part I

like to imagine is, on the contrary, a servile humanity working towards the production of some cruel master-piece; a Bernard Palissy (how they have deaved us with that fellow!) burning his wife and children to get a varnish for a fine plate. I like turning problems round; I can’t help it, my mind is so constructed that they keep steadier when they are standing on their heads. And if I can’t endure the thought of a Christ sacrificing himself for the thankless salvation of all the frightful people I knock up against daily, I imagine with some satisfaction, and indeed a kind of serenity, the rotting of that vile mob in order to produce a Christ ... though, in reality, I should prefer something else; for all His teaching has only served to plunge us deeper into the mire. The trouble comes from the selfishness of the ferocious. Imagine what magnificent things an unselfish ferocity would produce! When we take care of the poor, the feeble, the rickety, the injured, we are making a great mistake; and that is why I hate religion--because it teaches us to. That deep peace, which philanthropists themselves pretend they derive from the contemplation of nature, and its fauna and flora, comes from this--that in the savage state, it is only robust creatures that flourish; all the rest is refuse and serves as manure. But people won’t see it; won’t admit it.”

“Yes, yes; I admit it willingly. Go on.”

“And tell me whether it isn’t shameful, wretched ... that men have done so much to get superb breeds of horses, cattle, poultry, cereals, flowers, and that they themselves are still seeking a relief for their sufferings in medicine, a palliative in charity, a consolation in religion, and oblivion in drink. What we ought to work at is the amelioration of the breed. But all selection implies the suppression of failures, and this is what our fool of a Christianized society cannot consent to. It will not even take upon itself to castrate degenerates--and those are the most prolific. What we want is not hospitals, but stud farms.”

“Upon my soul, Strouvilhou, I like you when you talk so.”

“I am afraid, Monsieur le Comte, that you have misunderstood me. You thought me a sceptic, and in reality I am an idealist, a mystic. Scepticism has never been any good. One knows for that matter where it leads--to tolerance! I consider sceptics people without imagination, without ideals--fools.... And I am not ignorant of all the delicacies, the sentimental subtleties which would be suppressed by the production of this robust humanity; but no one would be there to regret the delicacies, since the people capable of appreciating them would be suppressed too. Don’t make any mistake--I am not without what is called culture, and I know that certain among the Greeks had caught a glimpse of my ideal; at any rate, I like imagining it, and remembering that Coré, daughter of Ceres, went down to Hades full of pity for the shades; but that after she had become queen, and Pluto’s wife, Homer never calls her anything but ‘implacable Proserpine.’ See Odyssey, Bk. VI. ‘_Implacable_’--that’s what every man who pretends to be virtuous owes it to himself to be.”

“Glad to see you come back to literature--that is, if we may be said ever to have left it. Well then, virtuous Strouvilhou, I want to know whether you’ll consent to become the implacable editor of a review?”

“To tell the truth, my dear count, I must own that of all nauseating human emanations, literature is one of those which disgust me most. I can see nothing in it but compromise and flattery. And I go so far as to doubt whether it can be anything else--at any rate until it has made a clean sweep of the past. We live upon nothing but feelings which have been taken for granted once for all and which the reader imagines he experiences, because he believes everything he sees in print; the author builds on this as he does on the conventions which he believes to be the foundations of his art. These feelings ring as false as counters, but they pass current. And as everyone knows that ‘bad money drives out good,’ a man who should offer the public real coins would seem to be defrauding us. In a world in which everyone cheats, it’s the honest man who passes for a charlatan. I give you fair warning--if I edit a review, it will be in order to prick bladders--in order to demonetize fine feelings, and those promissory notes which go by the name of _words_.”

“Upon my soul, I should very much like to know how you’ll set about it.”

“Let me alone and you’ll soon see.... I have often thought it over.”

“No one will understand what you’re after; no one will follow you.”

“Oh, come now! The cleverest young men of the present day are already on their guard against poetical inflation. They perfectly recognize a gas bag when they see one--even in the disguise of scientifically elaborate metre, and trimmed up with all the hackneyed effusions of high-sounding lyrical verse. One can always find hands for a work of destruction. Shall we found a school with no other object but to pull things down?... Would you be afraid?”

“No.... So long as my garden isn’t trampled on.”

“There’s enough to be done elsewhere ... _en attendant_. The moment is propitious. I know many a young man who is only waiting for the rallying cry; quite young ones.... Oh, yes, I know! That’s what you like; but I warn you they aren’t taking any.... I have often wondered by what miracle painting has gone so far ahead, and how it happens that literature has let itself be outdistanced. In painting to-day, just see how the ‘_motif_,’ as it used to be called, has fallen into discredit. _A fine subject!_ It makes one laugh. Painters don’t even dare venture on a portrait unless they can be sure of avoiding every trace of resemblance. If we manage our affairs well, and leave me alone for that, I don’t ask for more than two years before a future poet will think himself dishonoured if anyone can understand a word of what he says. Yes, Monsieur le Comte, will you wager? All sense, all meaning will be considered anti-poetical. Illogicality shall be our guiding star. What a fine title for a review--_The Scavengers!_”

Passavant had listened without turning a hair.

“Do you count your young nephew among your acolytes?” he asked after a pause.

“Young Léon is one of the elect; he doesn’t let the flies settle on him, either. Really, it’s a pleasure teaching him. Last term he thought it would be a joke to cut out the swotters in his form and carry off all the prizes. Since he came back from the holidays he has let his work go to the deuce; I haven’t the least idea what he’s hatching; but I have every confidence in him, and I wouldn’t for the world interfere.”

“Will you bring him to see me?”

“Monsieur le Comte is joking, no doubt.... Well, then, this review?”

“We’ll see about it later. I must have time to let your plans mature in my mind. In the mean time, you might really find me a secretary. I’m not satisfied with the one I had.”

“I’ll send you little Cob-Lafleur to-morrow. I shall be seeing him this afternoon, and I make no doubt he’ll suit you.”

“Scavenger style?”

“A little.”

“_Ex uno_...”

“Oh, no; don’t judge them all from him. He is one of the moderate ones. Just right for you.”

Strouvilhou rose.

“A propos,” said Passavant, “I haven’t given you my book, I think. I’m sorry not to have a first edition left....”

“As I don’t mean to sell it, it isn’t of the slightest importance.”

“It’s only because the print’s better.”

