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THE SON
BOURGET





hºtº Nº ()
| 3/2/,
THE SON
(ANDRE CORNELIS)
- _ _*:
ponarED BYT º
-- an: * -
ancastlis LIBRARY Association
# I New York CITY - |
By
PAUL, BOURGET
AUTHOR OF “LovE's CRUEL ENIGMA,” “THE DISCIPLE,”
“THE PROMISED LAND "
MERCANTILELIBRARY,
|NEW YORK.
M 316148
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1893, by
THE WAVERLY COMPANY
e


T. C. I. E.'ſ YORK
*::::53:3A
ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
R 1928 L
*- - -
- *
- -
- - -
- -
- * *
* - - -
- - º
--
-
- - -
... - - -
- - -


THE SON
(ANDRE CORNELIS.)
I.
WHEN I was a child, I used to go to confession.
How often since then have I wished that I were
still the little lad who came at five o'clock in the
evening into the chapel belonging to our school,
the cold and empty chapel, with its whitewashed
walls, its benches on which our places were all
numbered, its feeble harmonium, its crude Holy
Family, its blue ceiling dotted with stars. We
were taken to this chapel by a master, in batches
of ten. When it came to my turn to kneel in one
of the two narrow spaces on either side of the
central seat of the priest, my heart would beat
violently, and a strange oppression would come
upon me, produced by the gloom and silence of
the chapel, and the indistinct murmur of the con-
fessor's voice as he questioned the boy on the op-
posite side, to whom I was to succeed. These
(3)


4. THE SOAV
sensations, and the shame inspired by the sins
which I was about to confess, made me start with
a nervous dread when the sound of the sliding
panel announced that the moment had come, and
I could distinguish the priest's marked profile, and
note the keenness of his glance, although his face
was full and florid. What a moment of deadly
pain to endure, and then what a blessed sense of
relief What a feeling of supreme liberty, alle-
viation, pardon—nay, effacement of my wrong-
doing; what conviction that a fair spotless page
was now offered to me, and it was mine to fill
it with good deeds. I am too far removed now
from the religious faith of my early years to im-
agine that there was a phenomenon of a super-
natural order in all this. Whence then came the
sense of deliverance that renewed the youth of
my soul? Solely from the fact that I had told my
sins, that I had thrown overboard the burden of
conscience that oppresses us all. Confession was
the lancet-stroke that empties the abscess. Alas!
I have now no confessional at which to kneel, no
prayer to murmur, no God in whom to hopel
Nevertheless, I must get rid of these intolerable
recollections. The tragedy of my life presses too
heavily upon my memory, and I have not a friend
to speak to, not an echo to take up my plaint.


THE SOAV 5
There are things which cannot be uttered, since
they ought not to find a hearer—this I know; and
so I have resolved, in order to cheat my pain, to
make my confession here, to myself alone, on this
fair white paper, as I might make it të a priest.
I will write down all the details of my terrible
history, bit by bit, as each comes to my remem-
brance, and when this confession is finished, I
shall see whether I am to be rid of the anguish
also. Ah! if it could even be diminished only
If it were but lessened, so that I might come and
go, and have my share of youth and life I have
suffered so much, and for so long, and yet I love
life, in spite of my sufferings. A full glass of the
black drug, the laudanum that I always keep at
hand in a bottle for nights when I cannot sleep,
and the slow torture of my remorse would cease
at once. But I cannot, I will not. The instinctive
animal desire to live on stirs me more strongly than
all the moral reasons which urge me to make an
end. Live then, poor wretch, since Nature bids
you tremble at the thought of death. Nature ?
And besides, I do not want to go down there, be-
low—no, not yet—into that dark world where it
may be we should meet. No, no, not that terror,
not that I See now, I had promised myself that I
would be self-possessed, and I am already losing


6 THE SOAV
control over my thoughts; but I will resume it.
The following is my project:
On these sheets of paper I will draw a true pic-
ture of my destiny, for I can catch only troubled
glimpses of it in the blurred mirror of my thoughts.
And when the pages are covered with my scrawl
I will burn them. But the thing will have taken
form, and existed before my eyes, like a living be-
ing. I shall have thrown a steady light upon the
chaos of horrible recollections which bewilder me.
I shall know what my strength really is. Here,
in this room where I came to the final resolution,
it is only too easy for me to remember. To work,
then I pass my word to myself that I will set
down the whole. Poor heart, let me number all
thy wounds.


II.
LET me remember 2 I have the sense of having
trodden a Via Dolorosa during long years, but
what was my first step in the blood-spotted path-
way of pain 2 Where ought I to take up the tale
of the slow martyrdom, whose last stage of tor-
ture I have reached to-day ? I know not, for my
feelings are like those lagoon-worn shores on
which one cannot tell where the sea begins or
ends; vague places, all sand and water, whose
uncertain outline is constantly changing and being
formed anew ; regions without bounds or features.
Nevertheless these places are drawn upon the map,
and we may depict our feelings also by reflection,
and after the manner of analysis. The reality is
ever shifting about. How intangible it is, always
escaping our eager grasp ! The enigma of enigmas
is the exact moment at which a wound gapes in
the heart, one of those wounds which have never
closed in mind. In order to simplify everything,
and to keep myself from sinking into that painful
torpor of reverie which steals over me like the
influence of opium, I will divide my task into
(7)


THE SOAV 9
had a roll of linen in his hand. I understood the
use of this afterwards. I had not to question
this man, for at sight of me he exclaimed, as
though involuntarily :
“Ah! M. André, what an awful misfortune l’”
Then, regaining his presence of mind, he said:
“Go back into your room—go back at once l’”
Before I could answer, he caught me up in his
arms, rather threw than placed me on the upper
step of my staircase, locked the door of the cor-
ridor, and walked rapidly away.
“No, no,” I cried, flinging myself against the
door, “tell me all; I will, I must know.” No
answer. I shook the lock, I struck the panel with
my clenched fists, I dashed my shoulder against
the door. Vain was my frenzyl Then, sitting
upon the lowest step, I listened, in an agony of
fear, to the coming and going of people outside,
who knew of “the awful misfortune,” but what
was it they knew 2 Child as I was, I understood
the terrible signification which the servant's ex-
clamation bore under the actual circumstances.
Two days previously, my father had gone out
after breakfast, according to custom, to the place
of business which he had occupied for over four
years, in the Rue de la Victoire. He had been
thoughtful during breakfast, indeed for some


THE SOM’ II
passed, then the next morning and afternoon, and
once more it was evening. My mother and I
were once more seated at the square table, where
the cover laid for my father in front of his empty
chair, gave, as it were, a form to our nameless
dread. My mother had written to M. Jacques
Termonde, and he came after dinner. I was sent
away immediately, but not without my having
had time to remark the extraordinary brightness
of M. Termonde's eyes, which were blue, and
usually shone coldly in his thin sharp face. He
had fair hair and a beard best described as pale.
Thus do children take note of small details, which
are speedily effaced from their minds, but after-
wards re-appear, at the contact of life, just as
certain invisible marks come out upon paper when
it is held to the fire. While begging to be al-
lowed to remain, I was mechanically observing
the hurried and agitated turning and re-turning
of a light cane—I had long coveted it—held be-
hind his back in his remarkably beautiful hands.
If I had not admired the cane so much, and the
fighting centaurs on its handle—a fine piece of
Renaissance work—this symptom of extreme dis-
turbance might have escaped me. But, how could
M. Termonde fail to be disturbed by the disap-
pearance of his best friend ? Nevertheless, his


I 2 THE SOAV
voice, a soft voice which made all his phrases
melodious, was quite calm.
“To-morrow,” he said, “I will have every in-
quiry made, if Cornélis has not returned; but he
will come back, and all will be explained. De-
pend on it, he went away somewhere on the busi-
ness he told you of, and left a letter for you to be
sent by a commissionaire who has not delivered
it.” *
“Ah!” said my mother, “you think that is
possible?”
How often, in my dark hours, have I recalled
this dialogue, and the room in which it took place
—a little salon, much liked by my mother, with
hangings and furniture of some foreign stuff all
striped in red and white, black and yellow, that
my father had brought from Morocco; and how
plainly have I seen my mother in my mind's eye,
with her black hair, her brown eyes, her quivering
lips. She was as white as the summer gown she
wore that evening. M. Termonde was dressed
with his usual correctness, and I remember well
his slender and elegant figure. It makes me smile
when people talk of presentiments. I went off
perfectly satisfied with what he had said. I had a
childish admiration for this man, and hitherto he
had represented nothing to me but treats and


THE SOAV I3
indulgence. I attended the two classes at the
Lycée, if not with a light, at least with a relieved
heart. But, while I was sitting upon the lower
step of my little staircase, all my uneasiness re-
vived. I hammered at the door again, I called as
loudly as I could ; but no one answered me, until
the good woman who had been my nurse came
into my room. - -
“My father l’” I cried, “where is my father?”
“Poor child, poor child,” said nurse, and took
me in her arms.
She had been sent to tell me the awful truth,
but her strength failed her. I escaped from her,
ran out into the corridor, and reached my father's
bedroom before any one could stop me. Ah!
upon the bed lay a rigid form covered by a white
sheet, upon the pillow a bloodless, motionless face,
with fixed, wide-open eyes, for the lids had not
been closed; the chin was supported by a band-
age, a napkin was bound around the forehead; at
the bed's foot knelt a woman, still dressed in her
white summer gown, crushed and helpless with
grief. These were my father and my mother. I
flung myself madly upon her, and she clasped me
passionately, with the piercing cry, “My André,
my André!” In that cry there was such intense
grief, in that embrace there was such frenzied


I4 THE SOAV
tenderness, her heart was then so big with tears,
that it warms my own even now to think of it.
The next moment she rose and carried me out of
the room, that I might see the dreadful sight no
more. She did this easily, her terrible excitement
had doubled her strength. “God punishes me !
God punishes me !” she said over and over again,
taking no heed of her words. She had always
been given, by fits and starts, to mystical piety.
Then she covered my face, my neck, and my hair
with kisses and tears. May all that we suffered,
the dead and I, be forgiven you, poor mother, for
the sincerity of those tears at that moment. In
my darkest hours, and when the phantom was
there, beckoning to me, your grief pleaded with
me more strongly than his plaint. Because of the
kisses of that moment I have always been able to
believe in you, for those kisses and tears were not
meant to conceal anything. Your whole heart
revolted against the horrid deed that bereaved me
of my father. I swear by the anguish which we
shared in that moment, that you had no part in
the hideous plot. Ah, forgive me, that I have felt
the need even now of affirming this, of redoubling
the evidence of it. If you only knew how one
sometimes hungers and thirsts for certaintv-ay,
even to the point of agony.


III.
WHEN I asked my mother, on the instant, to
tell me all about the awful event, she said that
my father had been seized with a fit in a hackney
carriage, and that as no papers were found upon
him, he had not been recognized for two days.
Grown-up people are much too ready to think it
is equally easy to tell lies to all children. Now, I
was a child who pondered long in my thoughts
over things that were said to me, and by dint of
putting a number of small facts together, I came
to the conviction that I did not know the whole
truth. If my father's death had occurred in the
manner stated to me, why should the man-servant
have asked me, one day when he took me out to
walk, what had been said to me about it? And
when I answered him, why did he say no more,
and, being a very talkative person, why had he
kept silence ever since 2 Why, too, did I feel the
same silence all around me, in the air, sitting on
every lip, hidden in every look 2 Why was the
subject of conversation constantly changed when-
ever I drew near? I guessed this by many trifling
(15)


I6 7 HE SOAV
signs. Why was not a single newspaper left lying
about, whereas, during my father's lifetime, the
three journals to which we subscribed were always
to be found on a table in the salon 2 Above all,
why did both the masters and my schoolfellows
look at me so curiously, when I went back to
school early in October, four months after our
great misfortune? Alas! it was their curiosity
which revealed the full extent of the catastrophe
to me. It was only a fortnight after the reopen-
ing of the school, when I happened to be playing
one morning with two new boys; I remember
their names, Rastonaix and Servoin, now, and I
can see the big fat cheeks of Rastonaix and the
ferret-like face of Servoin. Although we were
outdoor pupils, we were allowed a quarter of an
hour's recreation indoors, between the Latin and
English lessons. The two boys had engaged me
on the previous day for a game of ninepins, and
when it was over, they came close to me, and look-
ing at each other to keep up their courage, they
put to me the following questions, point-blank:
“Is it true that the murderer of your father has
been arrested 2 ”
“And that he is to be guillotined 2"
This occurred sixteen years ago, but I cannot
now recall the beating of my heart at those words


7 HE SOM’ 17
without horror. I must have turned frightfully
pale, for the two boys, who had struck me this
blow with the carelessness of their age—of our
age—stood there disconcerted. A blind fury
seized upon me, urging me to command them to
be silent, and to hit them with my fists if they
spoke again; but at the same time I felt a wild
impulse of curiosity—what if this were the ex-
planation of the silence by which I felt myself
surrounded ?–and also a pang of fear, the fear of
the unknown. . The blood rushed into my face,
and I stammered out:
“I do not know.” -
The drum-tap, summoning us back to the school-
room, separated us. What a day I passed, be-
wildered by my trouble, turning the two terrible
sentences over and over again.
It would have been natural for me to question
my mother; but the truth is, I felt quite unable
to repeat to her what my unconscious tormenters
had said. It was strange but true, that thenceforth
my mother, whom nevertheless I loved with all
my heart, exercised a paralyzing influence over
me. She was so beautiful in her pallor, so royally
beautiful and proud. No, I should never have
ventured to reveal to her that an irresistible doubt
of the story she had told me was implanted in my
2


18 7 HE SOAV
mind merely by the two questions of my school.
fellows; but, as I could not keep silence entirely
and live, I resolved to have recourse to Julie, my
former nurse. She was a little woman, fifty years
of age, an old maid too, with a flat wrinkled face,
like an over-ripe apple; but her eyes were full of
kindness, and indeed so was her whole face, al-
though her lips were drawn in by the loss of her
front teeth, and this gave her a witch-like mouth.
She had deeply mourned my father in my com-
pany, for she had been in his service before his
marriage. Julie was retained especially on my ac-
count, and in addition to her the household con-
sisted of the cook, the man-servant, and the femme
de chambre. Julie put me to bed and tucked me
in, heard me say my prayers, and listened to my
little troubles. “Oh the wretches l’” she ex-
claimed, when I opened my heart to her and re-
peated the words that had agitated me so terribly.
“And yet it could not have been hidden from you
for ever.” Then it was that she told me all the
truth, there in my little room, speaking very low
and bending over me, while I lay sobbing in my
narrow bed. She suffered in the telling of that
truth as much as I in the hearing of it, and the
touch of her dry old hand, with fingers scarred


THE SOAV 19
by the needle, fell softly on my curly head as
she stroked it.
That ghastly story, which bore down my youth
with the weight of an impenetrable mystery, I
have found written in the newspapers of the day,
but not more clearly than it was narrated by my
dear old Julie. Here it is, plainly set forth, as
I have turned and re-turned it over and over
again in my thoughts, day after day, with the
vain hope of penetrating it.
My father, who was a distinguished advocate,
had resigned his practice in court some years pre-
viously, and set up as a financial agent, hoping
by that means to make a fortune more rapidly
than by the law. His good official connection,
his scrupulous probity, his extensive knowledge
of the most important questions, and his great
capacity for work, had speedily secured him an
exceptional position. He employed ten secre.
taries, and the million and a half francs which
my mother and I inherited formed only the be-
ginnings of the wealth to which he aspired, partly
for his own sake, much more for his son's, but,
above all, for his wife's—he was passionately at-
tached to her. Notes and letters found among
his papers proved that at the time of his death,
he had been for a month previously in corres-


2O THE SOAV
pondence with a certain person named, or calling
himself, William Henry Rochdale, who was com-
missioned by the firm of Crawford, in San Fran-
cisco, to obtain a railway concession in Cochin
China, then recently conquered, from the French
Government. It was with Rochdale that my father
had the appointment of which he spoke before he
left my mother, M. Termonde, and myself, after
breakfast, on the last fatal morning. The Instruc-
tion had no difficulty in establishing this fact.
The appointed place of meeting was the Imperial
Hotel, a large building, with a long façade, in the
Rue de Rivoli, not far from the Ministère de la
Marine. The entire block of houses was destroyed
by fire in the Commune ; but during my child-
hood I frequently begged Julie to take me to the
spot, that I might gaze, with an aching heart,
upon the handsome courtyard adorned with green
shrubs, the wide, carpeted staircarse, and the slab
of black marble, encrusted with gold, that marked
the entrance to the place whither my father
wended his way, while my mother was talking
with M. Termonde, and I was playing in the room
with them. My father had left us at a quarter-
past twelve, and he must have taken a quarter of
an hour to walk to the Imperial Hotel, for the
concierge, having seen the corpse, recognized it,


