One after another, sundry women have occupied my life. Antonia Véron was first. Her marriage and mine, their hindrance and restriction, threw us back upon each other as of yore. We found ourselves alone one day in my house—where nothing ever used to happen, and she offered me her lips, irresistibly. The appeal of her sensuality was answered by mine, then, and often later. But the pleasure constantly restored, which impelled me towards her, always ended in dismal enlightenments. She remained a capricious and baffling egotist, and when I came away from her house across the dark suburb among a host of beings vanishing, like myself, I only brought away the memory of her nervous and irritating laugh, and that new wrinkle which clung to her mouth like an implement.

Then younger desires destroyed the old, and gallant adventures begot one another. It is all over with this one and that one whom I adored. When I see them again, I wonder that I can say, at one and the same time, of a being who has not changed, "How I loved her!" and, "How I have ceased to love her!"

All the while performing as a duty my daily task, all the while taking suitable precautions so that Marie may not know and may not suffer, I am looking for the happiness which lives. And truly, when I have a sense of some new assent wavering and making ready, or when I am on the way to a first rendezvous, I feel myself gloriously uplifted, and equal to everything!

This fills my life. Desire wears the brain as much as thought wears it. All my being is agog for chances to shine and to be shared. When they say in my presence of some young woman that, "she is not happy," a thrill of joy tears through me.

On Sundays, among the crowds, I have often felt my heart tighten with distress as I watch the unknown women. Reverie has often held me all day because of one who has gone by and disappeared, leaving me a clear vision of her curtained room, and of herself, vibrating like a harp. She, perhaps, was the one I should have always loved; she whom I seek gropingly, desperately, from each to the next. Ah, what a delightful thing to see and to think of a distant woman always is, whoever she may be!

There are moments when I suffer, and am to be pitied. Assuredly, if one could read me really, no one would pity me. And yet all men are like me. If they are gifted with acceptable physique they dream of headlong adventures, they attempt them, and our heart never stands still. But no one acknowledges that, no one, ever.

Then, there were the women who turned me a cold shoulder; and among them all Madame Pierron, a beautiful and genteel woman of twenty-five years, with her black fillets and her marble profile, who still retained the obvious awkwardness and vacant eye of young married women. Tranquil, staid and silent, she came and went and lived, totally blind to my looks of admiration.

This perfect unconcern aggravated my passion. I remember my pangs one morning in June, when I saw some feminine linen spread upon the green hedge within her garden. The delicate white things marshaled there were waiting, stirred by the leaves and the breeze; so that Spring lent them frail shape and sweetness—and life. I remember, too, a gaunt house, scorching in the sun, and a window which flashed and then shut! The window stayed shut, like a slab. All the world was silent; and that splendid living being was walled up there. And last, I have recollection of an evening when, in the bluish and dark green and chalky landscape of the town and its rounded gardens, I saw that window lighted up. A narrow glimmer of rose and gold was enframed there, and I could distinguish, leaning on the sill that overhung the town, in the heart of that resplendence, a feminine form which stirred before my eyes in inaccessible forbearance. Long did I watch with shaking knees that window dawning upon space, as the shepherd watches the rising of Venus. That evening, when I had come in and was alone for a moment—Marie was busy below in the kitchen—alone in our unattractive room, I retired to the starry window, beset by immense thoughts. These spaces, these separations, these incalculable durations—they all reduce us to dust, they all have a sort of fearful splendor from which we seek defense in our hiding.

* * * * * *

I have not retained a definite recollection of a period of jealousy from which I suffered for a year. From certain facts, certain profound changes of mood in Marie, it seemed to me that there was some one between her and me. But beyond vague symptoms and these terrible reflections on her, I never knew anything. The truth, everywhere around me, was only a phantom of truth. I experienced acute internal wounds of humiliation and shame, of rebellion! I struggled feebly, as well as I could, against a mystery too great for me, and then my suspicions wore themselves out. I fled from the nightmare, and by a strong effort I forgot it. Perhaps my imputations had no basis; but it is curious how one ends in only believing what one wants to believe.