“Oh! as I don’t mean to read it either.... _Au revoir._ And if the spirit moves you, I’m at your service. I wish you good morning.”

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: In English in the original.]

XIII

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: DOUVIERS’ PROFITENDIEU

BROUGHT back Olivier’s things from Passavant’s. As soon as I got home, set to work on _The Counterfeiters_. My exaltation is calm and lucid. My joy is such as I have never known before. Wrote thirty pages without hesitation, without a single erasure. The whole drama, like a nocturnal landscape suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning, emerges out of the darkness, very different from what I had been trying to invent. The books which I have hitherto written seem to me like the ornamental pools in public gardens--their contours are defined--perfect perhaps, but the water they contain is captive and lifeless. I wish it now to run freely, according to its bent, sometimes swift, sometimes slow; I choose not to foresee its windings.

X. maintains that a good novelist, before he begins to write his book, ought to know how it is going to finish. As for me, who let mine flow where it will, I consider that life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination. “Might be continued”--these are the words with which I should like to finish my _Counterfeiters_.

Visit from Douviers. He is certainly an excellent fellow.

As I exaggerated my sympathy for him, I was obliged to submit to his effusions, which were rather embarrassing. All the time I was talking to him, I kept repeating to myself La Rochefoucauld’s words: “I am very little susceptible to pity; and should like not to be so at all.... I consider that one ought to content oneself with showing it and carefully refrain from feeling it.” And yet my sympathy was real, undeniable, and I was moved to tears. Truth to tell, my tears seemed to console him better than my words. I almost believe that he gave up being unhappy as soon as he saw me cry.

I was firmly resolved not to tell him the name of the seducer; but to my surprise he did not ask it. I think his jealousy dies down as soon as he no longer feels Laura’s eyes upon him. In any case, its energy had been somewhat diminished by the act of coming to see me.

There is something illogical in his case; he is indignant that the other man should have deserted Laura. I pointed out that if it had not been for his desertion, Laura would not have come back to him. He is resolved to love the child as if it were his own. Who knows whether he would ever have tasted the joys of paternity without the seducer? I took good care not to point this out to him, for at the recollection of his insufficiencies, his jealousy becomes more acute. But then it belongs to the domain of vanity and ceases to interest me.

That an Othello should be jealous is comprehensible; the image of his wife’s pleasure obsesses him. But when a Douviers becomes jealous it can only be because he imagines he ought to be.

And no doubt he nurses this passion from a secret need to give body to his somewhat unsubstantial personage. Happiness would be natural to him; but he has to admire himself and he esteems only what is acquired, not what is natural. I did all I could therefore to persuade him that simple happiness was more meritorious than torments and very difficult to attain. I did not let him go till he was calm again.

Inconsistency. Characters in a novel or a play who act all the way through exactly as one expects them to.... This consistency of theirs, which is held up to our admiration, is on the contrary the very thing which makes us recognize that they are artificially composed.

Not that I pretend that inconsistency is a sure indication of naturalness, for one often meets, especially among women, affected inconsistencies; and on the other hand, in some few instances, there is reason to admire what is known as _esprit de suite_; but, as a rule, such consecutiveness is obtained only by vain and obstinate perseverance, and at the expense of all naturalness. The more fundamentally generous an individual is, and the more fertile in possibilities, the more liable he is to change, and the less willing to allow his future to be decided by his past. The “_justum et tenacem propositi virum_,” who is held up to us as a model, more often than not offers a stony soil and is refractory to culture.

I have known some of yet another sort: these assiduously fabricate for themselves a self-conscious originality, and after having made a choice of certain practices, their principal preoccupation is never to depart from them, to remain for ever on their guard and allow themselves not a moment’s relaxation. (I remember X., who refused to let me fill his glass with Montrachet 1904, saying: “I don’t like anything but Bordeaux.” As soon as I pretended it was a Bordeaux, he thought the Montrachet delectable.)

When I was younger, I used to make resolutions, which I imagined were virtuous. I was less anxious to be what I was, than to become what I wished to be. Now, I am not far from thinking that in irresolution lies the secret of not growing old.

Olivier has asked me what I am working at. I let myself be carried away into talking of my book, and even--he seemed so much interested--into reading him the pages I had just written. I was afraid of what he would say, knowing how sweeping young people’s judgments are and how difficult they find it to admit another point of view from their own. But the few remarks which he diffidently offered, seemed to me most judicious, and I immediately turned them to account.

My breath, my life comes to me from him--through him.

He is still anxious about the review he was going to edit, and particularly about the story which he wrote at Passavant’s request and which he now repudiates. I told him that Passavant’s new arrangements will necessitate the re-casting of the first number; he will be able to get his MS. back.

Just received a very unexpected visit from _M. le juge d’instruction_ Profitendieu. He was mopping his forehead and breathing heavily, not so much, it seemed to me, from having come up my six flights of stairs, as from embarrassment. He kept his hat in his hand and did not sit down till I pressed him to. He is a handsome man, with a fine figure and considerable presence.

“I think you are President Molinier’s brother-in-law,” he said. “It is about his son George that I have taken the liberty of coming to see you. I feel sure you will excuse a step which at first sight may seem indiscreet, but which the affection and esteem I have for my colleague will, I hope, sufficiently explain.”

He paused. I got up and went to let down a portière, for fear the charwoman, who is very inquisitive, and who was, I knew, in the next room, should overhear. Profitendieu approved me with a smile.

“In my capacity as _juge d’instruction_, I have an affair on my hands which is causing me extreme embarrassment. Your young nephew has already been mixed up in a most compromising manner in a ... this is quite between ourselves, I beg ... in a somewhat scandalous adventure. I am willing to believe, considering his extreme youth, that he was taken by surprise, owing to his simplicity--his innocence; but I may say that it has required some skill on my part to ... ahem ... circumscribe this affair, without injuring the interests of justice. In the face of a second breach--of quite another kind, I hasten to add--I cannot answer for it that young George will get off so easily. I even doubt whether it is in the boy’s own interest to _try_ to get him off, notwithstanding all my desire as a friend to spare your brother-in-law such a scandal. Nevertheless I _will_ try; but I have officers, you understand, who are zealous, and whom I am not always able to restrain. Or, if you prefer it, I am still able to keep them in hand to-day, but to-morrow I shall be unable to. And I thought you might speak to your young nephew and warn him of the risk he is running.”