THA, SOAV 21
and remembered that it was just about half-past
twelve when my father inquired of him what was
the number of Mr. Rochdale's rooms. This gen-
tleman, a foreigner, had arrived on the previous
day, and had fixed, after some hesitation, upon an
apartment situated on the second floor, and com-
posed of a salon and a bed-room, with a small
ante-room, which separated the apartment from
the landing outside. From that moment he had
not gone out, and he dined the same evening and
breakfasted the next morning in his salon. The
concierge also remembered that Rochdale came
down alone, at about two o'clock on the second
day; but he was too much accustomed to the con-
tinual coming and going to notice whether the
visitor who arrived at half-past twelve had or had
not gone away again. Rochdale handed the key
of his apartment to the concierge, with directions
that anybody who came, wanting to see him,
should be asked to wait in his salon. After this
he walked away in a leisurely manner, with a
business-like portfolio under his arm, smoking a
cigar, and he did not reappear.
The day passed on, and toward night two
housemaids entered the apartment of the foreign
gentleman to prepare his bed. They passed
through the salon without observing anything


22 THE SOAV
unusual. The traveler's luggage, composed of
a large and much-used trunk and a quite new
dressing-bag, were there. His dressing-things
were arranged on the top of a cabinet. The next
day, toward noon, the same housemaids entered
the apartment, and finding that the traveler had
slept out, they merely replaced the day-covering
upon the bed, and paid no attention to the salon.
Precisely the same thing occurred in the even-
ing ; but on the following day, one of the women
having come into the apartment early, and again
finding everything intact, began to wonder what
this meant. She searched about, and speedily
discovered a body, lying at full length under-
neath the sofa, with the head wrapped in towels.
She uttered a scream which brought other ser-
vants to the spot, and the corpse of my father--
alas! it was he-was removed from the hiding-
place in which the assassin had cunningly con-
cealed it. It was not difficult to reconstruct the
scene of the murder. A wound in the back of
the neck indicated that the unfortunate man had
been shot from behind, while seated at the table
examining papers, by a person standing close be-
side him. The report had not been heard, on
account of the proximity of the weapon, and also
because of the constant noise in the street, and


THE SOAV 25
with respect to the stature, figure, bearing, and
tone of voice of the individual. This hypothesis
was confirmed by one Jullien, a hairdresser, who
came forward of his own accord to make the fol-
lowing statement:
On a day in the preceding month, a man who
answered to the description of Rochdale given by
the first driver and the bric-à-brac seller, being
fair-haired, pale, tall, and broad-shouldered, came
to his shop to order a wig and a beard ; these
were to be so well constructed that no one could
recognize him, and were intended, he said, to be
worn at a fancy ball. The unknown person was
accordingly furnished with a black wig and a
black beard, and he provided himself with all the
necessary ingredients for disguising himself as a
native of South America, purchasing coal for
blackening his eyebrows, and a composition of
Sienna earth and amber for coloring his com-
plexion. He applied these so skilfully, that
when he returned to the hairdresser's shop, Jul-
lien did not recognize him. The unusualness of
a fancy ball given in the middle of summer, and
the perfection to which his customer carried the
art of disguise, astonished the hairdresser so
much that his attention was immediately at-
tracted by the newspaper articles upon “The


THE SOAV 27
the evening of one day until two o'clock in the
afternoon of the next, and that he had then
vanished, like a phantom, leaving one only trace
behind—one only. This man had come there,
other men had spoken to him ; the manner in
which he had passed the night and the morning
before the crime was known. He had done his
deed of murder, and then—nothing. “All
Paris” was full of this affair, and when I made a
collection, long afterwards, of newspapers which
referred to it, I found that for six whole weeks it
occupied a place in the chronicle of every day.
At length the fatal heading, “The Mystery of
the Imperial Hotel,” disappeared from the col-
umns of the newspapers, as the remembrance of
that ghastly enigma faded from the minds of
their readers, and solicitude about it ceased to
occupy the police. The tide of life, rolling that
poor waif amid its waters, had swept on. Yes;
but I, the son 2 How should I ever forget the old
woman's story that had filled my childhood with
tragic horror 2 How should I ever cease to see
the pale face of the murdered man, with its fixed,
open eyes? How should I not say: “I will
avenge thee, thou poor ghost” Poor ghost
When I read Hamlet for the first time, with that
passionate avidity which comes from an analogy


IV.
I REMEMBER little of the succeeding events.
All was so trivial, so insignificant, between that
first vision of horror and the vision of woe which
came to me two years later, that, with one
exception, I hardly recall the intervening time.
In 1864, my father died; in 1866, my mother
married M. Jacques Termonde. The exceptional
period of the interval was the only one during
which my mother bestowed constant attention
upon me. Before the fatal date my father was
the only person who had cared for me; at a later
period there was no one at all to do so. Our
apartment in the Rue Tronchet became unbear-
able to us; there we could not escape from the re-
membrance of the terrible event, and we removed
to a small hotel in the Boulevard de Latour-
Maubourg. The house had belonged to a painter,
and stood in a small garden which seemed larger
than it was because other gardens adjoined it, and
overshadowed its boundary wall with greenery.
The centre of the house was a kind of hall, in the
English style, which the former occupant had
(29)


30 THE SOAV
used as a studio; my mother made this her ordi-
nary sitting-room. Now, at this distance of time,
I can understand my mother's character, and
recognize that there was something unreal and
slightly theatrical about her, which, although it
was very harmless, led her to exaggerate the out-
ward expression of all her feelings. While she
occupied herself in studying the attitudes by
which her emotions were to be fittingly ex-
pressed, the sentiments themselves were fading
away. For instance, she chose to condemn herself
to voluntary exile and seclusion after her be-
reavement, receiving only a very few friends, of
whom M. Jacques Termonde was one; but she
very soon began to adorn herself and everything
around her, with the fine and subtle tastefulness
that was innate in her. My mother was a very
lovely woman; her beauty was of a refined and
pensive order, her figure was tall and slender, her
dark hair was very luxuriant and of remarkable
length. No doubt it was to the Greek blood in
her veins that she owed the classical lines of her
profile, her full-lidded soft eyes, and the willowy
grace of her form. Her maternal grandfather was
a Greek merchant, of the name of Votronto, who
had come from the Levant to Marseilles when the
Ionian Islands were annexed to France. Many


7 HAE SOAV 31
times in after years I have recalled the strange
contrast between her rare and refined beauty and
my father's stolid sturdy form, and my own, and
wondered whether the origin of many irreparable
mistakes might not be traced to that contrast.
But I did not reason in those days; I was under
the spell of the fair being who called me, “My
son.” I used to look at her with a kind of
idolatry when she was seated at her piano in that
elegant sanctum of hers, which she had hung with
draped foreign stuffs, and decorated with tall
green plants and various curious things, after a
fashion entirely her own. For her sake, and in
spite of my natural awkwardness and untidiness,
I strove to keep myself very clean and neat in the
more and more elaborate costumes which she
made me wear, and also more and more did the
terrible image of the murdered man fade away
from that home, which, nevertheless, was provided
and adorned by the fortune which he had earned
for us and bequeathed to us. All the ways of
modern life are so opposed to the tragic in events,
so far removed from the savage realities of
passion and bloodshed, that when such things in-
trude upon the decorous life of a family, they are
put out of sight with all speed, and soon come to


32 THE SOAV
be looked upon as a bad dream, impossible to
doubt, but difficult to realize.
Yes, our life had almost resumed its normal
course when my mother's second marriage was
announced to me. This time I accurately re-
member not only the period, but also the day and
hour. I was spending my holidays with my
spinster aunt, my father's sister, who lived at
Compiègne, in a house situated at the far end of
the town. She had three servants, one of whom
was my dear old Julie, who had left us because
my mother could not get on with her. My aunt
Louise was a little woman of fifty, with countri-
fied looks and manners: she had hardly ever con-
sented to stay two whole days in Paris during my
father's lifetime. Her almost invariable attire
was a black silk gown made at home, with just a
line of white at the neck and wrists, and she al-
ways wore a very long gold chain of ancient date,
which was passed under the bodice of her gown
and came out at the belt. To this chain her
watch and a bunch of seals and charms were at-
tached. Her cap, plainly trimmed with ribbon,
was black like her dress, and the smooth bands
of her hair, which was turning gray, framed a
thoughtful brow and eyes so kind that she was
pleasant to behold, although her nose was large


7THE SOAV 33
and her mouth and chin were heavy. She had
brought up my father in this same little town of
Compiègne, and had given him, out of her for-
tune, all that she could spare from the simple
needs of her frugal life, when he wished to marry
Mdlle. de Slane, in order to induce my mother's
family to listen to his suit. The contrast between
the portrait in my little album of my aunt and
her face as I saw it now, told plainly enough how
much she had suffered during the past two years.
Her hair had become more white, the lines which
run from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth
were deepened, her eyelids had a withered look.
And yet she had never been demonstrative in her
grief. I was an observant little boy, and the
difference between my mother's character and
that of my aunt was precisely indicated to my
mind by the difference in their respective sorrow.
At that time it was hard for me to understand
my aunt's reserve, while I could not suspect her
of want of feeling. Now it is to the other sort
of nature that I am unjust. My mother also had
a tender heart, so tender that she did not feel
able to reveal her purpose to me, and it was my
aunt Louise who undertook to do so. She had
not consented to be present at the marriage, and
M. Termonde, as I afterwards learned, preferred
3 -


34 THE SOAV
that I should not attend on the occasion, in order,
no doubt, to spare the feelings of her who was
to become his wife. In spite of all her self-con-
trol, Aunt Louise had tears in her brown eyes
when she led me to the far end of the garden,
where my father had played when he was a child
like myself. The golden tints of September had
begun to touch the foliage of the trees. A vine
spread its tendrils over the arbor in which we
seated ourselves, and wasps were busy among the
ripening grapes. My aunt took both my hands
in hers, and began :
“André, I have to tell you a great piece of
news.”
I looked at her apprehensively. The shock of
the dreadful event in our lives had left its mark
upon my nervous system, and at the slightest sur-
prise my heart would beat until I nearly fainted.
She saw my agitation and said simply:
“Your mother is about to marry.”
It was strange this sentence did not imme-
diately produce the impression which my look at
her had led my aunt to expect. I had thought
from the tone of her voice, that she was going to
tell me of my mother's illness or death. My
sensitive imagination readily conjured up such
fears. I asked calmly:


THE SOM’ 35
“Whom 2 ”
“You do not guess?”
“M. Termonde 2° I cried.
Even now I cannot define the reasons which
sent this name to my lips so suddenly, without a
moment's thought. No doubt M. Termonde had
been a good deal at our house since my father's
death; but had he not visited us as often, if not
more frequently, before my mother's widowhood?
Had he not managed every detail of our affairs
for us with care and fidelity, which even then I
could recognize as very rare 2 Why should the
news of his marriage with my mother seem to
me on the instant to be much worse news than if
she had married no matter whom 2 Exactly the
opposite effect ought to have been produced,
surely? I had known this man for a long time;
he had been very kind to me formerly—they said
he spoiled me—and he was very kind to me still.
My best toys were presents from him, and my
prettiest books; a wonderful wooden horse which
moved by clockwork, given to me when I was
seven—how much my poor father was amused
when I told him this horse was “a double thor-
oughbred ”—“Don Quixote,” with Doré's illus-
trations, this very year; in fact some new gift
constantly, and yet I was never easy and light-


36 THE SOAV
hearted in his presence as I had formerly been.
When had this restraint begun ? I could not
have told that, but I thought he came too often
between my mother and me. I was jealous of
him, I may as well confess it, with that uncon-
scious jealousy which children feel, and which
made me lavish kisses on my mother when he was
by, in order to show him that she was my mother,
and nothing at all to him. Had he discovered
my feelings? Had they been his own also?
However that might be, I now never failed to dis-
cern antipathy similar to my own in his looks,
notwithstanding his flattering voice and his over-
polite ways. At my then age, instinct is never
deceived about such impressions. This was quite
enough to account for the shiver that went over
me when I uttered his name. But I saw my
aunt start at that shiver and my cry.
“M. Termonde,” said she “yes, it is he ; but
why did you think of him immediately?” Then,
looking me full in the face with a searching gaze,
she said in a low tone, as though she were ashamed
of putting such a question to a child:
“What do you know?”
At these words, and without any other cause
than the weakness of nerves to which I had been
subject ever since my father's death, I burst into


7A/E SOAV 37
tears. The same thing happened to me some-
times when I was shut up in my room alone, with
the door bolted, suffering from a dread which I
could not conquer, like that of a coming danger.
I would forecast the worst accidents that could
happen; for example, that my mother would be
murdered, like my father, and then myself, and I
peered under all the articles of furniture in the
room. It had occurred to me, when out walking
with a servant, to imagine that the harmless man
might be an accomplice of the mysterious crim-
inal, and have it in charge to take me to him, or
at all events to lose me in some unknown place.
My too highly-wrought imagination overmastered
me. I fancied myself, however, escaping from
the deadly device, and in order to hide myself
more effectually, making for Compiègne. Should
I have enough money? Then I reflected that it
might be possible to sell my watch to an old
watchmaker whom I used to see, when on my
way to the Lycée, at work behind the window of
his little shop, with a glass fixed in his right eye.
That was a sad faculty of foresight which poisoned
so many of the harmless hours of my childhood
It was the same faculty that now made me break
out into choking sobs when my aunt asked me
what I had in my mind against M. Termonde. I


38 THE SOAV
related the worst of my grievances to her then,
leaning my head on her shoulder, and in this one
all the others were summed up. It dated from
two months before. I had come back from school
in a merry mood, contrary to my habit. My
teacher had dismissed me with praise of my com-
positions and congratulations on my prizes.
What good news this was to take home, and how
tenderly my mother would kiss me when she
heard it! I put away my books, washed my
hands carefully, and flew to the salon where my
mother was. I entered the room without knock-
ing at the door, and in such haste that as I sprang
toward her to throw myself into her arms, she
gave a little cry. She was standing beside the
mantlepiece, her face was very pale, and near her
stood M. Termonde. He seized me by the arm
and held me back from her.
“Oh, how you frightened me !” said my
mother.
“Is that the way to come into a salon?” said
M. Termonde.
His voice had turned rough like his gesture.
He had grasped my arm so tightly that where
his fingers had fastened on it I found black marks
that night when I undressed myself. But it was
neither his insolent words nor the pain of his


THE SOAV 39
grasp which made me stand there stupidly, with a
swelling heart. No, it was hearing my mother
say to him:
“Don’t scold André too much ; he is so young.
He will improve.”
Then she drew me toward her, and rolled my
curls round her fingers; but in her words, in their
tone, in her glance, in her faint smile, I detected
a singular timidity, almost a supplication, directed
to the man before her, who frowned as he pulled
his moustache with his restless fingers, is if in impa-
tience of my presence. By what right did he, a
stranger, speak in the tone of a master in our
house? Why had he laid his hand on me ever so .
lightly 2 Yes, by what right 2 Was I his son or
his ward? Why did not my mother defend me
against him? Even if I were in fault it was
toward her only. A fit of rage seized upon me;
I burned with longing to spring upon M. Ter-
monde like a beast, to tear his face and bite him.
I darted a look of fury at him and at my mother,
and left the room without speaking. I was of a
sullen temper, and I think this defect was due to
my excessive and almost morbid sensitiveness.
All my feelings were exaggerated, so that the
least thing angered me, and it was misery to me to
recover myself. Even my father had found it