* * * * * *

Something which had been plotting a long while among the Socialist extremists suddenly produced a stoppage of work at the factory, and this was followed by demonstrations which rolled through the terrified town. Everywhere the shutters went up. The business people blotted out their shops, and the town looked like a tragic Sunday.

"It's a revolution!" said Marie to me, turning pale, as Benoît cried to us from the step of our porch the news that the workmen were marching. "How does it come about that you knew nothing at the factory?"

An hour later we learned that a delegation composed of the most dangerous ringleaders was preceding the army of demonstrators, commissioned to extort outrageous advantages, with threats, from Messrs. Gozlan.

Our quarter had a loose and dejected look. People went furtively, seeking news, and doors half opened regretfully. Here and there groups formed and lamented in undertones the public authority's lack of foresight, the insufficient measures for preserving order.

Rumors were peddled about on the progress of the demonstration.

"They're crossing the river."

"They're at the Calvary cross-roads."

"It's a march against the castle!"

I went into Fontan's. He was not there, and some men were talking in the twilight of the closed shutters.

"The Baroness is in a dreadful way. She's seen a dark mass in the distance. Some young men of the aristocracy have armed themselves and are guarding her. She says it's another Jacquerie⁴ rising!"

"Ah, my God! What a mess!" said Crillon.

"It's the beginning of the end!" asserted old Daddy Ponce, shaking his grayish-yellow forehead, all plaited with wrinkles.

Time went by—still no news. What are they doing yonder? What shall we hear next?

At last, towards three o'clock Postaire is framed in the doorway, sweating and exultant. "It's over! It's all right, my lad!" he gasps; "I can vouch for it that they all arrived together at the Gozlans' villa. Messrs. Gozlan were there. The delegates, I can vouch for it that they started shouting and threatening, my lad! 'Never mind that!' says one of the Messrs. Gozlan, 'let's have a drink first; I'll vouch for it we'll talk better after!' There was a table and champagne, I'll vouch for it. They gave 'em it to drink, and then some more and then some more. I'll vouch for it they sent themselves something down, my lad, into their waistcoats. I can vouch for it that the bottles of champagne came like magic out of the ground. Fontan kept always bringing them as though he was coining them. Got to admit it was an extra-double-special guaranteed champagne, that you want to go cautious with. So then, after three-quarters of an hour, nearly all the deputation were drunk. They spun round, tongue-tied, and embraced each other,—I can vouch for it. There were some that stuck it, but they didn't count, my lad! The others didn't even know what they'd come for. And the bosses; they'd had a fright, and they didn't half wriggle and roar with laughing—I'll vouch for it, my lad! An' then, to-morrow, if they want to start again, there'll be troops here!"

Joyful astonishment—the strike had been drowned in wine! And we repeated to each other, "To-morrow there'll be the military!"

"Ah!" gaped Crillon, rolling wonder-struck eyes, "That's clever! Good; that's clever, that is! Good, old chap–"

He laughed a heavy, vengeful laugh, and repeated his familiar refrain full-throated: "The sovereign people that can't stand on its own legs!"

By the side of a few faint-hearted citizens who had already, since the morning, modified their political opinions, a great figure rises before my eyes—Fontan. I remember that night, already long ago, when a chance glimpse through the vent-hole of his cellar showed me shiploads of bottles of champagne heaped together, and pointed like shells. For some future day he foresaw to-day's victory. He is really clever, he sees clearly and he sees far. He has rescued law and order by a sort of genius.

The constraint which has weighed all day on our gestures and words explodes in delight. Noisily we cast off that demeanor of conspirators which has bent our shoulders since morning. The windows that were closed during the weighty hours of the insurrection are opened wide; the houses breathe again.

"We're saved from that gang!" people say, when they approach each other.

This feeling of deliverance pervades the most lowly. On the step of the little blood-red restaurant I spy Monsieur Mielvaque, hopping for joy. He is shivering, too, in his thin gray coat, cracked with wrinkles, that looks like wrapping paper; and one would say that his dwindled face had at long last caught the hue of the folios he desperately copies among his long days and his short nights, to pick up some sprigs of extra pay. There he stands, not daring to enter the restaurant (for a reason he knows too well); but how delighted he is with the day's triumph for society! And Mademoiselle Constantine, the dressmaker, incurably poor and worn away by her sewing-machine, is overjoyed. She opens wide the eyes which seem eternally full of tears, and in the grayish abiding half-mourning of imperfect cleanliness, in pallid excitement, she claps her hands.