Profitendieu’s visit (I might as well admit it) had at first alarmed me horribly; but as soon as I understood that he had come neither as an enemy nor as a judge, I began to be amused. I was a great deal more so when he went on:

“For some time past a certain number of counterfeit coins have been put into circulation. So far I am informed. But I have not yet succeeded in discovering their origin. I know, however, that young George--quite innocently, I am willing to believe--is one of those who circulate them. A few young boys of your nephew’s age are lending themselves to this shameful traffic. I don’t doubt that their simplicity is being abused and that these foolish children are tools in the hands of one or two unscrupulous elders. We should have had no difficulty in taking up the younger delinquents and making them confess the origin of the coins; but I am only too well aware that after a certain point a case escapes our control, so to speak; that is to say, we cannot go back on the police court proceedings, and we sometimes find ourselves forced to become acquainted with things we should prefer to ignore. Upon this occasion, I have no doubt I shall discover the real culprits without having recourse to the minors’ evidence. I have given orders therefore not to alarm them. But my orders are only provisional. I don’t want your nephew to force me to countermand them. He had better be told that the authorities’ eyes are open. It wouldn’t be a bad thing indeed to frighten him a little; he is on a downward course....”

I declared I would do my best to warn him, but Profitendieu seemed not to hear me. His eyes became vague. He repeated twice: “on what is called a downward course,” and then was silent.

I do not know how long his silence lasted. Without his having to formulate his thoughts, I seemed to see them forming in his mind, and before he spoke, I already heard his words:

“I am a father myself, sir....”

Everything he had been saying disappeared; there was nothing left between us but Bernard. The rest was only a pretext; it was to talk of him that he had come.

If effusions make me feel uncomfortable, if exaggerated feelings irritate me, nothing, on the contrary, could have been more calculated to touch me than this restrained emotion. He kept it back as best he could, but with so great an effort that his lips and hands trembled. He was unable to continue. He suddenly hid his face in his hands, and the upper part of his body was shaken with sobs:

“You see,” he stammered, “you see how miserable a child can make us.”

What was the good of pretending? Extremely moved myself, “If Bernard were to see you,” I cried, “his heart would melt; I can vouch for it.”

At the same time I felt in rather an awkward situation. Bernard had hardly ever mentioned his father to me. I had morally accepted his having left his family, ready as I am to consider such desertions natural, and disposed to see in them nothing but what will be to the child’s greatest advantage. In Bernard’s case, there was the additional factor of his bastardy.... But here was his false father discovering feelings which were all the stronger, no doubt, that they were beyond control, and all the more sincere that they were in no way obligatory. In the face of this love, this grief, I was forced to ask myself whether Bernard had done right to leave. I had no longer the heart to approve him.

“Make use of me, if you think I can be of any use,” I said, “if you think that I ought to speak to him. He has a good heart.”

“I know. I know.... Yes, you can do a great deal. I know he was with you this summer. My police work is well done.... I know too that he is going up for his _viva voce_ this very day. I chose the moment I knew he would be at the Sorbonne to come and see you. I was afraid of meeting him.”

For some minutes, my emotion had been dwindling, for I had just noticed that the verb “to know” figured in nearly all his sentences. I immediately became less interested in what he was saying than in this trick of speech, which was perhaps professional.

He told me also that he “knew” that Bernard had passed his written examination brilliantly. An obliging examiner, who happened to be a friend of his, had enabled him to see his son’s French essay, which it appears was most remarkable. He spoke of Bernard with a kind of restrained admiration, which made me wonder whether after all he did not believe he was really his father.

“Heavens!” added he, “whatever you do, don’t tell him what I have just been saying. He is so proud by nature, so easily offended!... If he suspected that ever since he left I have never ceased thinking of him, following him.... But all the same, you can tell him that you have seen me.” (He breathed painfully after each sentence.) “You can tell him, what no one else can, that I am not angry with him”; then with a voice that grew fainter: “that I have never ceased to love him ... like a son. Yes, I know that you know.... You can tell him too ...” and without looking at me, with difficulty, in a state of extreme confusion “that his mother left me ... yes, for good, this summer; and that if he ... would come back, I....”

He was unable to finish.

When a big, strong, matter-of-fact man, who has made his way in life and is firmly established in his career, suddenly throws aside all decorum and pours out his heart before a stranger, he affords him (in this case it was I) a most singular spectacle. I was able once more to verify, as I have often done before, that I am more easily moved by the effusions of an outsider than by those of a familiar acquaintance. (Will examine into the reason of this another time.)

Profitendieu did not conceal that he had at first been prejudiced against me, not having understood, and still not understanding, why Bernard had left his home to join me. This was what had prevented him from coming to see me in the first place. I did not dare tell him the story of the suit-case, and merely spoke of his son’s friendship for Olivier, which had quickly led to our becoming intimate in our turn.

“These young men,” went on Profitendieu, “start off in life without knowing to what they are exposed. No doubt their ignorance of danger makes their strength. But we who know, we, their fathers, tremble for them. Our solicitude irritates them, and the best thing is to let them see it as little as possible. I know that it is sometimes very troublesome and clumsy. Rather than incessantly repeat to a child that fire burns, let us consent to his burning his fingers. Experience is a better instructor than advice. I always allowed Bernard the greatest possible liberty--so much so, that he fancied, I grieve to say, that I was indifferent to him. I am afraid that was his mistake and the reason of his running away. Even then, I thought it was better to let him be; though I kept a watch on him all the time without his suspecting it. Thank God, I had the means!” (Evidently the organization of his police was Profitendieu’s special pride--this was the third time he had alluded to it.) “I thought I must take care not to belittle the risks of his initiative in the boy’s eyes. Shall I own to you that his rebellious conduct, notwithstanding the pain it gave me, has only made me fonder of him than ever? It seemed to me a proof of courage, of valour....”

Now that he felt himself on confidential terms, the worthy man would have gone on for ever. I tried to bring the conversation back to what interested me more and, cutting him short, asked him if he had ever seen one of the counterfeit coins of which he had spoken. I was curious to know whether they were like the little glass piece which Bernard had shown us. I had no sooner mentioned this, than Profitendieu’s whole countenance changed; his eyelids half closed and a curious light burned in his eyes; crow’s feet appeared upon his temples, his lips tightened, his features were all drawn upwards in his effort at attention. There was no further question of anything that had passed before. The judge ousted the father and nothing existed for him but his profession. He pressed me with questions, took notes and spoke of sending a police officer to Saas-Fée to take the names of the visitors in the hotel books.