4O THE SOAV
very difficult to get the better of those fits of
wounded feeling, during which I strove against
my own relentings with a cold and concentrated
anger which both relieved and tortured me. I
was well aware of this moral infirmity, and as I
was not a bad child in reality, I was ashamed of it.
Therefore, my humiliation was complete when, as
I went out of the room, M. Termonde said:
“Now for a week's sulk! His temper is really
insufferable.”
His remark had one advantage, for I made it a
point of honor to give the lie to it, and did not
sulk; but the scene had hurt me too deeply for
me to forget it, and now my resentment was fully
revived, and grew stronger and stronger while I
was telling the story to my aunt. Alas! my al-
most unconscious second-sight, that of a too sen-
sitive child, was not in error. That puerile but
painful scene symbolized the whole history of my
youth, my invincible antipathy to the man who
was about to take my father's place, and the blind
partiality in his favor of her who ought to have
defended me from the first and always.
“He detests me!” I said through my tears;
“what have I done to him 2 ”
“Calm yourself,” said the kind woman. “You
are just like your poor father, making the worst of


THE SOAV 41
all your little troubles. And now you must try
to be nice to him on account of your mother, and
not to give way to this violent feeling, which
frightens me. Do not make an enemy of him,”
she added.
It was quite natural that she should speak to
me in this way, and yet her earnestness appeared
strange to me from that moment out. I do not
know why she also seemed surprised at my answer
to her question, “What do you know?” She
wanted to quiet me, and she increased the appre-
hension with which I regarded the usurper—so I
called him ever afterward—by the slight faltering
of her voice when she spoke of him.
“You will have to write to them this evening,”
said she at length.
Write to them The words sickened me. They
were united ; never, nevermore should I be able
to think of the one without thinking of the other.
“Are you?”
“I have already written.”
“When are they to be married ?”
“They were married yesterday,” she answered,
in so low a tone that I hardly heard the words.
“And where 2 " I asked, after a pause.
“In the country, at the house of some friends.”
Then she added quickly : “They preferred that


THE SOAV 43
my father at all ages. Underneath these works
of art was a bookcase, in which I found all my
father's school prizes, piously preserved. What
a feeling of protection I derived from the por-
tières in green velvet, with long bands of needle-
work, my aunt's masterpieces, which hung in wide
folds over the doors | . With what admiration I
regarded the faded carpet, with its impossible
flowers, which I had so often tried to gather in
my babyhood | This was one of the legends of
my earliest years, one of those anecdotes which
are told of a beloved son, and which make him
feel that the smallest details of his existence have
been observed, understood, and loved. In later
days I have been frozen by the ice of indifference.
And my aunt, she whose life had been lived among
these old-fashioned things, how I loved her, with
that face in which I read nothing but supreme
tenderness for me, those eyes whose gaze did me
good in some mysterious part of my soul! I felt
her so near to me, only through her likeness to
my father, that I rose from my task four or five
times to kiss her, during the time it took me to
write my letter of congratulation to the worst en-
emy I had, to my knowledge, in the world.
And this was the second indelible date in my
life.


V.
INDELIBLE | Yes, those two dates and only those
have remained so, and when I retrace the past in
fancy, I am always pulled up by them. The two
images—my father assassinated, my mother mar-
ried again—weighed long upon my heart. Other
children have restless and supple minds which
yield easily to successive impressions; they sur-
render themselves entirely to the actual moment,
pass from a pleasure to a chi dish trouble, and for-
get in the evening what they have felt during the
day. But I? ah, no! From my two recollections
I was never released. An ever present hallucin-
ation kept before my mind's eye the dead face on
the pillow, and my mother kneeling at the bed's
foot, or the sound in my ears of my aunt's voice
announcing the other news. I could always see
her sad face, her brown eyes, and the black bows
on her cap shaking in the wind of the September
afternoon. And still, even to-day, when I am en-
deavoring to reproduce the history of my mind's
life, or the real and solitary André Cornélis, all
other remembrances vanish before those two; not
(44)


THE SOAV 45
a phase of my youth but is pervaded by them and
contained in them, as the cloud contains the light-
ning, and the fire it kindles, and the ruins of the
homesteads which it strikes. Of all the images
that crowd upon my memory, recalling what I
was during my long years of childhood and youth,
those two disastrous days are always the chief;
they form the lurid background of the picture of
my life, the dark horizon of a more melancholy
landscape.
What are the other images? A large space,
with old trees in it, some children playing late on
an autumn day; while others, who are not play-
ing, but only look on, lean against the old brown
tree-stems, or wonder about like forsaken creat-
ures. This is the playground of the Lycée at
Versailles. The scholars who are playing are the
“old” boys, the others, the shy exiles, are the
“new,” and I am one of the latter. It is just four
short weeks since my aunt told me of my mother's
marriage, and already my life is entirely changed.
On my return from the holidays it was decided
that I should enter the school as a boarder. My
mothér and my stepfather were about to travel in
Italy until the summer, and the question of their
taking me with them was not even mooted. My
mother proposed to allow me to remain as a day-


46 - THE sow
pupil, unde. the care of my aunt, who would come
up to Paris; but my stepfather negatived the prop-
osition at once by quite reasonable arguments.
Why should so great a sacrifice of all her habits
be imposed upon the old lady, and what was there
to dread in the rough life of a boarding-school,
which is the best means of forming a boy's char-
acter 2
“And he needs that schooling,” added my step-
father, directing the same cold glance toward me
as on the day when he grasped my arm so roughly.
In short, it was settled that I was to go to school,
but not in Paris.”
“The air is bad,” said my stepfather.
Why am I not in the least obliged to him for
his seeming solicitude for my health 2 It was not
because I foresaw what he had forseen already—
he, the man who wanted to separate me from my
mother for ever—that it would be easier for them
to leave me at school outside the city than at one
nearer home, when they returned 2 What need
has he of these calculations 2 Is it not enough
that he should give utterance to a wish for Ma-
dame Termonde to obey him 2 How I suffer when
I hear her say “thou ’’ to him, just as she used to
say it to my own father. And then I think of the
days when I came home from my classes at the


THE SOAV 47
Lycée Bonaparte, and that dear father helped me
with my lessons. My stepfather brought me to
this school yesterday in the afternoon, and it
was he who presented me to the head master, a
tall thin personage with a bald head, who tapped
me on the cheek and said: -
“Ah, he comes from Bonaparte, the school of
the “Muscadins.’”
That same evening I had the curiosity to refer
to the dictionary for this word “Muscadin,” and
I found the following definition: “A young man
who studies personal adornment.” It is true that
I do not resemble the fellows in tunics among
whom I am to live, for I am handsomely dressed,
according to my mother's taste, and my costume
includes a large white collar and smart English
boots. The other boys have shapeless képis,
coarse blue stockings which fall over their broken
shoes, and their buttons are mostly torn off.
They wear out the last year's outdoor costume in
the house. During the first play-time on my first
day, several of the boys eyed me curiously, and
one of them asked me: “What does your father
do?” I made no answer. What I dread, with
unbearable misery, is that they may speak to me
of it. Yesterday, while my stepfather and I
were coming down to Versailles in the railway


48 THE SOAV
carriage, without exchanging a word, what would
I have given to be able to tell him of this dread,
to entreat him not to throw me among a number
of boys, and leave me to their heedless rudeness
and cruelty, to promise him that I would work
harder and better than before, if I might but
remain at home ! But the look in his blue eyes
is so sharp when they rest on me, it is so hard
for me to say the word “Papa" to him—that
word which I am always saying in my thoughts
to the other; to him who lies, in the sleep that
knows no waking, in the cemetery at Com-
piègne ! And so I addressed no supplication to
M. Termonde, and I allowed myself to be shut
up in the Versailles Lycée without a word of
protest. I preferred to wander about as I do
among strangers, to uttering one complaint to
him. Mamma is to come to-morrow ; she is
going away the next day, and the nearness of
this interview prevents me from feeling the inev-
itable separation too keenly. If she will only
come without my stepfather
She came—and with him. She took her seat
in the parlor, which is decorated with vile por-
traits of scholars who have taken prizes at the
general examinations. My schoolfellows were
also talking to their mothers, but none could


THE SOAV 49
boast a mother so worthy to be loved as mine !
Never had she seemed to me so beautiful, with
her slender and elegant figure, her graceful neck,
her deep eyes, her fine smile. But I could not
say a word to her, because my stepfather,
“Jack,” as she called him, with her pretty affec-
tation of an English accent, was there between
us. Ah! that antipathy which paralyzes all the
loving impulses of the heart, how intensely have
I felt it, then and since I thought I could per-
ceive that my mother was surprised, almost sad-
dened by my coldness when she bade me
farewell; but ought she not to have known that
I would never show my love for her in his pres-
ence 2 She is gone ; she is on her travels, and I
remain here.
Other images arise which recall our schoolroom
in the evenings of that first winter of my im-
prisonment. The metal stove burns red in the
middle of the gas-lit room. A bowl of water is
placed upon the top lest the heat should affect
our heads. All along the walls stretches the line
of our desks, and behind each of us is a little
cupboard in which we keep our books and papers.
Silence reigns, and is rendered more perceptible
by the scratching of pens, the turning over of
leaves, and an occasional suppressed cough. The
4.


50 THA, SOM
master is in his place, behind a desk which is
raised above the others. His name is Rodolphe
Sorbelle, and he is a poet. The other day he let
fall out of his pocket a sheet of paper covered
with writing and erasures, from which we man-
aged to make out the following lines:
Je voudrais étre oiseau des champs,
Avoir un bec,
Chanter avec :
Je voudrais étre oiseau des champs,
Avoir des ailes.
Woler Sur elles.
Mais je ne puis en faire autant,
Car j’ai le bec
Beaucoup trop sec,
Et je suis pion,
'Cré nom de nom!
This prodigious poem gave us, cruel little
wretches that we were, the greatest delight. We
sang the verses perpetually, in the dormitory, out
walking, in the playground, setting the last
words to the classic music of “Les Lampions.”
But the old watch-dog has sharp teeth, and de-
fends himself by “detentions,” so none of us care
to brave him to his face. The lamp hung over
his head shows up his greenish-gray hair, his red
forehead, and his threadbare coat, which once


52 THE SOM
the thoughts that are in me. And my school-
fellows themselves seem to understand that there
is something in my life which does not exist in
theirs; they spare me the torments that are gen-
erally inflicted upon a new boy, but I am not the
friend of any of them, except this same Gervais,
who is my walking companion when we go out.
Gervais is an imaginative lad, and when he is at
home he devours a collection of the Journal pour
Tous. He has found in it a series of romances
called “L’Homme aux Figures de Cire,” “Le
Roi des Gabiers,” “Le Chat du Bord,” and
Thursday after Thursday, when we go out walk-
ing, he relates these stories to me. The tragic
strain of my own fate is the cause of my taking a
grim pleasure in these narratives, in which crime
plays the chief part. Unfortunately I have con-
fided the secret of this questionable amusement
to my good aunt, and the head master has sepa-
rated the improvised “feuilletoniste ’’ from his
public. Gervais and I are forbidden to walk to-
gether. My aunt believed that the excess of
sensitiveness in me, which alarmed her, would
be corrected by this prohibition. Poor woman :
Neither her solicitous tenderness, nor her pious
care and foresight—she comes to Versailles from
Compiègne every Sunday to take me out—nor


THE SOAV 53
my studies—for I redouble my efforts so that my
stepfather should not triumph in my bad marks—
nor my religious enthusiasm—for I have become
the most fervent of us all at the chapel—no,
nothing, nothing appeases the hidden demon
which possesses and devours me. While the
evening studies are going on, and in the interval
between two tasks, I read a letter whose envelope
bears the effigy of King Victor Emmanuel. This
is my food for the week, conveyed in the pages
written by my mother. They give me details of
her travels, which I do not understand very
clearly; but I do understand that she is happy
without me, outside of me—that the thought of
my father and his mysterious death no longer
haunts her; above all, that she loves her new
husband, and I am jealous—miserably, basely
jealous. My imagination, which has its strange
lapses, has also a singular minuteness. I see my
mother in a room in a foreign inn, and spread
out upon the table are the various fittings of her
traveling-bag, silver-mounted, with her cipher in
relief, the Christian name in full, and encircling
it the letter T. Marie T–. Well, had she
not the right to make a new life for herself,
honorably? Why should this mixture of her past
with her present hurt me so much 2 So much,


54 THE SON
that just now, when stretched upon my narrow
iron bed in the dormitory, I could not close my
eyes.
How long those nights seemed to me, when I
lay down oppressed by this thought, and strove in
vain to lose it in the sweet oblivion of sleep ! I
prayed to God for sleep, with all the strength of
my childlike piety. I said mentally twelve times
twelve Paters and Aves—and I did not sleep. I
then tried to “form a chimera; ” for thus I
called a strange faculty with which I knew my-
self to be endowed. When I was quite a little
boy, on an occasion when I was suffering from
toothache, I had shut my eyes, forcibly abstracted
my mind, and compelled it to represent a happy
scene in which I was the chief actor. Thus I
was enabled to overrule my sensations to the
point of becoming insensible to the toothache.
Now, whenever I suffer, I do the same, and the
device is almost always successful. I employ it
in vain when my mother is in question. Instead
of the picture of felicity which I evoke, the other
picture presents itself to me, that of the intimate
life of the being whom in all the world I most
love, with the man whom I most hate. For I
hate him, with an implacable hatred, and without
being able to assign any other motive than that


THE SOAV 55
he has taken the first place in the heart which
was all my own. Ah, me ! I shall hear the slow
hours struck, first from the belfry of a church
hard by, and then by the school-clock—a grave
and sonorous chime, then a treble ringing. I
shall hear old Sorbelle walk through the whole
length of the dormitory, and then go into the
room which he occupies at the far end. How
dull is the spectacle of the two rows of our little
beds, with their brass knobs shining in the dim
light; and how odious it is to be listening to the
snores of the sleepers' At measured intervals
the watchman, an old soldier with a big face and
thick black moustaches, passes. He is wrapped
in a brown cloth cape, and carries a dark lantern.
Can it be that he is not afraid, all alone, at night,
in those long passages, and on the stone stair-
cases, where the wind rushes about with a dismal
noise? How I should hate to be obliged to go
down those stairs, shuddering in that darkness
with the fear of meeting a ghost I try to drive
away this new idea, but in vain, and then I
think. . . . Where is he who killed my father?
Is it with fear, is it with horror that I shudder
at this question ? And I go on thinking. . . .
Does he know that I am here? Panic seizes upon
me, with the idea that the assassin might be capa-


56 THE SOAV
ble of assuming the disguise of a school servant,
for the purpose of killing me also. I commend
my soul to God, and in the midst of these awful
thoughts I fall asleep at length, very late, to be
awakened with a start at half-past five in the
morning, with an aching head, shaken nerves,
and an ailing mind, sick of a disease which is
beyond cure.