Marie and I can hear the furious desperate hammering of Brisbille in his forge, and we begin to laugh as we have not laughed for a long time.

At night, before going to sleep, I recall my former democratic fancies. Thank God, I have escaped from a great peril! I can see it clearly by the terror which the workmen's menace spread in decent circles, and by the universal joy which greeted their recoil! My deepest tendencies take hold of me again for good, and everything settles down as before.

* * * * * *

Much time has gone by. It is ten years now since I was married, and in that lapse of time there is hardly a happening that I remember, unless it be the disillusion of the death of Marie's rich godmother, who left us nothing. There was the failure of the Pocard scheme, which was only a swindle and ruined many small people. Politics pervaded the scandal, while certain people hurried with their money to Monsieur Boulaque, whose scheme was much more safe and substantial. There was also my father-in-law's illness and his death, which was a great shock to Marie, and put us into black clothes.

I have not changed. Marie has somewhat. She has got stouter; her eyelids look tired and red, and she buries herself in silences. We are no longer quite in accord in details of our life. She who once always said "Yes," is now primarily disposed to say "No." If I insist she defends her opinion, obstinately, sourly; and sometimes dishonestly. For example, in the matter of pulling down the partition downstairs, if people had heard our high voices they would have thought there was a quarrel. Following some of our discussions, she keeps her face contracted and spiteful, or assumes the martyr's air, and sometimes there are moments of hatred between us.

Often she says, while talking of something else, "Ah, if we had had a child, all would have been different!"

I am becoming personally negligent, through a sort of idleness, against which I have not sufficient grounds for reaction. When we are by ourselves, at meal times, my hands are sometimes questionable. From day to day, and from month to month, I defer going to the dentist and postpone the attention required. I am allowing my molars to get jagged.

Marie never shows any jealousy, nor even suspicion about my personal adventures. Her trust is almost excessive! She is not very far-seeing, or else I am nothing very much to her, and I have a grudge against her for this indifference.

And now I see around me women who are too young to love me. That most positive of obstacles, the age difference, begins to separate me from the amorous. And yet I am not surfeited with love, and I yearn towards youth! Marthe, my little sister-in-law, said to me one day, "Now that you're old–" That a child of fifteen years, so freshly dawned and really new, can bring herself to pass this artless judgment on a man of thirty-five—that is fate's first warning, the first sad day which tells us at midsummer that winter will come.

One evening, as I entered the room, I indistinctly saw Marie, sitting and musing by the window. As I came in she got up—it was Marthe! The light from the sky, pale as a dawn, had blenched the young girl's golden hair and turned the trace of a smile on her cheek into something like a wrinkle. Cruelly, the play of the light showed her face faded and her neck flabby; and because she had been yawning, even her eyes were watery, and for some seconds the lids were sunk and reddened.

The resemblance of the two sisters tortured me. This little Marthe, with her luxurious and appetizing color, her warm pink cheeks and moist lips; this plump adolescent whose short skirt shows her curving calves, is an affecting picture of what Marie was. It is a sort of terrible revelation. In truth Marthe resembles, more than the Marie of to-day does, the Marie whom I formerly loved; the Marie who came out of the unknown, whom I saw one evening sitting on the rose-tree seat, shining, silent—in the presence of love.

It required a great effort on my part not to try, weakly and vainly, to approach Marthe—the impossible dream, the dream of dreams! She has a little love affair with a youngster hardly molted into adolescence, and rather absurd, whom one catches sight of now and again as he slips away from her side; and that day when she sang so much in spite of herself, it was because a little rival was ill. I am as much a stranger to her girlish growing triumph and to her thoughts as if I were her enemy! One morning when she was capering and laughing, flower-crowned, at the doorstep, she looked to me like a being from another world.

* * * * * *

One winter's day, when Marie had gone out and I was arranging my papers, I found a letter I had written not long before, but had not posted, and I threw the useless document on the fire. When Marie came back in the evening, she settled herself in front of the fire to dry herself, and to revive it for the room's twilight; and the letter, which had been only in part consumed, took fire again. And suddenly there gleamed in the night a shred of paper with a shred of my writing—"I love you as much as you love me!"

