CHAPTER III

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The first few days, George gave all his care to the little house which was to receive the New Life within its great peace; and to help him in the preparations he had Colas di Sciampagne, who seemed expert at all trades. On a band of fresh plastering he had written with the point of a reed this old device, suggested by the illusion: _Parva domus, magna quies_. And he saw a favorable presage even in the three blades of bay sown by the wind between the interstices of the raised edge of the window.

But, when all was ready and this false energy had gone, he found again in his inmost self the inquietude, the discontent, and that implacable anguish the true cause of which he did not know; he felt confusedly that his destiny had once more pushed him into an oblique and perilous pass. It seemed to him that, from another house and from other lips, there came to him now a voice of recall and reproach. In his soul there revived the heartbreaking farewells, tearless and yet so cruel, in which he had lied from shame on reading in his deceived mother's tired eyes the question, too sad: "_For whom_ are you abandoning me?"

Was it not this mute question, the recollection of that blush and that lie, which inspired him with the inquietude, the discontent, and the anguish, at the moment that he was about to enter the New Life? And how could he silence that voice? By what intoxication?

He did not dare reply. In spite of his deep trouble, he wished still to believe in the promise of her who was going to come; he hoped to be able still to attribute to his love a high moral signification. Had he not an ardent desire to live, to give to all the forces of his nature a rhythmic development, to feel himself complete and harmonious? Love would finally effect this prodigy; he would finally find in love the plenitude of his humanity, deformed and diminished by so many miseries.

With these hopes and these vague tendencies, he sought to cheat his remorse; but what dominated him in presence of this woman's image was always desire. In despite of all his platonic aspirations, he could not succeed in seeing in love anything else but the work of the flesh, could not imagine the days to come but as a succession of already familiar sensual pleasures. In that benign solitude, in the company of that passionate woman, what life could he live, if not a life of idleness and voluptuousness?

And all the past sorrows came back to his mind, with all the painful pictures: his mother's haggard face and swollen red eyes, scorched by tears; Christine's sweet and heart-broken smile; the large head of the sickly child, always leaning on a bosom barren of all but sighs; the cadaveric mask of the poor idiotic gormand.

And his mother's tired eyes asked: "_For whom_ are you abandoning me?"

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