VI.
THREE years have passed away since the
autumnal evening on which a hackney-coach had
set down my stepfather and myself in that corner
of one of the gloomy avenues of Old Versailles,
which is made more gloomy by the walls of the
school. I was to have remained at this school for
ten months only—the period of my mother's stay
in Italy. That evening was in the autumn of
1866; we are now in the winter of 1870, and I
have been all this time imprisoned in the Lycée,
“where the air is so good, and I get on so well.”
These are the reasons assigned by my mother for
not taking me back to her home. My school-
fellows pass before me in the twilight of my re-
membrance of that distant time. Rocquain, more
pasty-faced than ever, with his comic-actor-like
red nose, sings café-concert songs, smokes cigar-
ettes in secret places, and collects the photographs
of the actresses in vogue. Gervais, still brown
and surly, has a passion for races, at which he is
always playing, and is reconciled with Leyreloup,
“the hedgehog,” as we call him, whom he has in-
(57)


58 THE SOAV
fected with his dangerous mania. The two are
constantly arranging insect or tortoise steeple-
chases. They have even contrived a betting sys-
tem, and ten of us have joined in it. The game
is played by placing in front of a dictionary
several bits of paper with the name of a horse
written upon each of them. The dictionary is
then opened and shut rapidly, and the bit of
paper which is blown farthest away by the little
breeze thus created, is the winner, and the boys
who have backed it divide the stakes. Parizelle
is bigger than ever; at sixteen he is already
growing a beard, and has been entertained by
some military acquaintances at a certain café,
which he points out to us when we take our
weekly walks. As for myself, I have a new
friend, one Joseph Dediot, who has introduced
me to some of the verses of De Musset. We go
wild over this poet. Dediot's place in the school-
room is by the side of Scelles, the bookseller's
son, whom we call Bel-CEil, because he squints.
Bel-CEil is as lazy as a lobster, and Dediot has
made the oddest bargain with him. Dediot does
all his exercises, and in return for each, Bel-CEil
hands over to him a copy of twenty lines of
“Rolla.” In exchange for I know not how many
versions, themes, and Latin verses, my friend has


THE SOAV 59
at last secured the entire poem, and we spout its
most characteristic lines enthusiastically.
We have become sceptics and misanthropes.
We play at despairing Atheism, just as Parizelle
and Rocquain play at debauchery, Gervais and
others at sport and fashion, politics and love.
Old Sorbelle, having been dismissed from the
Lycée, has just published a pamphlet in which he
figures under the name of Lebros, and the Pro-
vost under that of M. Bifteck. This little book
occupies our attention throughout the whole
winter, and induces us to form a conspiracy which
leads to nothing. Here we are, then, playing at
revolution | What a strange discipline is that of
those infamous schools, where young boys ruin
their years of happy youth by the puerile and
premature imitation of passions from which they
will have to suffer in reality some day, just as
children, who are destined to die in war as men,
play at soldiers, with their flaxen curls and their
ringing laughter | Alas! for me the game was
over too soon.
Nevertheless, this shabby, dull, mean school
was my home, the only place in which I felt my-
self really “at home,” and I loved it. Yes, I loved
that hulks which was also partly barracks and
partly hospital, because there at all events I was


6o THE SOAV
not perpetually confronted with the evidence of
my double misfortune. After all, the influence
of my age made itself felt there, the nervous
strain upon me was relaxed, and I escaped from
the fixed idea of the murderer of my father to be
discovered, and my stepfather to be detested.
My half-holidays were such misery to me that
they would have made me dread the termination
of my school time, only that I knew the same date
would place me in possession of my fortune, en-
abling me to devote myself entirely to the su-
preme aim and purpose of my life. I had sworn
to myself that the mysterious assassin whom
justice had failed to discover should be unearthed
by me, and I derived extraordinary moral strength
from that resolution, which I kept strictly to my-
self, without ever speaking of it. This, however,
did not prevent me from suffering from trifles,
whenever those trifles were signs of my doubly-
orphaned state. How clearly present to me now
are the torments of those sortie days When the
servant who was to take me to my mother's abode
comes to fetch me on those Sunday mornings at
eight, his careless manner makes me feel that I
am no longer the son of the house. This wretch,
this François Niquet, with his shaven chin and
his insolent eye, does not remove his hat when I


7A/A; SOAV 61
come down into the parlor. Sometimes, when the
weather is bad, he presumes to grumble, and,
although the smell of tobacco makes me sick, he
lights his pipe in the railway carriage, and smokes
without asking my leave. I would rather die
than make any observation upon this, because I
had once complained of my stepfather's valet, a
vile fellow whom they made out to be in the
right as against me, and I then and there resolved
that never again would I expose myself to a
similar affront. Besides, I had already suffered
too much, and thus to suffer teaches one to feel
contempt. The train proceeds, and I do not ex-
change a dozen words with the fellow. I know
that I am regarded as proud and unamiable ; but
the same bent of mind which made me sullen
when quite a child, now makes me take a pleasure
in displeasing those whom I dislike. Amid
silence and the reek of coarse tobacco, we reach the
Montparnasse Station, where no carriage ever
awaits me, no matter how bad the weather may
be. We take the Boulevard Latour-Maubourg,
and pass by the long avenues lined with build-
ings, hospitals, and bric-à-brac shops, turn down
by the Church of Saint François Xavier with its
two slender towers, cross the Place des Invalides,
and reach the door of our hotel. I hate the con-


62 THE SOAV
cierge, also a creature of M. Termonde's, and his
broad flat face, in which I read hostility which is
no doubt absolute indifference. But everything
transforms itself into a sign of enmity, to my
mind, from the faces of the servants, even to the
aspect of my own room. M. Termonde has taken
my own dear old room from me ; a large hand-
some room, which used to be flooded with sun-
shine, with a window opening on the garden, and
a door communicating with my mother's apart-
ment. I now occupy a sort of large closet, with a
northern aspect and no view except that of a
wood-stack. When I reach home on those Sun-
day mornings, I have to go straight to this room
and wait there until my mother has risen and can
receive me. No one has taken the trouble to
light a fire ; so I ask for one, and while the ser-
vant is blowing at the logs, I take a chair, and
gaze at the portrait of my father, which is now
banished to my quarters after having figured for
so long upon an easel draped with black, in my
mother's morning-room. The odor of damp
wood in process of kindling is mingled with the
musty flavor of the room, which has been shut
up all the week. I have some bitter moments
to pass there. These mean miseries make me feel
the moral forsakenness of my position more


THE SOAV 63
Reenly, more cruelly. And my mother lives, she
breathes at the distance of a few steps from me;
yes, and she loves me !
Now that I can cast a lurid look back upon my
unhappy youth, I am aware that my own temper
had much to do with the misunderstanding be-
tween my poor mother and myself which has never
ceased to exist. Yes, she loved me, and at the same
time she loved her husband. It was for me to ex-
plain to her the sort of pain she caused me by
uniting and mingling those two affections in her
heart. She would have understood me, she would
have spared me the series of small dumb troubles
that ultimately made any explanation between us
impossible. When at length I saw her on those
“sortie ’ days, at about eleven, just before break-
fast, she expected me to meet her with effusive
delight; how should she know that the presence
of her husband paralyzed me, just as it had done
when we parted before her journey to Italy 2
There was an incomprehensible mystery to her in
that absolute incapacity for revealing my mind,
that stony inertness which overwhelmed me so soon
as we were not alone, she and I–and we were never
alone. She used to come to see me at Versailles
once a week, on Wednesday, and it hardly ever
happened that she came without my stepfather.


64 7 HAE SOAV
I never wrote a letter to her that she did not show
to her husband; indeed, he saw every letter which
she received. How well I knew this habit of hers,
how she would say, “André has written to me,”
and then hand to him the sheet of paper on which
I could not trace one sincere, heartfelt, trustful
line, because of the idea that his eyes were to rest
upon it ! How many notes have I torn up in
which I tried to tell her the story of the troubles
amid which I lived Yes, yes, I ought to have
spoken to her, nevertheless, to have explained
myself a little, confessed my sufferings, my
wild jealousy, my brooding grief, my great need
of having a corner in her thoughts for myself
alone, were it only pity—but I dared not. It
was in my nature to feel the pain that I must
cause her by speaking thus, too strongly, and I
was unable to bear it. All the various trouble of
my heart then was bound up in a timid silence, in
embarrassment in her presence which affected her-
self. Like many women she was unable to under-
stand a disposition different from her own, a man-
ner of feeling opposed to hers. She was happy in
her second marriage, she loved, she was loved. In
M. Termonde she had met a man to whom she had
given her whole self, but she had also given to me
freely, lavishly. I was her son, it seemed so nat-


7A/E SOA” 65
ural to her that he whom she loved should also
love her child. And, in fact, had not M. Termonde
been to me a vigilant and irreproachable pro-
tector 2 Had he not carefully provided for every
detail of my education ? No doubt he had in-
sisted upon my being sent to school as a boarder,
but I had also been of his opinion as to that. He
had chosen masters for me in all branches of in-
struction; I learned fencing, riding, dancing, mu-
sic, foreign languages. He had attended to, and
he continued to attend to, the smallest details,
from the New Year's gift that I was to receive—
it was always very handsome—to the fixing of my
allowance, my “week,” as we called it, which was
paid on each Thursday, at the highest figure per-
mitted by the rules of the Lycée. Never had this
man, who was so imperious by nature, raised his
voice in speaking to me. Never once since his
marriage had he varied from the most perfect po-
liteness toward me ; a woman who was in love
with him would naturally see in this a proof of
exquisite tact and devoted affection. Put my
grievances against my stepfather into words? No,
I could not do it. And so I was silent, and how
was my mother to explain my sullenness, the ab-
sence of any demonstrativeness on my part to-
ward my stepfather otherwise than by my self.
5


66 7 HE SOAV
ishness and want of feeling 2 She did believe
me, in fact, to be a selfish and unfeeling boy, and
I, owing to my unhealthy mood of mind, felt that
when I was in her presence I really became what
she believed me. I shrank into myself like a surly
animal. But why did she not spare methose trials
which completed our alienation from each other?
Why, when we met on those wretched Sundays,
did she not contrive that I should have the five
minutes alone with her that would have enabled
me, not to talk to her—I did not ask so much —but
to embrace her, as I loved her, with all my heart?
I came into the room which she had transformed
into a private sitting room—in every corner of it
I had played at my free pleasure when I, the
spoiled child whose lightest wish was a command,
was the master—and there was M. Termonde in
his morning costume, smoking cigarettes and
reading newspapers. It needed nothing but the
rustle of the sheet in his hand, the tone of his
voice as he bade me good-day, the touch of his
fingers—he merely gave me their tips—and I re-
coiled upon myself. So strong was my antipathy
that I never remember to have eaten with a good
appetite at the same table with him. My wretch-
edness was at its height during those Sunday
breakfasts and dinners. Ah, I hated everything


THE SOAV 67
about him; his blue eyes, almost too far apart,
which were sometimes fixed, and at others rolled .
slightly in their orbits, his high prominent fore-
head, and prematurely gray hair, the refinement
of his features, and the elegance of his manners,
such a contrast with my natural dullness and
lack of ease—yes, I hated all these, and even to
the finely-shaped foot which was set off by his
perfect boots. I think that even now, at this
present hour, I should recognize a coat he had
worn, among a thousand, so living a thing has a
garment of his seemed to me, under the influence
of that aversion. Only too well did I, with my
filial instinct, realize that he, with his slender
graceful figure, his feline movements, his flatter-
ing voice, his native and acquired aristocratic
ways, was the true husband of the lovely, highly-
adorned, almost ideal creature whom I, her son,
resembled as little as my poor father had re-
sembled her. Ah, how bitter was that knowl-
edge
Out of the depths of the silence which I pre-
served on those wretched half-holidays, I followed
with intense interest all the conversations that
took place before me, especially during breakfast
and dinner, in the dining-room, newly furnished,
like all the rest of the house. The hours of those
* * :
tº


68 THE SOAV
meals were no longer the hours of my father's
time. This change, and the new furnishing of
our dwelling, typified the newness of my mother's
life. M. Termonde, who was the son of a stock.
broker, and had been for some time in diplomacy,
had kept up social relations of a kind quite dif-
ferent from our former ones. My mother and he
went frequently into that mixed and cosmopoli-
tan society which was then, and is now, called
“smart.” What had become of the familiar
faces at the dinners, few and far between, which
my father used to give at the Rue Tronchet?
Those dinner parties consisted of three or four
persons, the ladies in high gowns, and the gentle-
men in morning dress. The talk was of politics
and business; a former Minister of King Louis
Philippe's, who had gone back to his practice at
the bar, was the oracle of the little circle; and
the dinner hour was half-past six, instead of
seven, on those days, because the old statesman
always retired to rest at ten o'clock. In the
wealthy but plain bourgeois life of our home, to
go to a theatre was an event, and a ball formed
an epoch. Thus, at least, did things represent
themselves to my childish mind. Now the old
ex-Minister came to the house no more, nor
Mdme. Largey X, the engineer's widow, whom


THE SOAV 69
papa was always quoting to mamma as a model,
and whom my mother laughingly called her
“mother-in-law.” Now, my mother and my step-
father went out almost every evening. They had
horses and several carriages, instead of the coupé
hired by the month with which the wife of the
renowned lawyer had been content. All the
men who came in after dinner, all the women
whom I met at six o'clock in my mother's draw-
ing-room, were young and full of life and spirits,
and their talk was solely of amusements; new
plays, fancy balls, races, and dress. My father,
who was full of the ideas of the Monarchy of
July, like his old political friend, used to speak
severely of the imperial régime; but now, my
mother was invited to the great receptions at the
Tuileries. How could I have ventured to talk to
her about the small miseries of my school life,
which seemed to me so mean when I contrasted
them with her brilliant and opulent existence 2
Formerly, when I was a day pupil at the Bona-
parte, I used to relate to her every trifle concern-
ing the school and my fellow pupils; but now, I
should have been ashamed to bore her with
Rocquain, Gervais, Leyreloup, and the rest. It
seemed to me that she could not possibly be in-
terested in the story of how Joseph Dediot had


7o THE sow
been traitorously deserted by his faithless cousin
Cécile; and yet, how tragic the case was, to my
mind | Notwithstanding that two locks of hair
had been exchanged, a bouquet offered and ac-
cepted, a kiss snatched and returned, the false
girl had married an apothecary at Avranches.
Dediot had even written two poems, inspired by
his misfortune, and one of them, dedicated to me,
began thus:
Sèche ton coeur, André, ne sois jamais aimant.
How could I have talked of all these small things
to a lady who dined with the Duchesse d'Arcole,
whose intimate friends were a Maréchale and two
Marquises, and whose entertainments were de-
scribed in the society journals? My mother was
now the beautiful Madame Termonde, and so
completely had her new name replaced the old,
that I was almost the only person who remem-
bered she was also the widow of M. Cornélis, he
whose tragical death had been related in the very
same newspapers. Had she herself forgotten it?
“Forgetfulness Is this then in all reality the
world's law 2 ” I asked myself, with the indignant
revolt of a young heart, which does not admit the
inevitable compromises of feeling. And I made
answer to myself, No! There was one person


THE SON 71
who remembered as well as I did, one person to
whom my father's death still remained a hideous
nightmare, one person to whom I could tell all
my thoughts and all my grief—my dear, good,
kind aunt. In her case at least all the fond and
and tender things of the past remained un-
changed. When August came, and I went to
Compiègne for a portion of my holidays, I found
everything in its place, both in the house and in
the heart of the dear old maid.
For my sake, I knew it well, she had consented
to keep up her former relations with my mother
and she dined with her three or four times a
year. Dear Aunt Louise She would listen with
the utmost kindness to all my childish com-
plaints, and she always sent me home softened,
almost appeased ; more indulgent towards my
mother, and convinced that I was wrong in my
judgment of M. Termonde.
Nevertheless, I did not tell Aunt Louise any-
thing about my reprisals upon the man whom I
accused of having stolen my mother's heart from
me. I had perceived, very soon, certain signs of
an antipathy toward myself on the part of my
stepfather, similar to that which I entertained
toward him. When I came rather suddenly into
the salon, and he was engaged in a conversation
*
- ***...*


72 TA/F SOAV
either with my mother or one of his friends, my
presence sufficed to cause a slight alteration in
his voice ; a change which, most likely, no one
else would have perceived, but which did not
escape me, for did not my own throat contract,
and my lips quiver with sheer abhorrence 2
I should not have been the sullen and resentful
boy I then was, if I had not planned how to
utilize my strange power of disturbing the man
whom I execrated, in the interest of my enmity.
My system was to force him to feel the acute
sensation which my presence inflicted on him, by
keeping silence, and steadily pursuing him with
my gaze. Great as his self-control was, I never
fixed my eyes upon him from the far end of the
room, but, after a while, he would turn his eyes
toward me. Then his glance avoided mine, and
he would go on talking ; but still he was looking
at me, and presently our eyes would meet, and
his would shift away again. I knew, by a frown
which gathered on his forehead, that he was on
the point of forbidding me to look at him in that
way; but then he would put strong restraint
upon himself, and sometimes he would leave the
I’OOln.
That abstention from any kind of struggle with
me was a fixed resolution on his part, I guessed,


7A/E SOAV 73
because I knew him to be very determined by
nature, and especially incapable of enduring that
any one should brave him. He was fond of re-
lating how, in his youth, when he was attached
to the Embassy at Madrid, he had killed a bull
at an amateur “ring,” on being “dared ” to do it
by a young Spaniard. It must have hurt his
pride severely to permit me the silent insolence
of my eyes; he did allow me to indulge it, how-
ever, and I did not acknowledge that petty
triumph to Aunt Louise. I must set down
everything here, and the truth is I was most un-
happy; I knew myself to be so, and I did not
lesson my trouble in the least in dilating upon it;
on the contrary, I rather exaggerated it so as to
win that tender sympathy which did my sore
heart good.
I once spoke to her of the vow I had taken,
the solemn promise I had made to myself that I
would discover the murderer of my father, and
take vengeance upon him, and she laid her hand
upon my mouth. She was a pious woman, and
she repeated the words of the gospel: “Ven-
geance is mine, saith the Lord.” Then she
added: “We must leave the punishment of the
crime to Him ; His will is hidden from us. Re-
member the divine precept and promise, “Forgive


74 THE sov
and you shall be forgiven.” Never say: “An
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' Ah, no ;
drive this enmity out of your heart, Cornélis;
yes, even this.” And there were tears in her
eyes.