“Though in all likelihood,” he added, “the coin you saw was given to the grocer by an adventurer who was merely passing through the place.”

To which I replied that Saas-Fée was at the further end of an _impasse_ and that it was not easy to go there and back from it in the same day. He appeared particularly pleased with this piece of information, and after having thanked me warmly, left me, with an absorbed, delighted look on his face, and without having once recurred either to George or to Bernard.

XIV

BERNARD AND THE ANGEL

BERNARD was to experience that morning that for a nature as generous as his, there is no greater joy than to rejoice another being. This joy was denied him. He had just heard that he had passed his examination with honours, but finding no one near to whom he could communicate it, the news lost all its savour. Bernard knew well enough that the person who would have been most pleased to hear it, was his father. He even hesitated a moment whether he would not go there and then and tell him; but pride held him back. Edouard? Olivier? It was really giving too much importance to a certificate. He had passed his _baccalauréat_. Nothing to make a fuss about! It was now that the difficulties would begin.

In the Sorbonne quadrangle, he saw one of his schoolfellows, who had also been successful; but he had drawn apart from the others and was crying. The poor boy was in mourning. Bernard knew that he had just lost his mother. A great wave of sympathy drove him towards the orphan; then a feeling of absurd shyness made him pass on. The other boy, who had seen him come up and then go by, was ashamed of his tears; he esteemed Bernard and was hurt by what he took for contempt.

Bernard went into the Luxembourg gardens. He sat down on a bench in the same part of the gardens where he had gone to meet Olivier the evening he had sought shelter with him. The air was almost warm and the blue sky laughed down at him through the branches of the great trees, already stripped of their leaves. One could not believe that winter was really on the way; the cooing birds themselves were deceived. But Bernard did not look at the gardens; he saw the ocean of life spread out before him. People say there are paths on the sea, but they are not traced and Bernard did not know which one was his.

He had been meditating for some moments, when he saw coming towards him--gliding on so light a foot that one felt it might have rested on the waves--an angel. Bernard had never seen any angels, but he had not a moment’s doubt, and when the angel said: “Come!” he rose obediently and followed him. He was not more astonished than he would have been in a dream. He tried to remember afterwards if the angel had taken him by the hand; but in reality they did not touch each other and even kept a little apart. They returned together to the quadrangle where Bernard had left the orphan, firmly resolved to speak to him; but the quadrangle was empty.

Bernard walked, with the angel by his side, towards the church of the Sorbonne, into which the angel passed first--into which Bernard had never been before. Other angels were going to and fro in this place; but Bernard had not the eyes that were needed to see them. An unfamiliar peace enfolded him. The angel went up to the high altar, and Bernard, when he saw him kneel down, knelt down beside him. He did not believe in any god, so that he could not pray, but his heart was filled with a lover’s longing for dedication, for sacrifice; he offered himself. His emotion was so confused that no word could have expressed it; but suddenly the organ’s song arose.

“You offered yourself in the same way to Laura,” said the angel; and Bernard felt the tears streaming down his cheeks. “Come, follow me.”

As the angel drew him along, Bernard almost knocked up against one of his old schoolfellows, who had also just passed his _viva voce_. Bernard considered him a dunce and was astonished that he had got through. The dunce did not notice Bernard, who saw him slip some money for a candle into the beadle’s hand. Bernard shrugged his shoulders and went out.

When he found himself in the street again, he saw that the angel had left him. He went into a tobacco shop--the very same in which George, a week before, had risked his first false coin. He had passed a great many more since then. Bernard bought a packet of cigarettes and smoked. Why had the angel gone? Had Bernard and he then nothing to say to each other?... Noon struck. Bernard was hungry. Should he go back to the pension? Should he join Olivier and share with him Edouard’s lunch?... He made sure that he had enough money in his pocket and went into a restaurant. As he was finishing his lunch, a soft voice murmured in his ear:

“The time has come to do your accounts.”

Bernard turned his head. The angel was again beside him.

“You will have to make up your mind,” he said. “You have been living at haphazard. Do you mean to let chance dispose of your life? You want to be of service--but what do you wish to serve? That is the question.”

“Teach me; guide me,” said Bernard.

The angel led Bernard into a hall full of people. At the bottom of the hall was a platform and on the platform a table covered with a dark red cloth. A man, who was still young, was seated behind the table and was speaking.

“It is a very great folly,” he was saying, “to imagine that there is anything we can discover. What have we that we have not received? It is the duty of each one of us to understand while we are still young, that we derive from the past, that we are bound to this past by every kind of obligation, and that the whole of our future is marked out by it.”

When he had finished developing this theme, another orator took his place; he began by approving the former and then raised his voice against the presumption of the man who thinks he can live without a doctrine, or guide himself by his own lights.

“A doctrine has been bequeathed us,” he said. “It has already traversed many centuries. It is assuredly the best--the only one. The duty of each one of us is to prove this truth. It has been handed down to us by our masters. It is our country’s and every time she repudiates it, she has to pay for her error dearly. No one can be a good Frenchman without holding it, nor succeed in anything good without conforming to it.”

To this second orator succeeded a third, who thanked the other two for having so ably traced what he called the theory of their programme; then he set forth that this programme consisted in nothing less than the regeneration of France, which was to be brought about by the united efforts of each single member of their party. He himself, he declared, was a man of action; he affirmed that the end and proof of every theory is in its practice, and that the duty of every good Frenchman is to be a combatant.

“But, alas!” he added, “how many isolated efforts are wasted! Our country would be far greater, our activity would be far more wide-spread, all that is best in us would be brought forward, if every effort were co-ordinated, if every act contributed to the glory of law and order, if everyone were willing to serve in the ranks.”

And while he was speaking, a number of young men went round the audience, distributing printed forms of membership, which had only to be signed.

“You wanted to offer yourself,” said the angel then. “What are you waiting for?”

Bernard took one of the papers which were handed him; it began with these words: “I solemnly pledge myself to....” He read it, then looked at the angel and saw that he was smiling; then he looked at the meeting and recognized among the young men present, the schoolfellow whom he had seen just before in the church, burning a candle in gratitude for having passed his examination; and suddenly, further on, he caught sight of his eldest brother, whom he had not seen since he had left home. Bernard did not like him and was a little jealous of the consideration with which their father seemed to treat him. He crumpled the paper nervously in his hand.