And it was so clear, the inscription that flamed in the darkness, that it was not worth while even to attempt an explanation.

We could not speak, nor even look at each other! In the fatal communion of thought which seized us just then, we turned aside from each other, even shadow-veiled as we were. We fled from the truth! In these great happenings we become strangers to each other for the reason that we never knew each other profoundly. We are vaguely separated on earth from everybody else, but we are mightily distant from our nearest.

* * * * * *

After all these things, my former life resumed its indifferent course. Certainly I am not so unhappy as they who have the bleeding wound of a bereavement or remorse, but I am not so delighted with life as I once hoped to be. Ah, men's love and women's beauty are too short-lived in this world; and yet, is it not only thereby that we and they exist? It might be said that love, so pure a thing, the only one worth while in life, is a crime, since it is always punished sooner or later. I do not understand. We are a pitiful lot; and everywhere about us—in our movements, within our walls, and from hour to hour, there is a stifling mediocrity. Fate's face is gray.

Notwithstanding, my personal position has established itself and progressively improved. I am getting three hundred and sixty francs a month, and besides, I have a share in the profits of the litigation office—about fifty francs a month. It is a year and a half since I was stagnating in the little glass office, to which Monsieur Mielvaque has been promoted, succeeding me. Nowadays they say to me, "You're lucky!" They envy me—who once envied so many people. It astonishes me at first, then I get used to it.

I have restored my political plans, but this time I have a rational and normal policy in view. I am nominated to succeed Crillon in the Town Council. There, no doubt, I shall arrive sooner or later. I continue to become a personality by the force of circumstances, without my noticing it, and without any real interest in me on the part of those around me.

Quite a piece of my life has now gone by. When sometimes I think of that, I am surprised at the length of the time elapsed; at the number of the days and the years that are dead. It has come quickly, and without much change in myself on the other hand; and I turn away from that vision, at once real and supernatural. And yet, in spite of myself, my future appears before my eyes—and its end. My future will resemble my past; it does so already. I can dimly see all my life, from one end to the other, all that I am, all that I shall have been.

CHAPTER VIII
THE BRAWLER

At the time of the great military maneuvers of September, 1913, Viviers was an important center of the operations. All the district was brightened with a swarming of red and blue and with martial ardor.

Alone and systematically, Brisbille was the reviler. From the top of Chestnut Hill, where we were watching a strategical display, he pointed at the military mass. "Maneuvers, do they call them? I could die of laughing! The red caps have dug trenches and the white-band caps have bunged 'em up again. Take away the War Office, and you've only kids' games left."

"It's war!" explained an influential military correspondent, who was standing by.

Then the journalist talked with a colleague about the Russians.

"The Russians!" Brisbille broke in; "when they've formed a republic–"

"He's a simpleton," said the journalist, smiling.

The inebriate jumped astride his hobby horse. "War me no war, it's all lunacy! And look, look—look at those red trousers that you can see miles away! They must do it on purpose for soldiers to be killed, that they don't dress 'em in the color of nothing at all!"

A lady could not help breaking in here: "What?" Change our little soldiers' red trousers? Impossible! There's no good reason for it. They would never consent! They would rebel."

"Egad!" said a young officer; "why we should all throw up our commissions! And any way, the red trousers are not the danger one thinks. If they were as visible as all that, the High Command would have noticed it and would have taken steps—just for field service, and without interfering with the parade uniform!"

The regimental sergeant-major cut the discussion short as he turned to Brisbille with vibrant scorn and said, "When the Day of Revenge comes, we shall have to be there to defend you!"

And Brisbille only uttered a shapeless reply, for the sergeant-major was an athlete, and gifted with a bad temper, especially when others were present.

The castle was quartering a Staff. Hunting parties were given for the occasion in the manorial demesne, and passing processions of bedizened guests were seen. Among the generals and nobles shone an Austrian prince of the blood royal, who bore one of the great names in the Almanach de Gotha, and who was officially in France to follow the military operations.