VII.
MY poor aunt She thought me made of
sterner stuff than I really was. There was no
need of her advice to prevent my being consumed
by the desire for vengeance which had been the
fixed star of my early youth, the blood-colored
beacon aflame in my night. Ah! the resolutions
of boyhood, the “ oaths of Hannibal’’ taken to
ourselves, the dream of devoting all our strength
to one single and unchanging aim—life sweeps all
that away, together with our generous illusions,
ardent enthusiasm, and noble hopes. What a
difference there is—what a falling off—between
the boy of fifteen, unhappy indeed, but so bold
and proud in 1870, and the young man of eight
years later, in 1878 ' And to think, only to
think, that but for chance occurrences, impossible
to foresee, I should still be, at this hour, the
young man whose portrait hangs upon the wall
above the table at which I am writing. Of a
surety, the visitors to the Salon of that year
(1878) who looked at this portrait among so many
others, had no suspicion that it represented the
(75)


76 THE SOM,
son of a father who had come to so tragic an end.
And I, when I look at that commonplace image
of an ordinary Parisian, with eyes unlit by any
fire or force of will, complexion paled by senseless
dissipation, hair cut in the fashion of the day,
strictly correct dress and attitude, I am astonished
to think that I could have lived as I actually did
live at that period. Between the misfortunes that
saddened my childhood, and those of quite recent
date which have finally laid waste my life, the
course of my existence was colorless, monotonous,
vulgar, just like that of anybody else. I shall
merely note the stages of it.
In the second half of 1870, the Franco-Prussian
war takes place. The invasion finds me at
Compiègne, where I am passing my holidays with
my aunt. My stepfather and my mother remain
in Paris during the siege. I go on with my
studies under the tuition of an old priest belonging
to the little town, who prepared my father for his
first communion. In the autumn of 1871 I return
to Versailles; in August, 1873, I take my
bachelor's degree, and then I do my one year's
voluntary service in the army at Angers under
the easiest possible conditions. My colonel was
the father of my old schoolfellow, Rocquain. In
1874 I am set free from tutelage by my step-
*---, - . .


THE SOM 77
father's advice. This was the moment at which
my task was to have been begun, the time ap-
pointed with my own soul; yet, four years after-
wards, in 1878, not only was the vengeance that
had been the tragic romance, and, so to speak, the
religion of my childhood, unfulfilled, but I did
not trouble myself about it.
I was cruelly ashamed of my indifference when I
thought about it ; but I am now satisfied that it
was not so much the result of weakness of char-
acter as of causes apart from myself which would
have acted in the same way upon any young man
placed in my situation. From the first, and when
I faced my task of vengeance, an insurmountable
obstacle arose before me. It is equally easy and
sublime to strike an attitude and exclaim : “I
swear that I will never rest until I have punished
the guilty one.” In reality, one never acts except
in detail, and what could I do? I had to proceed
in the same way as justice had proceeded, to re-
open the inquiry which had been pushed to its
extremity without any result.
I began with the Judge of Instruction,” who
had had the carriage of the matter, and who was
* The translator renders literally those terms and
phrases relating to the French criminal law and pro-
cedure which have no analogous expression in
English. -


78 7 HE SOAV
now a Counsellor of the Court. He was a man of
fifty, very quiet and plain in his way, and he
lived in the fle de Paris, on the first floor of an
ancient house, from whose windows he could see
Notre Dame, primitive Paris, and the Seine,
which is as narrow as a canal at that place.
M. Massol, so he was named, was quite willing
to resume with me the analysis of the data which
had been furnished by the Instruction. No doubt
existed either as to the personality of the assassin,
or the hour at which the crime was committed.
My father had been killed between two and three
o'clock in the day, without a struggle, by that
tall, broad-shouldered personage whose extraor-
dinary disguise indicated, according to the magis-
trate, “an amateur.” Excess of complication is
always an imprudence, for it multiplies the
chances of failure. Had the assassin dyed his
skin and worn a wig because my father knew him
by sight? To this M. Massol said “No ; for M.
Cornélis, who was very observant, and who, be-
sides, was on his guard—this is evident from his
last words when he left you—would have recog-
nized him by his voice, his glance, and his atti-
tude. A man cannot change his height and his
figure, although he may change his face.” M.
Massol’s theory of this disguise was that the


7A/E SOAV 79
wearer had adopted it in order to gain time to get
out of France, should the corpse be discovered on
the day of the murder. Supposing that a de-
scription of a man with a very brown complexion
and a black beard had been telegraphed in every
direction, the assassin, having washed off his
paint, laid aside his wig and beard, and put on
other clothes, might have crossed the frontier
without arousing the slightest suspicion. There
was reason to believe that the pretended Rochdale
lived abroad. He had spoken in English at the
hotel, and the people there had taken him for an
American ; it was therefore presumable either that
he was a native of the United States, or that he
habitually resided there. The criminal was, then,
a foreigner, American or English, or perhaps a
Frenchman settled in America. As for the
motive of so complicated a crime, it was difficult
to admit that it could be robbery alone. “And
yet,” observed the Judge of Instruction, “we do
not know what the note-case carried off by the
assassin contained. But,” he added, “ the
hypothesis of robbery seems to me to be utterly
routed by the fact that, while Rochdale stripped
the dead man of his watch, he left a ring, which
was much more valuable, on his finger. From
this I conclude that he took the watch merely as


8o THE SOAV
a precaution to throw the police off the scent. My
supposition is that the man killed M. Cornélis for
revenge.”
Then the former Judge of Instruction gave me
some singular examples of the resentment cher-
ished against medical experts employed in legal
cases, Procureurs of the Republic, and Presidents
of Assize. His theory was, that in the course of
his practice at the bar my father might have ex-
cited resentment of a fierce and implacable kind;
for he had won many suits of importance, and no
doubt had made enemies of those against whom he
employed his great powers. Supposing one of
those persons, being ruined by the result, had
attributed that ruin to my father, there would be
an explanation of all the apparatus of this deadly
vengeance. M. Massol begged me to observe
that the assassin, whether he were a foreigner or
not, was known in Paris. Why, if this were not
so, should the man have so carefully avoided
being seen in the street? He had been traced
out during his first stay in Paris, when he bought
the wig and the beard, and that time he put up
at a small hotel in the Rue d'Aboukir under the
name of Rochdale, and invariably went out in a
cab. “Observe also,” said the Judge, “that he
kept his room on the day before the murder, and


THE SOAV 83
those niceties of feeling on my part, which
rendered the fusion of her present with her past
so repugnant to me, any more clearly on this
point than on any other ? M. Termonde had at
least scrupulously respected the whole of those
papers, from plans of association and prospectuses
to private letters. Among the latter were several
from M. Termonde himself, which bore testimony
to the friendship that had formerly subsisted
between my mother's first husband and her
second. Had I not known this always 2 Why
should I suffer from the knowledge? And still
there was nothing, no indication whatever to put
me on the track of a suspicion.
I evoked the image of my father as he lived,
just as I had seen him for the last time; I heard
him replying to M. Termonde's question in the
dining-room of the Rue Tronchet, and speaking
of the man who awaited him to kill him : “A
singular man whom I shall not be sorry to observe
more closely.” And then he had gone out and
was walking toward his death while I was playing
in the little salon, and my mother was talking to
the friend who was one day to be her master and
mine. What a happy home-picture, while in
that hotel room Ah! was I never to find
the key of the terrible enigma 2 Where was I to


84 THE SOAV
go? What was I to do? At what door was I to
knock 2
At the same time that a sense of the responsi-
bility of my task disheartened me, the novel
facilities of my new way of life contributed to
relax the tension of my will. During my school
days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of
my stepfather, the disappointment of my re-
pressed affections, the meanness and penury of
my surroundings, many grievous influences, had
maintained the restless ardor of my feelings; but
this also had undergone a change. No doubt I
still continued to love my mother deeply and
painfully, but I now no longer asked her for
what I knew she would not give me, my un-
shared place, a separate shrine in her heart. I
accepted her nature instead of rebelling against
it. Neither had I ceased to regard my stepfather
with morose antipathy; but I no longer hated
him with the old vehemence. His conduct to me
after I had left school was irreproachable. Just
as in my childhood, he had made it a point of
honor never to raise his voice in speaking to me, .
so he now seemed to pique himself upon an entire
absence of interference in my life as a young man.
When, having passed my baccalaureate, I an-
nounced that I did not wish to adopt any profes.
**


THE SOAV 85
sion, but withou, a reason—the true one was my
resolution to devote myself entirely to the fulfill-
ment of my task of justice—he had not a word
to say against that strange decision; nay, more,
he brought my mother to consent to it. When
my fortune was handed over to me, I found that
my mother, who had acted as my guardian, and
my stepfather, her co-trustee, had agreed not to
touch my funds during the whole period of my
education; the interest had been re-invested, and
I came into possession, not of 750,000 frances,
but of more than a million. Painful as I felt the
obligation of gratitude toward the man whom I
had for years regarded as my enemy, I was bound
to acknowledge that he had acted an honorable
part toward me. I was well aware that no real
contradiction existed between these high-minded
actions and the harshness with which he had im-
prisoned me at school, and, so to speak, relegated
me to exile. Provided that I renounced all at-
tempts to form a third between him and his wife,
he would have no relations with me but those of
perfect courtesy; but I must not be in my
mother's house. His will was to reign entirely
alone over the heart and life of the woman who
bore his name. How could I have contended
with him? Why, too, should I have blamed him,


THE SOM 87
mental and moral strength. With respect to that
task of mine, my task as an avenger, I was inca-
pable of immediate action—what and whom was I
to attack 2 And so I availed myself of all the
opportunies that presented themselves of disguis-
ing my inaction by movement, and soon the days
began to hurry on, and press one upon the other,
amid those innumerable amusements of which the
idle rich made a code of duties to be performed.
What with the morning ride in the Bois, after-
noon calls, dinner parties, parties to the theatre
and after midnight, play at the club, or the pur-
suit of pleasure elsewhere—how was I to find
leisure for the carrying out of a project 2 I had
horses, intrigues, an absurd duel in which I ac-
quitted myself well, because, as I believe, the
tragic ideas that were always at the bottom of my
life favored me. A woman of forty persuaded
me that I was her first love, and I became her
lover; then I persuaded myself that I was in love
with a Russian great lady, who was living in Paris.
The latter was—indeed she still is—one of those
incomparable actresses in society, who, in order to
surround themselves with a sort of court, com-
posed of admirers who are more or less rewarded,
employ all the allurements of luxury, wit, and
beauty; but who have not a particle of either im-


88 THE SOM
agination or heart, although they fascinate by a
display of the most refined fancies and the most
vivid emotions. I led the life of a slave to the
caprices of this soulless coquette for nearly six
months, and learned that women of “the
world” and women of “the half-world" are very
much alike in point of worth. The former are in-
tolerable on account of their lies, their assump-
tion, and their vanity; the others are equally odi-
ous by reason of their vulgarity, their stupidity,
and their sordid love of lucre. I forgot all my
absurd relations with women of both orders in the
excitement of play, and yet I was well aware of
the meanness of that diversion, which only ceases
to be insipid when it becomes odious, because it is
a clever calculation upon money to be gained with-
out working for it. There was in me somthing at
once wildly dissipated and yet disgusted, which
drove me to excess, and at the same time inspired
me with bitter self-contempt. In the innermost
recesses of my being the memory of my father
dwelt, and poisoned my thoughts at their source.
An impression of dark fatalism invaded my sick
mind; it was so strange that I should live as I was
living, nevertheless, I did live thus, and the visi-
ble “I” had but little likeness to the real. Upon
me, then, poor creature that I was, as upon the


THE SOAV 80
whole universe, a fate rested. “Let it drive me,”
I said, and yielded myself up to it. I went to
sleep, pondering upon ideas of the most sombre
philosophy, and I awoke to resume an existence
without worth or dignity, in which I was losing
not only my power of carrying out my design of
reparation toward the phantom which haunted my
dreams, but all self-esteem, and all conscience.
Who could have helped me reascend this fatal
stream 2 My mother? She saw nothing but the
fashionable exterior of my life, and she congratu-
lated herself that I had “ceased to be a savage.”
My stepfather? But he had been, voluntarily or
not, favorable to my disorderly life. Had he not
made me master of my fortune at the most danger-
ous age? Had he not procured me admission, at
the earliest moment, to the clubs to which he be-
longed, and in every way facilitated my entrance
into society? My aunt.” Ah, yes, my aunt was
grieved by my mode of life; and yet, was she not
glad that at any rate I had forgotten the dark res-
olution of hate that had always frightened her?
And, besides, I hardly ever saw her now. My
visits to Compiègne were few, for I was at the age
when one always finds time for one's pleasures, but
never has any for one's nearest duties. If, indeed,
there was a voice that was constantly lifted up


90 THE SOAV
against the waste of my life in vulgar pleasures,
it was that of the dead, who slept in the day, un-
avenged; that voice rose, rose, rose unceasingly,
from the depths of all my musings, but I had ac-
customed myself to pay it no heed, to make it no
answer. Was it my fault that everything, from
the most important to the smallest circumstance,
conspired to paralyze my will? And so I existed,
in a sort of torpor which was not dispelled even
by the hurly-burly of my mock passions and my
mock pleasures. -
The falling of a thunderbolt awoke me from this
craven slumber of the will. My aunt Louise was
seized with paralysis, toward the end of that sad
year 1878, in the month of December. I had come
in at night, or rather in the morning, having won
a large sum at play. Several letters and also a
telegram awaited me. I tore open the blue enve-
lope, while I hummed the air of a fashionable song,
with a cigarette between my lips, untroubled by
an idea that I was about to be apprised of an
event which would become, after my father's
death and my mother's second marriage, the third
great date in my life. The telegram was signed
by Julie, my former nurse, and it told me that my
aunt had been taken ill quite suddenly, also that
I must come at once, although there was a hope


THE SOAV 91
of her recovery. This bad news was the more terri-
ble to me because I had received a letter from my
aunt just a week previously, and in it the dear old
lady complained as usual, that I did not come to
see her. My answer to her letter was lying half-
written upon my writing-table. I had not finished
it; God knows for what futile reason. It needs
the advent of that dread visitant, Death, to make
us understand that we ought to make good haste
and love well those whom we do love, if we would
not have them pass away from us for ever, before
we have loved them enough. Bitter remorse, in
that I had not proved to her sufficiently how dear
she was to me, increased my anxiety about my
aunt's state. It was two o'clock a. m., the first
train for Compiègne did not start until six ; in the
interval she might die. Those were very long
hours of waiting, which I killed by turning over
in my mind all my shortcomings toward my
father's only sister, my sole kinswoman. The
possibility of an irrevocable parting made me re-
gard myself as utterly ungratefull My mental
pain grew keener when I was in the train speed-
ing through the cold dawn of a winter's day, along
the road I knew so well. As I recognized each
familiar feature of the way, I became once more
the schoolboy whose heart was full of unuttered


92 THE SOAV
tenderness, and whose brain was laden with the
weight of a terrible mission. My thoughts out-
stripped the engine, moving too slowly, to my im-
patient fancy, which summoned up that beloved
face, so frank and so simple, the mouth with its
thickish lips and its perfect kindliness, the eyes
out of which goodness looked, with their wrinkled,
tear-worn lids, the flat bands of grizzled hair. In
what state should I find her? Perhaps, if on that
night of repentance, wretchedness, and mental
disturbance, my nerves had not been strained to
the utmost—yes, perhaps I should not have expe-
rienced those wild impulses when by the side of
my aunt's deathbed, which rendered me capable
of disobeying the dying woman. But how can I
regret my disobedience, since it was the one thing
that set me on the track of the truth? No, I do
not regret anything, I am better pleased to have
done what I have done.