“Do you think I ought to sign?”

“Yes,” said the angel, “certainly--if you have doubts of yourself.”

“I doubt no longer,” said Bernard, flinging the paper from him.

In the mean time the orator was still speaking. When Bernard began to listen to him again, he was teaching an infallible method for never making a mistake, which was to give up ever forming a judgment for oneself and always to defer to the judgments of one’s superiors.

“And who are these superiors?” asked Bernard; and suddenly a great indignation seized him.

“If you went on to the platform,” he said to the angel, “and grappled with him, you would be sure to throw him....”

“It is with _you_ I will wrestle. This evening. Do you agree...?”

“Yes,” said Bernard.

They went out. They reached the boulevards. The crowds that were thronging them seemed entirely composed of rich people; each of them seemed sure of himself, indifferent to the others, but anxious.

“Is that the image of happiness?” asked Bernard, who felt the tears rising in his heart.

Then the angel took Bernard into the poor quarters of the town, whose wretchedness Bernard had never suspected. Evening was falling. They wandered for a long time among tall, sordid houses, inhabited by disease, prostitution, shame, crime and hunger. It was only then that Bernard took the angel’s hand, and the angel turned aside to weep.

Bernard did not dine that evening; and when he went back to the pension he did not attempt to join Sarah, as he had done the other evenings, but went straight upstairs to the room he shared with Boris.

Boris was already in bed but not asleep. He was re-reading, by the light of his candle, the letter he had received that very morning from Bronja.

“I am afraid,” wrote his friend, “that I shall never see you again. I caught cold when we got back to Poland. I have a cough; and though the doctor hides it from me, I feel I cannot live much longer.”

When he heard Bernard coming up, Boris hid the letter under his pillow, and blew the candle out hurriedly.

Bernard came in in the dark. The angel was with him, but, although the night was not very dark, Boris saw only Bernard.

“Are you asleep?” asked Bernard in a whisper. And as Boris did not answer, he concluded he was sleeping.

“Then, now,” said Bernard to the angel, “we’ll have it out.”

And all that night, until the breaking of the day, they wrestled.

Boris dimly perceived that Bernard was struggling. He thought it was his way of praying and took care not to disturb him. And yet he would have liked to speak to him, for his unhappiness was very great. He got up and knelt down at the foot of his bed. He would have liked to pray, but he could only sob:

“Oh, Bronja! You who can see angels, you who were to have opened my eyes, you are leaving me! Without you, Bronja, what will become of me? What will become of me?”

Bernard and the angel were too busy to hear him. They wrestled together till daybreak. The angel departed without either of them having vanquished the other.

When, a little later, Bernard himself left the room, he met Rachel in the passage.

“I want to speak to you,” she said. Her voice was so sad that Bernard understood at once what it was she had to say to him. He answered nothing, bowed his head, and in his great pity for Rachel suddenly began to hate Sarah and to loathe the pleasure he took with her.

XV

BERNARD VISITS EDOUARD

ABOUT ten o’clock, Bernard turned up at Edouard’s with a hand bag which was sufficient to contain the few clothes and books that he possessed. He had taken leave of Azaïs and of Madame Vedel, but had not attempted to see Sarah.

Bernard was grave. His struggle with the angel had matured him. He no longer resembled the careless youth who had stolen the suit-case and who thought that all that is needed in this world is to be daring. He was beginning to understand that boldness is often achieved at the expense of other people’s happiness.

“I have come to ask for shelter,” said he to Edouard. “Here I am again without a roof.”

“Why are you leaving the Vedels’?”

“For private reasons ... forgive me for not telling you.”

Edouard had observed Bernard and Sarah on the evening of the dinner enough to guess at the meaning of this silence.

“All right,” he said smiling. “The couch in my studio is at your service. But I must first tell you that your father came to see me yesterday.” And he repeated the part of their conversation which he thought likely to touch him. “It is not in my house that you ought to spend the night, but in his. He is expecting you.”

Bernard, however, kept silent.

“I will think about it,” he said at last. “Allow me in the mean time to leave my things here. May I see Olivier?”

“The weather is so fine, that I advised him to go out. I wanted to go with him, for he is still very weak, but he wouldn’t let me. But it’s more than an hour since he left and he will be back soon. You had better wait for him.... But I’ve just thought.... Your examination?”

“I’ve passed; but it’s of no importance; the important thing is to know what I’m to do now. Do you know the chief reason that prevents me from going back to my father’s? It’s because I don’t want to take his money. You’ll think me absurd to fling away such an opportunity; but I made a vow that I would make my way without it. I feel I must prove to myself that I am a man of my word--someone I can count on.”

“It strikes me as pride more than anything else.”

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

“Explain.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edouard laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can’t let you go to perdition.”

But Sarah sobbed and cried out:

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

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

XVI

EDOUARD WARNS GEORGE

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

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He bent still nearer and went on in a whisper:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I transcribe the passage in question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you mean to talk morals to him?”

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

“Why did he steal?”

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

“That’s the worst.”

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

“Is he intelligent?”

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

“Will you speak to him?”

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

“You would like to say?...”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A great pity.”

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

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

“Exactly. I want to know myself.”

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

“It’s of no importance.”

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

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

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

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

“That what?” I said to encourage him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not the only one.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

XVII

ARMAND AND OLIVIER

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m sorry for me.”

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

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

“You don’t mind smoke?”

“I’ll smoke myself to show you.”

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

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

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

“Whom I don’t know,” said Olivier.

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

“And he chucked him out?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh! come now!”

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

“I call it stupid.”

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

“You said that last time, too.”

“What a memory!”

Olivier was determined to hold his ground.

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

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

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

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

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

“Whilst ...” repeated Olivier aggressively.

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

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

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

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

Olivier, not knowing what to say, objected clumsily:

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

Armand burst out laughing:

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

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

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

“Does Passavant approve of all this?”

“He’s very much amused by it.”

“I see I did well to retire.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You haven’t asked after Sarah?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Am I to think you sincere now?”

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

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

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

“I can’t see anything.”

“Yes, you can; there; in the corner.”

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

But Armand shrugged his shoulders.

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

“Have you had it long?”

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

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

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

“What did he say?”

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

“It’s idiotic.”

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

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

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

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

“One can make literature out of anything.”

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

“What kind of a business?”

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

“Will you go?”

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

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

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

Olivier read:

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

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

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

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

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

XVIII

“THE STRONG MEN”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An opportunity soon offered.

