles, don’t say something you’ll be sorry for.”

“Oh, you’re the master here, all right. You do whatever you please.”

“Charles, you know perfectly well I’ve never made a fool of anyone, and if I do what I please, it harms no one but myself.”

He shrugged slightly. “How can you expect us to protect your interests if you undermine them yourself? You can’t defend both the poacher and the gamekeeper.”

“Why not?”

“Because then … Oh, listen, Monsieur, you’re all too smart for me. I just don’t like to see my employer siding with criminals and helping them undo the work we’ve done for him.”

Charles’s voice grew more and more assured. He sounded almost noble. I noticed that he had shaved off his whiskers. His point, moreover, was quite well taken. And since I said nothing (what could I have said?) he went on: “It was Monsieur who taught me last year that property involves certain responsibilities—but Monsieur seems to have forgotten. Either you take those responsibilities seriously and stop dealing with those … or else you don’t deserve to own anything.”

A silence.

“Is that all you came to say?”

“For tonight, yes, Monsieur. But some other night, if Monsieur forces me, perhaps I’ll be coming to tell you that my father and I are leaving La Morintère.” And he went out, after a very low bow. I took no time to reflect:

“Charles!” He’s absolutely right … Oh, but if that’s what’s called ownership!… “Charles!” … And I ran after him, catching up with him in the dark, speaking very quickly, as though to bolster my sudden decision: “You can tell your father I’m putting La Morinière up for sale.”

Charles bowed gravely and walked away without a word.

All of which was ridiculous, ridiculous!

That evening Marceline could not come down to dinner, and sent word that she was ill. I rushed upstairs and into her bedroom, full of anxiety. She reassured me at once: “It’s only a cold.” She had caught a chill, nothing more: “Though I put on my shawl the minute I started shivering.”

“You should have put on something warmer.”

“I should have put it on before I started shivering, not after.” She looked at me, tried to smile. Perhaps a day that had begun so badly inclined me to anxiety. If she had actually spoken the words: “Do you really care so much whether I live or die?” I couldn’t have understood her more clearly. No doubt about it, everything was going to pieces around me; of all that my hand grasped, it could hold onto nothing. I flung myself upon Marceline and covered her pale forehead with kisses. That was when she broke down and began sobbing on my shoulder.

“Oh, Marceline, Marceline! Let’s get away from this place. Somewhere else I’ll love you the way I did in Sorrento. You thought I had changed, didn’t you? But somewhere else, you’ll see, nothing has changed our love.”

I had not yet cured her unhappiness, but already, how she clung to hope!

The summer was barely over, but already the weather was damp and cold; the last rosebuds were rotting unopened on the bushes. Our guests had long since left us. Marceline was so ill that she could not deal with closing the house, and five days later we left.