The presence of the Baroness's semi-Imperial guest caused a great impression of historic glamour to hover over the country. His name was repeated; his windows were pointed out in the middle of the principal front, and one thought himself lucky if he saw the curtains moving. Many families of poor people detached themselves from their quarters in the evenings to take up positions before the wall behind which he was.

Marie and I, we were close to him twice.

One evening after dinner, we met him as one meets any passer-by among the rest. He was walking alone, covered by a great gray waterproof. His felt hat was adorned with a short feather. He displayed the characteristic features of his race—a long turned-down nose and a receding chin.

When he had gone by, Marie and I said, both at the same time, and a little dazzled, "An eagle!"

We saw him again at the end of a stag-hunt. They had driven a stag into the Morteuil forest. The mort took place in a clearing in the park, near the outer wall. The Baroness, who always thought of the townsfolk, had ordered the little gate to be opened which gives into this part of the demesne, so that the public could be present at the spectacle.

It was imperious and pompous. The scene one entered, on leaving the sunny fields and passing through the gate, was a huge circle of dark foliage in the heart of the ancient forest. At first, one saw only the majestic summits of mountainous trees, like peaks and globes lost amid the heavens, which on all sides overhung the clearing and bathed it in twilight almost green.

In this lordly solemnity of nature, down among the grass, moss and dead wood, there flowed a contracted but brilliant concourse around the final preparations for the execution of the stag.

The animal was kneeling on the ground, weak and overwhelmed. We pressed round, and eyes were thrust forward between heads and shoulders to see him. One could make out the gray thicket of his antlers, his great lolling tongue, and the enormous throb of his heart, agitating his exhausted body. A little wounded fawn clung to him, bleeding abundantly, flowing like a spring.

Round about it the ceremony was arranged in several circles. The beaters, in ranks, made a glaring red patch in the moist green atmosphere. The hunters, men and women, all dismounted, in scarlet coats and black hats, crowded together. Apart, the saddle and tackle horses snorted, with creaking of leather and jingle of metal. Kept at a respectful distance by a rope extended hastily on posts, the inquisitive crowd flowed and increased every instant.

The blood which issued from the little fawn made a widening pool, and one saw the ladies of the hunt, who came to look as near as possible, pluck up their habits so that they would not tread in it. The sight of the great stag crushed by weariness, gradually drooping his branching head, tormented by the howls of the hounds which the whipper-in held back with difficulty, and that of the little one, cowering beside him and dying with gaping throat, would have been touching had one given way to sentiment.

I noticed that the imminent slaying of the stag excited a certain curious fever. Around me the women and young girls especially elbowed and wriggled their way to the front, and shuddered, and were glad.

They cut the throats of the beasts, the big and the little, amid absolute and religious silence, the silence of a sacrament. Madame Lacaille vibrated from head to foot. Marie was calm, but there was a gleam in her eyes; and little Marthe, who was hanging on to me, dug her nails into my arm. The prince was prominent on our side, watching the last act of the run. He had remained in the saddle. He was more splendidly red than the others—empurpled, it seemed, by reflections from a throne. He spoke in a loud voice, like one who is accustomed to govern and likes to discourse; and his outline had the very form of bidding. He expressed himself admirably in our language, of which he knew the intimate graduations. I heard him saying, "These great maneuvers, after all, they're a sham. It's music-hall war, directed by scene-shifters. Hunting's better, because there's blood. We get too much unaccustomed to blood, in our prosaic, humanitarian, and bleating age. Ah, as long as the nations love hunting, I shall not despair of them!"

Just then, the crash of the horns and the thunder of the pack released drowned all other sounds. The prince, erect in his stirrups, and raising his proud head and his tawny mustache above the bloody and cringing mob of the hounds, expanded his nostrils and seemed to sniff a battlefield.