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

The chief point about _The Brotherhood of Strong Men_ at first consisted in the pleasure of keeping Boris out of it. But it soon occurred to Ghéridanisol that it would be far more perversely effective to let him in; he could be brought in this way to enter into engagements, by means of which he might gradually be led on to the performance of some monstrous act. From that moment Ghéridanisol was possessed by this idea; and as often happens in all kinds of enterprises, he thought much less of the object itself, than of how to bring it about; this seems trifling, but is perhaps the explanation of a considerable number of crimes. For that matter Ghéridanisol was ferocious; but he felt it prudent to hide his ferocity, at any rate from Phiphi. There was nothing cruel about Phiphi; he was convinced up to the last minute that the whole thing was nothing but a joke.

Every brotherhood must have its motto. Ghéridanisol, who had his idea, proposed: “_The strong man cares nothing for life._” The motto was adopted and attributed to Cicero. George proposed that, as a sign of fellowship, they should tattoo it on their right arms; but Phiphi, who was afraid of being hurt, declared that good tattooers could only be found in sea-ports. Besides which, Ghéridanisol objected that tattooing would leave an indelible mark which might be inconvenient later on. After all, the sign of fellowship was not an absolute necessity; the members would content themselves with taking a solemn vow.

At the moment of starting the traffic in false coins, there had been talk of pledges, and it was on this occasion that George had produced his father’s letters. But this idea had dropped. Such children as these, very fortunately, have not much consistency. As a matter of fact, they settled practically nothing, either as to “conditions of membership” or as to “necessary qualifications.” What was the use, when it was taken for granted that all three of them were “in it,” and that Boris was “out of it”? On the other hand they decreed that “the person who flinched should be considered as a traitor, and forever excluded from the brotherhood.” Ghéridanisol, who had determined to make Boris come in, laid great stress upon this point.

It had to be admitted that without Boris the game would have been dull and the virtue of the brotherhood without an object. George was better qualified to circumvent him than Ghéridanisol, who risked arousing his suspicions; as for Phiphi, he was not artful enough and had a dislike to compromising himself.

And in all this abominable story, what perhaps seems to me the most monstrous, is this comedy of friendship which George went through. He pretended to be seized with a sudden affection for Boris; until then, he had seemed never so much as to have set eyes on him. And I even wonder whether he was not himself influenced by his own acting, and whether the feelings he feigned were not on the point of becoming sincere--whether they did not actually become sincere as soon as Boris responded to them. George drew near him with an appearance of tenderness; in obedience to Ghéridanisol, he began to talk to him.... And, at the first words, Boris, who was panting for a little esteem and love, was conquered.

Then Ghéridanisol elaborated his plan, and disclosed it to Phiphi and George. His idea was to invent a “test” to which the member on whom the lot fell should be submitted; and in order to set Phiphi at ease, he let it be understood that things would be arranged in such a manner that the lot would be sure to fall on Boris. The object of the test would be to put his courage to the proof.

The exact nature of the test, Ghéridanisol did not at once divulge. He was afraid that Phiphi would offer some resistance.

And, in fact, when Ghéridanisol a little later began to insinuate that old La Pérouse’s pistol would come in handy, “No, no!” he cried, “I won’t agree to that.”

“What an ass you are! It’s only a joke,” retorted George, who was already persuaded.

“And then, you know,” added Ghéri, “if you want to play the fool, you have only got to say so. Nobody wants you.”

Ghéridanisol knew that this argument always told with Phiphi; and as he had prepared the paper on which each member of the brotherhood was to sign his name, he went on: “Only you must say so at once; because once you’ve signed, it’ll be too late.”

“All right. Don’t be in a rage,” said Phiphi. “Pass me the paper.” And he signed.

“As for me, old chap, I’d be delighted,” said George, with his arm fondly wound round Boris’s neck; “it’s Ghéridanisol who won’t have you.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s afraid. He says you’ll funk.”

“What does he know about it?”

“That you’ll wriggle out of it at the first test.”

“We shall see.”

“Would you really dare to draw lots?”

“Wouldn’t I!”

“But do you know what you’re letting yourself in for?”

Boris didn’t know, but he wanted to. Then George explained. “_The strong man cares nothing for life._” It remained to be seen.

Boris felt a great swimming in his head; but he nerved himself and, hiding his agitation, “Is it true you’ve signed?” he asked.

“Here! You can see for yourself.” And George held out the paper, so that Boris could read the three names on it.

“Have you ...” he began timidly.

“Have we what?...” interrupted George, so brutally that Boris did not dare go on. What he wanted to ask, as George perfectly understood, was whether the others had bound themselves likewise, and whether one could be sure that they wouldn’t funk either.

“No, nothing,” said he; but from that moment he began to doubt them; he began to suspect they were saving themselves and not playing fair. “Well and good!” thought he then; “what do I care if they funk? I’ll show them that I’ve got more pluck than they have.” Then, looking George straight in the eyes: “Tell Ghéri he can count on me.”

“Then you’ll sign?”

Oh! there was no need now--he had given his word. He said simply: “As you please.” And, in a large painstaking hand, he inscribed his name on the accursed paper, underneath the signatures of the three Strong Men.

George brought the paper back in triumph to the two others. They agreed that Boris had behaved very pluckily. They took counsel together.

Of course, the pistol wouldn’t be loaded! For that matter there were no cartridges. Phiphi still had fears, because he had heard it said that sometimes a too violent emotion is sufficient in itself to cause death. His father, he declared, knew of a case when a pretence execution.... But George shut him up:

“Your father’s a dago!”

No, Ghéridanisol would not load the pistol. There was no need to. The cartridge which La Pérouse had one day put into it, La Pérouse had not taken out. This is what Ghéridanisol had made sure of, though he took good care not to tell the others.

They put the names in a hat; four little pieces of paper all alike, and folded in the same manner. Ghéridanisol, who was “to draw,” had taken care to write Boris’s name a second time on a fifth, which he kept in his hand; and, as though by chance, his was the name to come out. Boris suspected they were cheating; but he said nothing. What was the use of protesting? He knew that he was lost. He would not have lifted a finger to defend himself; and even if the lot had fallen on one of the others, he would have offered to take his place--so great was his despair.

“Poor old boy! you’ve no luck,” George thought it his duty to say. The tone of his voice rang so false, that Boris looked at him sadly.