VIII.
My good old Julie was waiting for me at the
station. Her eyes had failed her of late, for she
was seventy years old, nevertheless she recog-
nized me as I stepped out of the train, and began
to talk to me in her usual interminable fashion so
soon as we were seated in the hired coupé, which
my aunt had sent to meet me, whenever I came to
Compiègne, from the days of my earliest child-
hood. How well I knew the heavy old vehicle,
with its worn cushions of yellow leather, and the
driver, who had been in the service of the livery
stable keeper as long as I could remember. He
was a little man with a merry roguish face, and
eyes twinkling with fun; but he tried to give a
melancholy tone to his salutation that morning.
“It took her yesterday,” said Julie, while the
vehicle rumbled heavily through the streets, “but
you see it had to happen. Our poor demoiselle
had been changing for weeks past. She was so
trustful, so gentle, so just ; she scolded, she fer.
reted about, she suspected—there, then, her head
was all astray. She talked of nothing but
(93)


24 THE SOAV
92
thieves and assassins; she thought everybody
wanted to do her some harm, the tradespeople,
Jean, Mariette, myself—yes, I too. She went
into the cellar every day to count the bottles of
wine, and wrote the number down on a paper.
The next day she found the same number, and
she would maintain the paper was not the same,
she disowned her own handwriting. I wanted to
tell you this the last time you came here, but I
did not venture to say anything; I was afraid it
would worry you, and then I thought these were
only freaks, that she was a little crazy, and it
would pass off. Well, then, I came down yester-
day to keep her company at her dinner, as she
always liked me to do, because, you know, she
was fond of me in reality, whether she was ill or
well. I could not find her. Mariette, Jean, and
I searched everywhere, and at last Jean be-
thought him of letting the dog loose ; the animal
brought us straight to the wood-stack, and there
we found her lying at full length upon the
ground. No doubt she had gone to the stack to
count the logs. We lifted her up, our poor dear
demoiselle ! Her mouth was crooked, and one
side of her could not move. She began to talk.
Then we thought she was mad, for she said sense-
less words which we could not understand; but


THE SOAV 95
the doctor assures us that she is perfectly clear in
her head, only that she utters one word when she
means another. She gets angry if we do not
obey her on the instant. Last night when I was
sitting up with her she asked for some pins, I
brought them and she was angry. Would you
believe that it was the time of night she wanted
to know? At length, by dint of questioning her,
and by her yeses and noes, which she expresses
with her sound hand, I have come to make out
her meaning. If you only knew how troubled
she was all night about you ; I saw it, and when
I uttered your name her eyes brightened. She
repeats words, you would think she raves; she
calls for you. Now look here, M. André, it was
the ideas she had about your poor father that
brought on her illness. All these last weeks she
talked of nothing else. She would say: “If only
they do not kill André also. As for me, I am
old, but he is so young, so good, so gentle.’ And
she cried—yes, she cried incessantly. “Who is it
that you think wants to harm M. André 2' I
asked her. Then she turned away from me with
a look of distrust that cut me to the heart, al-
though I knew that her head was astray. The
doctor says that she believes herself persecuted,


96 THE SOAV
and that it is a mania; he also says that she may
recover, but will never have her speech again.”
I listened to Julie's talk in silence; I made no
answer. I was not surprised that my aunt
Louise had begun to be attacked by a mental
malady, the trials of her life sufficiently explained
this, and I could also account for several singu-
larities that I had observed in her attitude toward
me of late. She had surprised me much by ask-
ing me to bring back a book of my father's which
I had never thought of taking away. “Return it
to me,” she said, insisting upon it so strongly,
that I instituted a search for the book, and at last
unearthed it from the bottom of a cupboard
where it had been placed, as if on purpose, under
a heap of other books. Julie's prolix narrative
only enlightened me as to the sad cause of what I
had taken for the oddity of a fidgety and lonely
old maid. On the other hand I could not take
the ideas of my aunt upon my father's death so
philosophically as Julie accepted them. What
were those ideas? Many a time, in the course of
conversation with her, I had vaguely felt that she
was not opening her heart quite freely to me.
Her determined opposition to my plans of a per-
sonal inquiry might proceed from her piety,
which would naturally cause her to disapprove of


THE SOAV 97
any thought 9r project of vengeance, but was
there nothing else, nothing besides that piety in
question ? Her strange solicitude for my personal
safety, which even led her to entreat me not to
go out unarmed in the evening, or get into an
empty compartment in a train, with other coun-
sels of the same kind, was no doubt caused by
morbid excitement; still her constant and dis-
tressing dread might possibly rest upon a less
vague foundation than I imagined. I also re-
called, with a certain apprehension, that so soon
as she ceased to be able completely to control her
mind these strange fears took stronger possession
of her than before. “What l” said I to myself,
“am I becoming like her, that I let such things
occur to me? Are not these fixed ideas quite
natural in a person whose brain is racked by the
mania of persecution, and who has lost a beloved
brother under circumstances equally mysterious
and tragical ?”
Thus reasoning with myself, almost in spite of
myself, and listening to Julie, I arrived at my
aunt's house. A gloomy place it looked on that
bitter cold morning, sunk in the grimmest kind
of silence, that of the country in winter. The
dog, a big black-and-white Newfoundland, whom
I had named Don Juan, whereat my aunt had
7


98 THE SOAV
been scandalized, jumped upon me when I got
out of the old coupé ; but I pushed him away
almost roughly, so sore was my heart at the
thought of what I was about to see in my aunt's
room, whither I proceeded at once.
When I entered, the maid-servant, who was
seated at the bed's foot, stopped me with a
gesture at the threshold ; my aunt was sleeping.
I stole softly over the carpet to an easy-chair
beside the fire, and looked at the invalid from
that distance. She lay, with her face turned
toward the wall, in the middle of the old bed
with four carved posts, which had belonged to my
grandmother. The curtains, of thick red stuff
brocaded with black velvet, half hid her from my
sight. I watched her sleeping; now listening to
her short breathing, and again looking about the
room, which was as familiar to me as the salon
below stairs, where I had written my letter of
congratulation to my stepfather on his marriage.
Those red curtains were of an old-fashioned
shade, which harmonized with the antiquated
shape of the furniture, the faded paper of the
screen before the window, the white ground of the
carpet, the discolored reps with which the chairs
were covered ; in short, with all the waifs from
the wreck of our family life, that had been


7A/A2 SOAV 99
piously preserved by the dear old maid. She was
so exact and orderly ; her black-mittened hands
were so skilful in pouncing upon any dust over-
looked by Jean, who combined the functions of
gardener and house-servant, that these old worn
things, owing to the deep shining brown of the
bedstead, the chairs, and the brass-handled chest
of drawers, lent a homely aspect to the room such
as the primitive painters loved to give to their
pictures of the Nativity. The contrast between
my apartment—the typical fashionable young
man's rooms—and this peaceful retreat was strik-
ing indeed. I had passed from the one to the
other too suddenly not to feel that contrast, and
also the mute reproach that was conveyed to me
by the sick room, with its atmosphere tainted by
a medicinal odor instead of the fresh scent of
lavender which I had always recognized there.
How bitterly I reproached myself in that half
hour, during which I listened to her breathing as
she slept, and meditated upon her lonely life.
What resolutions I formed ! I would come here
for long weeks together, when she should be
better—for I would not admit that she was in
danger of death—and I eagerly awaited the
moment of her awakening, to beg her forgive-
ness, to tell her how much I loved her. All of a
2353.23A


IOO THE SOAV
sudden she heaved a deep sigh, and I saw her
raise the free arm and move it up and down
several times with a gesture that had something
of despair in it.
“She is awake,” said Julie, who had taken the
maid's place at the foot of the bed. I approached
my aunt and called her by her name. I then
clearly saw her poor face distorted by paralysis.
She recognized me, and as I bent down to kiss
her, she stroked my cheek with her sound hand.
This caress, which was habitual with her, she
repeated slowly several times. I placed her, with
Julie's assistance, on her back, so that she could
see me distinctly ; she looked at me for a long
time, and two heavy tears fell from the eyes in
which I read boundless tenderness, supreme
anguish, and inexpressible pity. I answered
them by my own tears, which she dried with the
back of her hand ; then she strove to speak to me,
but could only pronounce an incoherent sentence
that struck me to the heart. She saw, by the ex-
pression of my face, that I had not understood her,
and she made a desperate effort to find words in
which to render the thought evidently precise and
lucid in her mind. Once more she uttered an un-
intelligible phrase, and began again to make the
feeble gesture of despairing helplessness which had


7THE SOAV IOI
so shocked me at her waking. She appeared, how-
ever, to take courage when I put the question to
her : “What do you want of me, dear aunt’ ” She
made a sign that Julie was to leave the room, and
no sooner were we alone than her face changed.
With my help she was able to slip her hand
under her pillow, and withdraw her bunch of
keys; then separating one key from the others
she imitated the opening of a lock. I imme-
diately remembered her groundless fears of being
robbed, and asked her whether she wanted the
box to which that key belonged. It was a small
key of a kind that is specially made for safety
locks. I saw that I had guessed aright; she was
able to get out the word “yes,” and her eyes
brightened.
“But where is this box2 " I asked. Once more
she replied by a sentence of which I could make
nothing; and, seeing that she was relapsing into a
state of agitation, with the former heart-rending
movement, I begged her to allow me to question
her and to answer by gestures only. After some
minutes, I succeeded in discovering that the box
in question was locked up in one of the two large
cupboards below stairs, and that the key of the
cupboard was on the ring with the others. I went
down-stairs, leaving her alone, as she had desired


IO2 THE SOAV
me by signs to do. I had no difficulty in finding
the casket to which the little key adapted itself;
although it was carefully placed behind a bonnet-
box and a case of silver forks. The casket was of
sweet-scented wood, and the initials J. C. were in-
laid upon the lid in gold and platinum. J. C.,
Justin Cornélis—so, it had belonged to my father.
I tried the key in the lock, to make quite sure
that I was not mistaken. I then raised the lid,
and glanced at the contents almost mechanically,
supposing that I was about to find a roll of busi-
ness papers, probably shares, a few trinket-cases,
and rouleaux of napoleons, a small treasure in
fact, hidden away from motives of fear. Instead
of this, I beheld several small packets carefully
wrapped in paper, each being endorsed with the
words, “Justin's Letters,” and the year in which
they were written. My aunt had preserved these
letters with the same pious care that had kept her
from allowing anything whatever belonging to
him in whom the deepest affection of her life had
centred, to be lost, parted with, or injured. But
why had she never spoken to me of this treasure,
which was more precious to me than to any one
else in the world 2 I asked myself that question
as I closed the box; then I reflected that no
doubt she desired to retain the letters to the last


THE SOAV IO3
hour of her life; and, satisfied with this expla-
nation, I went up-stairs again. From the door-
way my eyes met hers, and I could not mistake
their look of impatience and intense anxiety. I
placed the little coffer on her bed and she in.
stantly opened it, took out a packet of letters,
then another, finally kept only one out, replaced
those she had removed at first, locked the box,
and signed to me to place it on the chest of
drawers. While I was clearing away the things
on the top of the drawers, to make a clear space
for the box, I caught sight, in the glass opposite
to me, of the sick woman. By a great effort she
had turned herself partly on her side, and she was
trying to throw the packet of letters which she
had retained into the fireplace; it was on the
right of her bed, and only about a yard away from
the foot. But she could hardly raise herself at
all, the movement of her hand was too weak, and
the little parcel fell on the floor. I hastened to
her, to replace her head on the pillows and her
body in the middle of the bed, and then, with her
powerless arm she again began to make that ter-
rible gesture of despair, clutching the sheet with
her thin fingers, while tears streamed from her
poor eyes.
Ah! how bitterly ashamed I am of what I am


IO4 7 HE SON
going to write in this place I will write it,
however, for I have sworn to myself that I will
be true, even to the avowal of that fault, even to
the avowal of a worse still. I had no difficulty in
understanding what was passing in my aunt's
mind; the little packet—it had fallen on the
carpet close to the fender—evidently contained
letters which she wished to destroy, so that I
should not read them. She might have burned
them, dreading as she did their fatal influence
upon me, long since ; yet I understood why she
had shrunk from doing this, year after year, I,
who knew with what idolatry she worshipped the
smallest objects that had belonged to my father.
Had I not seen her put away the blotting-book
which he used when he came to Compiègne, with
the paper and envelopes that were in it at his last
visit * Yes, she had gone on waiting, still wait-
ing, before she could bring herself to part for ever
with those dear and dangerous letters, and then
her sudden illness came, and with it the terrible
thought that these papers would come into my
possession. I could also take into account that
the unreasonable distrust which she had yielded
to of late had prevented her from asking Jean or
Julie for the little coffer. This was the secret—
I understood it on the instant—of the poor thing's


7A/A: SOAV to 5
impatience for my arrival, the secret also of the
trouble I had witnessed. And now her strength
had betrayed her. She had vainly endeavored to
throw the letters into the fire, that fire which she
could hear crackling, without being able to raise
her head so as to see the flame. All these notions
which presented themselves suddenly to my
thoughts took form afterwards; at the moment
they melted into pity for the suffering of the help-
less creature before me.
“Do not disturb yourself, dear aunt,” said I,
as I drew the coverlet up to her shoulders, “I
am going to burn those letters.”
She raised her eyes, full of eager supplication,
I closed the lids with my lips and stooped to pick
up the little packet. On the paper in which it
was folded, I distinctly read this date: “1864–
Justin's letters.” 1864! that was the last year of
my father's life. I know it, I feel it, that which
I did was infamous; the last wishes of the dying
are sacred. I ought not, no, I ought not to have
deceived her who was on the point of leaving me
for ever. I heard her breathing quicken at that
very moment. Then came a whirlwind of
thought too strong for me. If my aunt Louise
was so wildly, passionately eager that those
letters should be burned, it was because they


106 THE SOAV
could put me on the right track of vengeance.
Letters written in the last year of my father's
life, and she had never spoken of them to me! I
did not reason, I did not hesitate, in a lightning-
flash I perceived the possibility of learning—
what? I knew not ; but—of learning. Instead
of throwing the packet of letters into the fire, I
flung it to one side, under a chair, returned to the
bedside and told her in a voice which I en-
deavored to keep steady and calm, that her di-
rections had been obeyed, that the letters were
burning. She took my hand and kissed it. Oh,
what a stab that gentle caress inflicted upon me!
I knelt down by her bedside, and hid my head in
the sheets, so that her eyes should not meet mine.
Alas! it was not for long that I had to dread her
glance. At ten she fell asleep, but at noon her
restlessness recurred. At two the priest came,
and administered the last sacraments to her. She
had a second stroke toward evening, never re-
covered consciousness, and died in the night.
Will you pardon me that falsehood which I
told you in your last hours, O my beloved dead?
Your desire that I should never read those fatal
letters, which have begun to shed so terrible a
light upon the past, arose from your solicitude
to spare me the suspicions that had tortured your-


THE SOAV to?
self. On your death-bed your sole thought was
for my happiness. Will you forgive me for hav-
ing frustrated that foresight of the dying? I
must speak to you, although I know not whether
you can see me this day, or hear me, or even feel
the emotion which goes out to you, beloved one,
from my inmost soul. But, I am ashamed of hav-
ing lied to you, when you thought only of being
good to me, so good, so good that no human
creature was ever better to another; and I am
forced to tell you this. You, at least, I have
never doubted; there is only one touch of bitter-
ness in my thoughts of you; it is that I did not
cherish you sufficiently while you were here with
me, that I betrayed you in the matter of the last
earthly desire of your pure soul.
I see you now, and those eyes which revealed
your stainless but sorely wounded heart. You
come to me, and you pardon me; your hand
strokes my cheek with that sad, sad caress which
you gave me before you went away into the
darkness, where hands may no more be clasped
or tears mingled. If death had not come to you
too quickly, if I had obeyed your last desire,
you would have carried the secret of your most
painful doubts to the grave. You do not blame
me now for having wanted to know? You no


to8 THE SOAV
longer blame me for having suffered? A destiny
exists, and weighs upon us, which requires that
light shall be cast upon the darkness of that
crime, that justice shall resume its rights, and the
avenger come. By what road 2 That power
knows, and uses strange weapons for its task of
reparation. It was decreed, dear and pious
sister of my murdered father, that your faithful
cherishing of his dear memory should at last
arouse my slumbering will. Reproach me not, O
tender, unquiet spirit, with the torments which I
have inflicted upon myself, with the tragic pur-
pose to which I have sacrificed my youth. Rest,
I say, rest May peace descend upon the grave
in which you sleep beside my father, in the ceme-
tery at Compiègne, where I too shall find repose
one day. And to think that to-morrow might be
that day !