The next day, when a few of us were chatting together in the street near the sunken post where the old jam-pot lies, Benoît came up, full of a tale to tell. Naturally it was about the prince. Benoît was dejected and his lips were drawn and trembling. "He's killed a bear!" said he, with glittering eye; "you should have seen it, ah! a tame bear, of course. Listen—he was coming back from hunting with the Marquis and Mademoiselle Berthe and some people behind. And he comes on a wandering showman with a performing bear. A simpleton with long black hair like feathers, and a bear that sat on its rump and did little tricks and wore a belt. The prince had got his gun. I don't know how it came about but the prince he got an idea. He said, 'I'd like to kill that bear, as I do in my own hunting. Tell me, my good fellow, how much shall I pay you for firing at the beast? You'll not be a loser, I promise you.' The simpleton began to tremble and lift his arms up in the air. He loved his bear! 'But my bear's the same as my brother!' he says. Then do you know what the Marquis of Monthyon did? He just simply took out his purse and opened it and put it under the chap's nose; and all the smart hunting folk they laughed to see how the simpleton changed when he saw all those bank notes. And naturally he ended by nodding that it was a bargain, and he'd even seen so many of the rustlers that he turned from crying to laughing! Then the prince loaded his gun at ten paces from the bear and killed it with one shot, my boy; just when he was rocking left and right, and sitting up like a man. You ought to have seen it! There weren't a lot there; but I was there!"

The story made an impression. No one spoke at first. Then some one risked the opinion. "No doubt they do things like that in Hungary or Bohemia, or where he reigns. You wouldn't see it here," he added, innocently.

"He's from Austria," Tudor corrected.

"Yes," muttered Crillon, "but whether he's Austrian or whether he's Bohemian or Hungarian, he's a grandee, so he's got the right to do what he likes, eh?"

Eudo looked as if he would intervene at this point and was seeking words. (Not long before that he had had the queer notion of sheltering and nursing a crippled hind that had escaped from a previous run, and his act had given great displeasure in high places.) So as soon as he opened his mouth we made him shut it. The idea of Eudo in judgment on princes!

And the rest lowered their heads and nodded and murmured, "Yes, he's a grandee."

And the little phrase spread abroad, timidly and obscurely.

* * * * * *

When All Saints' Day came round, many of the distinguished visitors at the castle were still there. Every year that festival gives us occasion for an historical ceremony on the grand scale. At two o'clock all the townsfolk that matter gather with bunches of flowers on the esplanade or in front of the cemetery half-way up Chestnut Hill, for the ceremony and an open air service.

Early in the afternoon I betook myself with Marie to the scene. I put on a fancy waistcoat of black and white check and my new patent leather boots, which make me look at them. It is fine weather on this Sunday of Sundays, and the bells are ringing. Everywhere the hurrying crowd climbs the hill—peasants in flat caps, working families in their best clothes, young girls with faces white and glossy as the bridal satin which is the color of their thoughts, young men carrying jars of flowers. All these appear on the esplanade, where graying lime trees are also in assembly. Children are sitting on the ground.

Monsieur Joseph Bonéas, in black, with his supremely distinguished air, goes by holding his mother's arm. I bow deeply to them. He points at the unfolding spectacle as he passes and says, "It is our race's festival."

The words made me look more seriously at the scene before my eyes—all this tranquil and contemplative stir in the heart of festive nature. Reflection and the vexations of my life have mellowed my mind. The idea at last becomes clear in my brain of an entirety, an immense multitude in space, and infinite in time, a multitude of which I am an integral part, which has shaped me in its image, which continues to keep me like it, and carries me along its control; my own people.

Baroness Grille, in the riding habit that she almost always wears when mixing with the people, is standing near the imposing entry to the cemetery. Monsieur the Marquis of Monthyon is holding aloft his stately presence, his handsome and energetic face. Solid and sporting, with dazzling shirt cuffs and fine ebon-black shoes, he parades a smile. There is an M.P. too, a former Minister, very assiduous, who chats with the old duke. There are the Messrs. Gozlan and famous people whose names one does not know. Members of the Institute of the great learned associations, or people fabulously wealthy.

Not far from these groups, which are divided from the rest by a scarlet barrier of beaters and the flashing chain of their slung horns, arises Monsieur Fontan. The huge merchant and café-owner occupies an intermediate and isolated place between principals and people. His face is disposed in fat white tiers, like a Buddha's belly. Monumentally motionless he says nothing at all, but he tranquilly spits all around him. He radiates saliva.

4. A terrible insurrection of the French peasantry in 1358.—Tr.