“It was bound to happen,” he said.

After that, it was agreed there should be a rehearsal. But as there was a risk of being caught, they settled not to make use of the pistol. They would only take it out of its case at the last moment, for the _real_ performance. Every care must be taken not to give the alarm.

On that day, therefore, they contented themselves with fixing the hour, and the place, which they marked on the floor with a bit of chalk. It was in the class-room, on the right hand of the master’s desk, in a recess, formed by a disused door, which had formerly opened on to the entrance hall. As for the hour, it was to be during preparation. It was to take place in front of all the other boys; it would make them sit up.

They went through the rehearsal when the room was empty, the three conspirators being the only witnesses. But in reality there was not much point in this rehearsal. They simply established the fact that, from Boris’s seat to the spot marked with chalk, there were exactly twelve paces.

“If you aren’t in a panic, you’ll not take one more,” said George.

“I shan’t be in a panic,” said Boris, who was outraged by this incessant doubt. The little boy’s firmness began to impress the other three. Phiphi considered they ought to stop at that. But Ghéridanisol was determined to carry on the joke to the very end.

“Well! to-morrow,” he said, with a peculiar smile, which just curled the corner of his lip.

“Suppose we kissed him!” cried Phiphi, enthusiastically. He was thinking of the accolade of the knights of old; and he suddenly flung his arms round Boris’s neck. It was all Boris could do to keep back his tears when Phiphi planted two hearty, childish kisses on his cheeks. Neither George nor Ghéri followed Phiphi’s example; George thought his behaviour rather unmanly. As for Ghéri, what the devil did he care!...

XIX

BORIS

THE next afternoon, the bell assembled all the boys in the class-room.

Boris, Ghéridanisol, George and Philippe were seated on the same bench. Ghéridanisol pulled out his watch and put it down between Boris and him. The hands marked five thirty-five. Preparation began at five o’clock and lasted till six. Five minutes to six was the moment fixed upon for Boris to put an end to himself, just before the boys dispersed; it was better so; it would be easier to escape immediately after. And soon Ghéridanisol said to Boris, in a half whisper, and without looking at him, which gave his words, he considered, a more fatal ring:

“Old boy, you’ve only got a quarter of an hour more.”

Boris remembered a story-book he had read long ago, in which, when the robbers were on the point of putting a woman to death, they told her to say her prayers, so as to convince her she must get ready to die. As a foreigner who, on arriving at the frontier of the country he is leaving, prepares his papers, so Boris searched his heart and head for prayers, and could find none; but he was at once so tired and so over-strung, that he did not trouble much. He tried to think, but could not. The pistol weighed in his pocket; he had no need to put his hand on it to feel it there.

“Only ten minutes more.”

George, sitting on Ghéridanisol’s left, watched the scene out of the corner of his eye, pretending all the while not to see. He was working feverishly. The class had never been so quiet. La Pérouse hardly knew his young rascals and for the first time was able to breathe. Philippe, however, was not at ease; Ghéridanisol frightened him; he was not very confident the game mightn’t turn out badly; his heart was bursting; it hurt him, and every now and then he heard himself heave a deep sigh. At last, he could bear it no longer, and tearing a half sheet of paper out of his copy-book (he was preparing an examination, but the lines danced before his eyes, and the facts and dates in his head) scribbled on it very quickly: “Are you quite sure the pistol isn’t loaded?”; then gave the note to George, who passed it to Ghéri. But Ghéri, after he had read it, raised his shoulders, without even glancing at Phiphi; then, screwing the note up into a ball, sent it rolling with a flick of his finger till it landed on the very spot which had been marked with chalk. After which, satisfied with the excellence of his aim, he smiled. This smile, which began by being deliberate, remained fixed till the end of the scene; it seemed to have been imprinted on his features.

“Five minutes more.”

He said it almost aloud. Even Philippe heard. He was overwhelmed by a sickening and intolerable anxiety, and though the hour was just coming to an end, he feigned an urgent need to leave the room--or was perhaps seized with perfectly genuine colic. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers, as boys do when they want to ask permission from the master; then, without waiting for La Pérouse to answer, he darted from his bench. In order to reach the door he had to pass in front of the master’s desk; he almost ran, tottering as he did so.

Almost immediately after Philippe had left the room, Boris rose in his turn. Young Passavant, who was sitting behind him, working diligently, raised his eyes. He told Séraphine afterwards that Boris was frightfully pale; but that is what is always said on these occasions. As a matter of fact, he stopped looking almost at once and plunged again into his work. He reproached himself for it bitterly later. If he had understood what was going on, he would certainly have been able to prevent it; so he said afterwards, weeping. But he had no suspicions.

So Boris stepped forward to the appointed place; he walked slowly, like an automaton--or rather like a somnambulist. He had grasped the pistol in his right hand, but still kept it in the pocket of his coat; he took it out only at the last moment. The fatal place was, as I have said, in the recess made by a disused door on the right of the master’s desk, so that the master could only see it by leaning forward.

La Pérouse leant forward. And at first he did not understand what his grandson was doing, though the strange solemnity of his actions was of a nature to alarm him. Speaking as loudly and as authoritatively as he could, he began:

“Master Boris, kindly return at once to your....”

But he suddenly recognized the pistol: Boris had just raised it to his temple. La Pérouse understood and immediately turned icy cold as if the blood were freezing in his veins. He tried to rise and run towards Boris--stop him--call to him.... A kind of hoarse rattle came from his throat; he remained rooted to the spot, paralytic, shaken by a violent trembling.

The shot went off. Boris did not drop at once. The body stayed upright for a moment, as though caught in the corner of the recess; then the head, falling on to the shoulder, bore it down; it collapsed.