IX.
My aunt died at nine o'clock in the evening. I
closed her eyes, and sat by her side until eleven,
when Julie came to me and persuaded me to go
down-stairs and eat something. I had taken
nothing but a cup of black coffee at noon. What
a mournful meal was that in the dining-room,
with its walls adorned with old china plates,
where I had so often sat opposite to my dear aunt'
A lamp stood on the table and threw a light upon
the table-cloth just in front of me, but did not dis-
pel the shadows in the room, which was warmed
by a big earthenware stove, all cracked by the
heat. I listened to the noise of this stove, and
it brought back the evenings in my childhood,
when I used to roast chestnuts in the ashes of
just such a fire, after I had split them, lest they
should burst. I looked at Julie, who insisted on
waiting upon me herself, and found her drying
the big tears that rolled down her wrinkled
cheeks with the corner of her blue apron. I
have passed hours that were more cruel, but
have never known any more poignant; and I
(IO9)


I IO THE SOAV
may do myself the justice to record that grief
absorbed every other feeling in me at first. Dur-
ing the whole of that dismal night I never for
an instant thought of opening the packet of let-
ters which I had obtained by so shameful a
falsehood. I had forgotten its existence, although
I had taken care to pick it up and take it to
my own room. Where was now my curosity to
learn the secrets of those letters? I knew that
I had just lost for ever the only being who had
loved me entirely, and that knowledge crushed
me. I wished to keep the watch by the side of
the dead for part of the night, and I could not
turn my gaze from that motionless face which had
looked upon me for so many years with absolute
and unbounded tenderness, but now lay before me
with rigid features, closed lips, shut eyelids, and
wearing an expression of profound sorrow such as
I have never seen upon any other dead face. All
the melancholy thoughts which had distilled their
slow poison into her heart while she lived, were
revealed by that countenance now restored to its
truth. Ah! that expression of infinite sadness
ought to have driven me on the instant to seek for
its mysterious cause in the letters which had occu-
pied her mind to the very brink of the grave, but
how could I have had strength to reason while


7THE SOAV III
gazing on that mournful face 2 I could only feel
that the lips which had never spoken any words
but those of tenderness to me would utter them no
more, that the hands which had caressed me so
tenderly would clasp mine no more for ever. The
nun who was watching the dead repeated the ap-
pointed prayers, and I found myself uttering the
old forms in which I no longer believed. As I re-
cited the Paternoster and the Ave, I thought of
all the prayers which she, who lay at rest before -
me, had put up to God for my peace and welfare.
At three o'clock in the morning Julie came in
to take my place, and I retired to my room, which
was on the same floor as my aunt's. A box-room
divided the two. I threw myself on my bed, worn
out with fatigue, and nature triumphed over my
grief. I fell into that heavy sleep which follows
the expenditure of nerve power, and from which
one awakes able to bear life again and to carry the
load that seemed unendurable. When I awoke it
was day, and the wintry sky was dull and dark
like that of yesterday, but it also wore a threat-
ening aspect, from the great masses of black cloud
that covered it. I went to the window and looked
out for a long time at the gloomy landscape closed
in by the edge of the forest. I note these small
details in order that I may more faithfully recall


1 12 THE SOAV
my exact impression at the time. In turning
away from the window and going toward the fire
which the maid had just lighted, my eye fell upon
the packet of letters stolen from my aunt. Yes,
stolen—'tis the word. It was in the place where
I had put it last night, on the mantel-shelf, with
my purse, rings, and cigar-case. I took up the
little parcel with a beating heart. I had only to
stretch out my hand and those papers would fall
into the flames and my aunt's dying wish be ac-
complished. I sank into an easy-chair and watched
the yellow flame gaining on the logs, while I
weighed the packet in my hand. I thought there
must be a good many letters in it. I suffered from
the physical uneasiness of indecision. I am not
trying to justify this second failure of my loyalty
to my dear aunt, I am trying to understand it.
Those letters were not mine, I never ought to
have appropriated them. I ought now to destroy
them unopened; all the more that the excitement
of the first moment, the sudden rush of ideas
which had prevented me from obeying the agon-
ized supplication of my poor aunt, had subsided.
I asked myself once more what was the cause of
her misery, while I gazed at the inscription upon
the cover, in my aunt's hand: “Justin's Letters,
1864.” The very room which I occupied was an


7A/E SOAV II.3
evil counsellor to me in this strife between an in-
disputable duty and my ardent desire to know ;
for it had formerly been my father's room, and the
furniture had not been changed since his time.
The color of the hangings was faded, that was all.
He had warmed himself by a fire which burned
upon that self-same hearth, and he had used the
same low, wide chair in which I now sat, thinking
my sombre thoughts. He had slept in the bed
from which I had just risen, he had written at the
table on which I rested my arms. No, that room
deprived me of free will to act, it made my father
too living. It was as though the phantom of the
murdered man had come out of his grave to entreat
me to keep the oft-sworn vow of vengeance. Had
these letters offered me no more than one single
chance, one against a thousand, of obtaining one
single indication of the secrets of my father's pri-
vate life, I could not have hesitated. With such
sacrilegious reasoning as this did I dispel the last
scruples of pious respect; but I had no need of
arguments for yielding to the desire which in-
creased with every moment. º
I had there before me those letters, the last his
hand had traced ; those letters which would lay
bare to me the recesses of his life, and I was not
to read them ' What an absurdity Enough of
8


II.4 7 HE SON
such childish hesitation. I tore off the cover
which hid the papers; the yellow sheets with
their faded characters shook in my hands. I
recognized the compact, square, clear writing,
with spaces between the words. The dates had
been omitted by my father in several instances,
and then my aunt had repaired the omission by
writing in the day of the month herself. My
poor aunt' this pious carefulness was a fresh
testimony to her constant tenderness; and yet,
in my wild excitement I no longer thought of
her who lay dead within a few yards of me.
Presently Julie came to consult me upon all
the material details which accompany death; but
I told her I was too much overwhelmed, that she
must do as she thought fit, and leave me quite
alone for the whole of the morning. Then I
plunged so deeply into the reading of the letters,
that I forgot the hour, the events taking place
around me, forgot to dress myself, to eat, even to
go and look upon her whom I had lost while yet
I could behold her face. Traitor and ingrate
that I was . I had devoured only a few lines
before I understood only too well why she had
been desirous to prevent me from drinking the
poison which entered with each sentence into my
heart, as it had entered into hers, Terrible, ter.


7THE SOAV II 5
rible letters' Now it was as though the phantom
had spoken, and a hidden drama of which I had
never dreamed unfolded itself before me. -
I was quite a child when the thousand little
scenes which this correspondence recorded in
detail took place. I was too young then to solve
the enigma of the situation; and, since, the only
person who could have initiated me into that
dark history was she who had concealed the
existence of the too-eloquent papers from me all
her life long, and on her deathbed had been more
anxious for their destruction than for her eternal
salvation—she, who had no doubt accused herself
of having deferred the burning of them from day
to day as of a crime. When at last she had
brought herself to do this, it was too late.
The first letter, written in January, 1864,
began with thanks to my aunt for her New
Year's gift to me—a fortress with tin soldiers—
with which I was delighted, said the letter,
because the cavalry were in two pieces, the man
detaching himself from his horse. Then, sud-
denly, the commonplace sentences changed into
utterances of mornful tenderness. An anxious
mind, a heart longing for affection, and discontent
with the existing state of things, might be dis-
cerned in the tone of regret with which the


I 16 7 HE SOAV
brother dwelt upon his childhood, and the days
when his own and his sister's life were passed to-
gether. There was a repressed repining in that
first letter that immediately astonished and im-
pressed me, for I had always believed my father
and mother to have been perfectly happy with
each other. Alas! that repining did but grow
and also take definite form as I read on. My
father wrote to his sister every Sunday, even
when he had seen her in the course of the week.
As it frequently happens in cases of regular and
constant correspondence, the smallest events were
recorded in minute detail, so that all our former
daily life was resuscitated in my thoughts as I
perused the lines, but accompanied by a com-
mentary of melancholy which revealed irrepar-
able division between those whom I had believed
to be so closely united. Again I saw my father
in his dressing-gown, as he greeted me in the
morning at seven o’clock, on coming out of his
room to breakfast with me before I started for
school at eight. He would go over my lessons
with me briefly, and then we would seat ourselves
at the table (without a tablecloth) in the dining-
room, and Julie would bring us two cups of
chocolate, deliciously sweetened to my childish
taste, My mother rose much later, and, after


THE SOAV 117
my school days, my father occupied a separate
room in order to avoid waking her so early. How
I enjoyed that morning meal, during which I
prattled at my ease, talking of my lessons, my
exercises, and my school-mates | What a delight-
ful recollection I retained of those happy, care-
less, cordial hours In his letters my father also
spoke of our early breakfasts, but in a way that
showed how often he was wounded by finding out
from my talk that my mother took too little care
of me, according to his notions—that I filled too
small a place in her dreamy, wilfully frivolous
life. There were passages which the then future
had since turned into prophecies. “Were I to be
taken from him, what would become of him * *
was one of these. At ten I came back from
school; by that time my father would be occu-
pied with his business. I had lessons to prepare,
and I did not see him again until half-past eleven,
at the second breakfast. Then mamma would
appear in one of those tasteful morning costumes
which suited her slender and supple figure so
well. From afar, and beyond the cold years of
my boyhood, that family table came before me
like a mirage of warm home-life ; how often had
it become a sort of nostalgia to me when I sat


THE SOAV - I 19
the son after they had developed themselves in
the father, so that the misery of both should be
identicall
My father's letters breathed sighs that my
mother had never suspected—vain sighs for a
complete blending of their two hearts; tender
sighs for the fond dream of fully-shared happi-
ness; despairing sighs for the ending of a moral
separation, all the more complete because its
origin was not to be sought in their respective
faults (mutual love pardons everything), but
in a complete, almost animal, contrast between
the two natures. Not one of his qualities was
pleasing to her; all his defects were displeasing
to her. And he adored her. I had seen enough
of many kinds of ill-assorted unions since I had
been going about in society, to understand in full
what a silent hell that one must have been, and
the two figures rose up before me in perfect dis-
tinctness. I saw my mother with her gestures—
a little affectation was, so to speak, natural to her
—the delicacy of her hands, her fair, pale com-
plexion, the graceful turn of her head, her
studiously low-pitched voice, the something un-
material that pervaded her whole person, her
eyes, whose glance could be so cold, so disdainful;
and, on the other hand, I saw my father with his


I2O - THE SOAV
robust, working-man's frame, his hearty laugh
when he allowed himself to be merry, the pro-
fessional, utilitarian, in fact, plebeian, aspect of
him, in his ideas and ways, his gestures and his
discourse. But the plebeian was so noble, so
lofty in his generosity, in his deep feeling. He
did not know how to show that feeling; therein
lay his crime. On what wretched trifles, when
we think of it, does absolute felicity or irreme-
diable misfortune depend |
The name of M. Termonde occurred several
times in the earlier letters, and, when I came to
the eleventh, I found it mentioned in a way
which brought tears to my eyes, set my hands
shaking, and made my heart leap as at the sound of
a cry of sharp agony. In the pages which he had
written during the night—the writing showed how
deeply he was moved—the husband, hitherto so
self-restrained, acknowledged to his sister, his
kind and faithful confidante, that he was jealous.
He was jealous, and of whom 2 Of that very man
who was destined to fill his place at our fireside,
to give a new name to her who had been Madame
Cornélis; of the man with cat-like ways, with pale
eyes, whom my childish instinct had taught me to
regard with so precocious and so fixed a hate.
He was jealous of Jacques Termonde. In his


7 HE SOAV 12 I
sudden confession he related the growth of this
jealousy, with the bitterness of tone that relieves
the heart of misery too long suppressed. In that
letter, the first of a series which death only was
destined to interrupt, he told how far back was
the date of his jealousy, and how it awoke to life
with his detection of one look cast at my mother
by Termonde. He told how he had at once sus-
pected a dawning passion on the part of this man,
then that Termonde had gone away on a long
journey, and that he, my father, had attributed
his absence to the loyalty of a sincere friend, to a
noble effort to fight from the first against a crim-
inal feeling. Termonde came back; his visits to
us were soon resumed, and they became more
frequent than before. There was every reason
for this; my father had been his chum at the
£cole de Droit, and would have chosen him to be
his best man at his marriage had not Termonde's
diplomatic functions kept him out of France at
the time. In this letter and the following ones
my father acknowledged that he had been strongly
attached to Termonde, so much so, indeed, that
he had considered his own jealousy as an un-
worthy feeling and a sort of treachery. But it is
all very well to reproach one's self for a passion,
it is there in our hearts all the same, tearing and


122 THE SOAV
devouring them. After Termonde's return, my
father's jealousy increased, with the certainty
that the man's love for the wife of his friend was
also growing: and yet, the unhappy husband did
not think himself entitled to forbid him the house.
Was not his wife the most pure and upright of
women 2 Her very inclination to mysticism and
exaggerated devotion, although he sometimes
found fault with her for it, was a pledge that she
would never yield to anything by which her con-
science could be stained. Besides, Termonde's
assiduity was accompanied by such evident, such
absolute respect, that it afforded no ground for
reproach. What was he to do 2 Have an ex-
planation with his wife—he who could not bring
himself to enter upon the slightest discussion with
her? Require her to decline to receive his own
friend ? But, if she yielded, he would have de-
prived her of a real pleasure, and for that he
should be unable to forgive himself. If she did
not yield 2 So, my poor father had preferred to
toss about in that Gehenna of weakness and in-
decision wherein dwell timid and taciturn souls.
All this misery he revealed to my aunt, dwelling
upon the morbid nature of his feelings, imploring
advice and pity, deriding and blaming the pueril-
ity of his jealousy, but jealous all the same, un-


THE SOM 123
able to refrain from recurring again and again to
the open wound in his heart, and incapable of the
energy and decision that would have cured it.
The letters became more and more gloomy, as
it always happens when one has not at once put
an end to a false position; my father suffered
from the consequences of his weakness, and
allowed them to develop without taking action,
because he could not now have checked them
without painful scenes. After having tolerated
the increased frequency of his friend's visits, it
was torture to him to observe that his wife was
sensibly influenced by this encroaching intimacy.
He perceived that she took Termonde's advice on
all the little matters of daily life—upon a ques-
tion of dress, the purchase of a present, the
choice of a book. He came upon the traces of
the man in the change of my mother's tastes, in
music for instance. When we were alone in the
evenings, he liked her to go to the piano and play
to him, for hours together, at haphazard; now
she would play nothing but pieces selected by
Termonde, who had acquired an extensive knowl-
edge of the German masters during his residence
abroad. My father, on the contrary, having been
brought up in the country with his sister, who


124 THE SOAV
was herself taught by a provincial music master,
retained his old-fashioned taste for Italian music.
My mother belonged, by her own family, to a
totally different sphere of society from that into
which her marriage with my father had intro-
duced her. At first she did not feel any regret
for her former circle, because her extreme beauty
secured her a triumphant success in the new one;
but it was quite another thing when her intimacy
with Termonde, who moved in the most worldly
and elegant of Parisian “worlds,” was perpetu-
ally reminding her of all its pleasures and habits.
My father saw that she was bored and weary
while doing the honors of her own salon with an
absent mind. He even found the political opin-
ions of his friend echoed by his wife, who laughed
at him for what she called his Utopian liberalism. .
Her mockery had no malice in it; but still it was
mockery, and behind it was Termonde, always
Termonde. Nevertheless, he said nothing, and
the shyness, which he had always felt in my
mother's presence, increased with his jealousy.
The more unhappy he was, the more incapable
of expressing his pain he became. There are
minds so eonstituted that suffering paralyzes them
into inaction. And then there was the ever.
present question, what was he to do? How was