When the police made their enquiry a little later, they were astonished not to find the pistol near Boris’s body--near the place, I mean, where he fell, for the little corpse was carried away almost immediately and laid upon a bed. In the confusion which followed, while Ghéridanisol had remained in his place, George had leapt over his bench and succeeded in making away with the weapon, without anyone’s noticing him; while the others were bending over Boris, he had first of all pushed it backwards with his foot, seized it with a rapid movement, hidden it under his coat, and then surreptitiously passed it to Ghéridanisol. Everyone’s attention being fixed on a single point, no one noticed Ghéridanisol either, and he was able to run unperceived to La Pérouse’s room and put the pistol back in the place from which he had taken it. When, in the course of a later investigation, the police discovered the pistol in its case, it might have seemed doubtful whether it had ever left it, or whether Boris had used it, had Ghéridanisol only remembered to remove the empty cartridge. He certainly lost his head a little--a passing weakness, for which, I regret to say, he reproached himself far more than for the crime itself. And yet it was this weakness which saved him. For when he came down and mixed with the others, at the sight of Boris’s dead body being carried away, he was seized with a fit of trembling, which was obvious to everyone--a kind of nervous attack--which Madame Vedel and Rachel, who had hurried to the spot, mistook for a sign of excessive emotion. One prefers to suppose anything, rather than the inhumanity of so young a creature; and when Ghéridanisol protested his innocence, he was believed. Phiphi’s little note, which George had passed him and which he had flicked away with his finger, was found later under a bench and also contributed to help him. True, he remained guilty, as did George and Phiphi, of having lent himself to a cruel game, but he would not have done so, he declared, if he had thought the weapon was loaded. George was the only one who remained convinced of his entire responsibility.

George was not so corrupted but that his admiration for Ghéridanisol yielded at last to horror. When he reached home that evening, he flung himself into his mother’s arms; and Pauline had a burst of gratitude to God, who by means of this dreadful tragedy had brought her son back to her.

XX

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL

WITHOUT exactly pretending to explain anything, I should not like to put forward any fact which was not accounted for by a sufficiency of motive. And for that reason I shall not make use of little Boris’s suicide for my _Counterfeiters_; I have too much difficulty in understanding it. And then, I dislike police court items. There is something peremptory, irrefutable, brutal, outrageously real about them.... I accept reality coming as a proof in support of my thought, but not as preceding it. It displeases me to be surprised. Boris’s suicide seems to me an _indecency_, for I was not expecting it.

A little cowardice enters into every suicide, notwithstanding La Pérouse, who no doubt thinks his grandson was more courageous than he. If the child could have foreseen the disaster which his dreadful action has brought upon the Vedels, there would be no excuse for him. Azaïs has been obliged to break up the school--for the time being, he says; but Rachel is afraid of ruin. Four families have already removed their children. I have not been able to dissuade Pauline from taking George away, so that she may keep him at home with her; especially as the boy has been profoundly shaken by his schoolfellow’s death, and seems inclined to reform. What repercussions this calamity has had! Even Olivier is touched by it. Armand, notwithstanding his cynical airs, feels such anxiety at the ruin which is threatening his family, that he has offered to devote the time that Passavant leaves him, to working in the school, for old La Pérouse has become manifestly incapable of doing what is required of him.

I dreaded seeing him again. It was in his little bedroom on the second floor of the pension, that he received me. He took me by the arm at once, and with a mysterious, almost a smiling air, which greatly surprised me, for I was expecting tears:

“That noise,” he said, “you know ... the noise I told you about the other day....”

“Well?”

“It has stopped--finished. I don’t hear it any more, however much I listen.”

As one humours a child, “I wager,” said I, “that now you regret it.”

“Oh! no; no.... It’s such a rest. I am so much in need of silence. Do you know what I’ve been thinking? That in this life we can’t know what real silence is. Even our blood makes a kind of continual noise; we don’t notice it, because we have become accustomed to it ever since our childhood.... But I think there are things in life which we can’t succeed in hearing--harmonies ... because this noise drowns them. Yes, I think it’s only after our death that we shall really be able to hear.”

“You told me you didn’t believe....”

“In the immortality of the soul? Did I tell you that?... Yes; I suppose I did. But I don’t believe the contrary either, you know.”

And as I was silent, he went on, nodding his head and with a sententious air:

“Have you noticed that in this world God always keeps silent? It’s only the devil who speaks. Or at least, at least ...” he went on, “... however carefully we listen, it’s only the devil we can succeed in hearing. We have not the ears to hear the voice of God. The word of God! Have you ever wondered what it is like?... Oh! I don’t mean the word that has been transferred into human language.... You remember the Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ I have often thought that the word of God was the whole of creation. But the devil seized hold of it. His noise drowns the voice of God. Oh! tell me, don’t you think that all the same it’s God who will end by having the last word?... And if, after death, time no longer exists, if we enter at once into Eternity, do you think we shall be able to hear God then ... directly?”

A kind of transport began to shake him, as if he were going to fall down in convulsions, and he was suddenly seized by a fit of sobbing.

“No, no!” he cried, confusedly; “the devil and God are one and the same; they work together. We try to believe that everything bad on earth comes from the devil, but it’s because, if we didn’t, we should never find strength to forgive God. He plays with us like a cat, tormenting a mouse.... And then afterwards he wants us to be grateful to him as well. Grateful for what? for what?...”

Then, leaning towards me:

“Do you know the most horrible thing of all that he has done?... Sacrificed his own son to save us. His son! his son!... Cruelty! that’s the principal attribute of God.”

He flung himself on his bed and turned his face to the wall. For a few moments a spasmodic shudder ran through him; then, as he seemed to have fallen asleep, I left him.

He had not said a word to me about Boris; but I thought that in this mystical despair was to be seen the expression of a grief too blinding to be looked at steadfastly.

I hear from Olivier that Bernard has gone back to his father’s; and, indeed, it was the best thing he could do. When he learnt, from a chance meeting with Caloub, that the old judge was not well, Bernard followed the impulse of his heart. We shall meet to-morrow evening, for Profitendieu has invited me to dinner with Molinier, Pauline and the two boys. I feel very curious to know Caloub.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET

_This book is set_ (_on the Linotype_) _in Elzevir No. 3, a French Old Style. For the modern revival of this excellent face we are indebted to Gustave Mayeur of Paris, who reproduced it in 1878, basing his designs, he says, on types used in a book which was printed by the Elzevirs at Leyden in 1634. The Elzevir family held a distinguished position as printers and publishers for more than a century, their best work appearing between about 1590 and 1680. Although the Elzevirs were not themselves type founders, they utilized the services of the best type designers of their time, notably Van Dijk, Garamond, and Sanlecque. Many of their books were small, or, as we should say now, “pocket” editions, of the classics, and for these volumes they developed a type face which is open and readable but relatively narrow in body, although in no sense condensed, thus permitting a large amount of copy to be set in limited space without impairing legibility._

SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. · PAPER MANUFACTURED BY TICONDEROGA PULP AND PAPER CO., TICONDEROGA, N. Y. AND FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON & CO., NEW YORK

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.