7A/F SOAV 125
he to approach an explanation, when he had no
positive accusation to bring? He remained per-
fectly convinced of the fidelity of his wife, and
he again and again affirmed this, entreating my
aunt not to withdraw a particle of her esteem
from his dear Marie, and imploring her never to
make an allusion to the sufferings of which he
was ashamed, before their innocent cause. And
then he dwelt upon his own faults; he accused
himself of lack of tenderness, of failing to win
love, and would draw pictures of his sorrowful
home, in a few words, with heart-rending
humility.
Rough, commonplace minds know nothing of
the scruples that rent and tortured my father's
soul. They say, “I am jealous,” without troub-
ling themselves as to whether the words convey
an insult or not. They forbid the house to the
person to whom they object, and shut their wives'
mouths with, “Am I master here 2" taking heed
of their own feelings merely. Are they in the
right? I know not; I only know that such
rough methods were impossible to my poor father.
He had sufficient strength to assume an icy mien
toward Termonde, to address him as seldom as
possible, to give him his hand with the insulting
politeness that makes a gulf between two sincere


7A/A2 SOAV 127
infamous, and I drive it away by taking refuge with
Ayou, to whom, at least, I am all the world.”
“ Unless, indeed, that—” This letter was
written on the first Sunday in June, 1864; and on
the following Thursday, four days later, he who had
written it, and had suffered all it revealed, went
out to the appointment at which he met with his
mysterious death, that death by which his wife was
set free to marry his felon friend. What was the
idea, as dreadful, as infamous as the idea of which
my father accused himself in his terrible last let-
ter, that flashed across me now? I placed the
packet of papers upon the mantelpiece and
pressed my two hands to my head, as though to
still the tempest of cruel fancies which made it
throb with fever. Ah, the hideous, nameless thing !
My mind got a glimpse of it only to reject it. But,
had not my aunt also been assailed by the same
monstrous suspicion? A number of small facts
rose up in my memory, and convinced me that my
father's faithful sister had been a prey to the same
idea which had just laid hold of me so strongly.
How many strange things I now understood, all in
a moment On that day when she told me of my
mother's second marriage, and I spontaneously ut-
tered the accursed name of Termonde, why had
she asked me, in a trembling voice : “What do


128 7A/E SOAV
you know?” What was it she feared that I had
guessed ? What dreaded information did she ex-
pect to receive from my childish observation of
things? Afterwards, and when she implored me
to abandon the task of avenging our beloved dead,
when she quoted to me the sacred words, “Ven-
geance is mine, saith the Lord,” who were the
guilty ones whom she foresaw I must meet on my
path? When she entreated me to bear with my
stepfather, even to conciliate him, not to make an
enemy of him, had her advice any object except
the greater ease of my daily life, or did she think
danger might come to me from that quarter?
When she became more afraid for me, owing to
the weakening of her brain by illness, and again
and again enjoined upon me to beware of going
out alone in the evening, was the vision of terror
that came to her that of a hand which would fain
strike me in the dark—the same hand that had
struck my father ? When she summoned up all
her strength in her last moments, that she might
destroy this correspondence, what was the clue
which she supposed the letters would furnish 2 A
terrific light shone upon me; what my aunt had
perceived beyond the plain purport of the letters,
I too perceived. Ah! I dared to entertain this
idea, yet now I am ashamed to write it down.


THE SOAV 129
But could I have escaped from the hard logic of
the situation? If my aunt had handed over those
letters to the Judge of Instruction in the matter,
would he not have arrived at the same conclusion
that I drew from them 2 No, I could not. A man
who has no known enemies is assassinated ; it is al-
leged that robbery is not the motive of the mur-
der ; his wife has a lover, and shortly after the
death of her husband she marries that lover.
“But it is they—it is they who are guilty, they
have killed the husband,” the judge would say,
and so would the first-comer. Why did not my
aunt place those letters of my father's in the hands
of justice? I understood the reason too well; she
would not have had me think of my mother what
I was now in a fit of distraction thinking—that
she had deceived my father, that she had been
Termonde's mistress, that therein lay the secret
of the murder. To conceive of this as merely
possible was to be guilty of moral parricide, to
commit the inexpiable sin against her who had -
borne me. I had always loved my mother so ten-
derly, so mournfully ; never, never had I judged
her. How many times—happening to be alone
with her, and not knowing how to tell her what
was weighing on my heart—how many times I had
dreamed that the barrier between us would not for
9 -


130 THE SOAV
ever divide us. Some day I might, perhaps, be-
come her only support, then she should see how
precious she still was to me. My sufferings had
not lessened my love for her; wretched as I was
because she refused me a certain sort of affection,
I did not condemn her for lavishing that affection
upon another. As a matter of fact, until those
fatal letters had done their work of disenchant-
ment, of what was she guilty in my eyes? Of
having married again? Of having chosen, being
left a widow at thirty, to construct a new life for
herself? What could be more legitimate? Of
having failed to understand the relations of the
child who remained to her with the man whom
she had chosen 2 What was more natural? She
was more wife than mother, and besides, fanciful
and fragile beings such as she was recoil from daily
contests; they shrink from facing realities which
would demand sustained courage and energy on
their part. I had admitted all these explanations
of my mother's attitude toward me, at first from
instinct and afterward on reflection. But now,
the inexhaustible spring of indulgence for those
who really hold our heart-strings was dried up in
a moment, and a flood of odious, abominable sus-
picion overwhelmed me instead.
This sudden invasion of a horrible, torturing


132 THE SOAV
if she had known that her husband was being
murdered at that very hour. Why, I must have
been mad to allow such a notion to present its
monstrous image before my eyes for a single
moment, and it was infamous of me to have gone
so far beyond the most insulting of my father's
suspicions. Already, and without any proof ex-
cept the expression of jealousy acknowledged by
himself to be unreasonable, I had reached a point
to which the unhappy but still loving man had
not dared to go, even to the extreme outrage
against my mother, of believing that she had
been Termonde's mistress. What if, during the
lifetime of her first husband, she had inspired
him whom she was one day to marry with too
strong a sentiment, did this prove that she had
shared it? If she had shared it, would that have
proved her to be a fallen woman 2 Why should
she not have entertained an affection for Ter-
monde, which, while it in no wise interfered
with her fidelity to her wifely duties, made my
father not-unnaturally jealous?
Thus did I justify her, not only from any
participation in the crime, but from any failure
in her duty. And then again my ideas changed;
I remembered the cry that she had uttered in
presence of my father's dead body: “I am


THE SOAV I 33
punished by God!” I was not sufficiently chari-
table to her to admit that those words might be
merely the utterance of a refined and scrupulous
mind which reproached itself even with its
thoughts. I also recalled the gleaming eyes and
shaking hands of Termonde, when he was talking
with my mother about my father's mysterious
disappearance. If they were accomplices, this
was a piece of acting performed before me, an
innocent witness, so that they might invoke my
childish testimony on occasion. These recollec-
tions once more drove me upon my fated way.
The idea of a guilty tie between her and him now
took possession of me, and then came swiftly the
thought that they had profited by the murder,
that they alone had an engrossing interest in it.
So violent was the assault of suspicion that it
overthrew all the barriers I had raised against it.
I accumulated all the objections founded upon a
physical alibi and a moral improbability, and thence
I forced myself to say it was, strictly speaking,
impossible they could have anything to do with
the murder; impossible, impossible ! I repeated
this frantically; but even as it passed my lips,
the hallucination returned, and struck me down.
There are moments when the disordered mind is
unable to quell visions which it knows to be


I 34 THE SOAV
false, when the imaginary and the real mingle in
a nightmare-panic, and the judgment is powerless
to distinguish between them. Who is there that,
having been jealous, does not know this condition
of mind? What did I not suffer from it during
the day after I had read those letters! I
wandered about the house, incapable of attending
to any duty, struck stupid by emotions which all
around me attributed to grief for my aunt's
death. Several times I tried to sit for a while
beside her bed; but the sight of her pale face,
with its pinched nostrils, and its deepening ex-
pression of sadness, was unbearable to me. It
renewed my miserable doubts. At four o'clock I
received a telegram. It was from my mother,
and announced her arrival by evening train.
When the slip of blue paper was in my hand my
wretchedness was for a moment relieved. She
was coming. She had thought of my trouble;
she was coming. That assurance dispelled my
suspicions. What if she were to read my
criminal thoughts in my face? But those absurd
and infamous notions took possession of me once
more. Perhaps she thinks, so ran my thoughts,
that the correspondence between my father and
my aunt had not been destroyed, and she is com-
ing in order to get hold of those letters before I


THE SOAV 135
see them, and to find out what my aunt said to
me when she was dying. If she and Termonde
are guilty, they must have lived in constant dread
of the old maid's penetration. Ah! I had been
very unhappy in my childhood, but how gladly
would I have gone back to be the schoolboy,
meditating during the dull and interminable
evening hours of study, and not the young man
who walked to and fro that night in the station
at Compiègne, awaiting the arrival of a mother,
suspected as mine was. Just God! Did not I
expiate everything in anticipation by that one
hour?


X.
THE train from Paris approached, and stopped.
The railway officials called out the name of the
station, as they opened the doors of the carriages
one after another, very slowly as it seemed to me.
I went from carriage to carriage seeking my
mother. Had she at the last moment decided not
to come ! What a trial to me if it were so
What a night I should have to pass in all the
torment of suspicions which, I knew too well, her
mere presence would dispel. A voice called me.
It was hers. Then I saw her, dressed in black,
and never in my life did I clasp her in my arms
as I did then, utterly forgetting that we were in a
public place, and why she had come, in the joy of
feeling my horrible imaginations vanish, melt
away at the mere touch of the being whom I
loved so profoundly, the only one who was dear
to me, notwithstanding our differences, in the
very depths of my heart, now that I had lost my
aunt Louise. After that first movement, which
resembled the grasp in which a drowning man
seizes the swimmer who dives for him, I looked
at my mother without speaking, holding both her
(136)


7//E SOAV 137
hands. She had thrown back her veil, and in the
flickering light of the station I saw that she was
very pale and had been weeping. I had only to
meet her eyes, which were still wet with tears, to
know that I had been mad. I felt this, with the
first words she uttered, telling me so tenderly of
her grief, and that she had resolved to come at
once, although my stepfather was ill. M. Ter-
monde had suffered of late from frequent attacks
of liver-complaint. But neither her grief nor her
anxiety about her husband had prevented my
poor mother from providing herself, for this little
excursion of a few hours, with all her customary
appliances of comfort and elegance. Her maid
stood behind her, accompanied by a porter, and
both were laden with three or four bags of dif-
ferent sizes, of the best English make, carefully
buttoned up in their waterproof covers; a dress-
ing-case, a writing-case, an elegant wallet to hold
the traveler's purse, handkerchief, book, and
second veil; a hot-water bottle for her feet, two
cushions for her head, and a little clock sus-
pended from a swinging disc.
“You see,” said she, while I was pointing out
the carriage to the maid, so that she might get
rid of her impedimenta, “I shall not have my
right mourning until to-morrow "-and now I


THE SOAV 139
forget the dear dead woman. I was very sad at
heart in reality, and yet I was happy, while we
were rattling through the town in the old coupé,
past the long lines of lighted windows. I held
my mother's hand; I longed to beg her pardon,
to kiss the hem of her dress, to tell her again and
again that I loved and revered her. She per-
ceived my emotion very plainly ; but she at-
tributed it to the affliction that had just befallen
me, and she condoled with me. She said, “My
André,” several times. How rare it was for me
to have her thus, all my own, and just in that
mood of feeling for which my sick heart pined
I had had the room on the ground floor, next
to the salon, prepared for my mother. I remem-
bered that she had occupied it, when she came to
Compiègne with my father, a few days after her
marriage, and I felt sure that the impression
which would be produced upon her by the sight
of the house in the first instance, and then by the
sight of this room, would help me to get rid of my
dreadful suspicions. I was determined to note
minutely the slightest signs of agitation which she
might betray at the contact of a resuscitated past,
rendered more striking by the aspect of things
that do not change so quickly as the heart of a
woman. And now, I blushed for that idea,


THE SOAV 141
ought to have been sacred in my sight. Julie had
prepared a sort of supper, and wished to attend at
table herself. I observed the former mistress and
the old servant brought thus face to face, and,
although I knew that they had not got on well
together in past days, I saw that they were well
pleased to meet again. Poor Julie especially,
who was a simple creature, incapable of deceit or
dissimulation, was so glad that she took me aside
a few minutes before the frugal meal, to tell me
what a consolation it was to her in her grief to
see my mother so kind and affectionate to me,
and to wait on us both at the same table, as in
the bygone time. Had there been in my mother's
past life one of those guilty secrets which faithful
servants are more quick than any others to divine,
the honest and true-hearted woman who had
tended both my father and myself would neither
have been ignorant of it nor capable of condoning
it. I should have detected the trace of it in her
wrinkled face with the drawn-in lips, for its
every wrinkle spoke eloquently to me. Nor
would my mother have been pleased and easy in the
presence of this witness of a sin of the past; her
manner would have betrayed a secret disturbance,
were it only by the haughtiness with which, as it


I42 THE SOAV
were, one repels the silent censure of an inferior
by anticipation.
Julie's face made one among the many things
which recalled her first marriage to my mother's
mind; and, either because the almost sudden
death of my aunt had deeply moved her, or be-
cause this sentimental recurrence to the past was
an indulgence of her taste for the romantic, far
from avoiding such recollections, she yielded to
them fully, while I silently blessed her for thus
destroying the last vestiges of my mute calumny.
How fervent was my mental thanksgiving, when,
later in the night, she asked to see my dear dead
aunt, so that she might take a last farewell of
her We entered the room where the dying
woman had striven with the last earthly solicitude
from which I had drawn such black conclusions.
Death had strengthened the resemblance that ex-
isted in her lifetime between my aunt and my
father. The motionless and livid face forcibly
recalled that other face still living in my sad
memory, and in whose presence my mother had
clasped me in so warm an embrace; and the re-
semblance was made more striking by the chin-
cloth which kept the mouth closed. Once more
we stood side by side before a funereal spectacle;


THE SOAV 143
but I was no longer a child, and my mother was
no longer a young woman.
How many years lay between those two deaths
—and what years The comparison struck my
mother too; she did not speak for a while—then
she whispered: “How like him she is ' " She
bent over the bed, pressed a kiss upon the ice-cold
brow, and kneeling at the foot of the bed, she
prayed. This trying ordeal, of which I had hardly
ventured to dream, she herself had sought in so
natural, so simple a way. . . . Since then I have
had many other tokens of the absolute blameless-
ness of my mother, I have heard words uttered by
him who had contrived and arranged the whole
crime, which fully exonerated the noble woman ;
but there was no need of them. The sight of her
kneeling beside the dead sister of my dear father
Thad sufficed to exorcise the phantom.
After her prayer, she expressed a wish to remain
in the room ; but I objected, fearing that the trial
would be too severe for her strength, and induced
her to go down-stairs with me. She was..too much
affected to sleep, and she begged of me to stay
with her for a while. I complied with joy, so
afraid was I that when out of her sight I might be
revisited by the hallucinations that had been so
completely banished by her demeanor. I felt


THE SOAV I45
This was very rare with her; it was also rare for
her and me to be so familiar and so united. It was
a strange sensation to hear her tell the story of her
marriage in that salon, filled with the relics of the
dead, and with the ever present remembrance of
the letters which I had read that day in my mind.
She told me—but this I already knew—how her
marriage was brought about. She met my father
at a ball given by a great lawyer, who was inti-
mate with her family; their name was De Slane.
She described her own dress at this ball, and then
sketched my father for me, in his black coat, with
an ill-tied white cravat and ill-fitting gloves. “A
young girl is always so foolish,” she said. “He
had himself introduced to us, and he proposed for
me twice over. I refused him each time, just be-
cause I had those ill-fitting gloves in my mind.
The third time he asked to see me in private.
Mamma wished very much for the marriage, not-
withstanding certain differences in station and ed-
ucation. Your father was such a good man, so
clever and hard-working, and then he adored my
mother with frank simplicity, just as if she were
an idol. Well, she consented to the interview. I
received your father with the firm intention of
saying ‘No’ to him, and he spoke to me so nicely,
with so much eloquence and such perfect tact, I
IQ


146 THE SOAV
saw so plainly how much he loved me, that I said
* Yes.” . . . .”
What a commentary upon the whole of my
father's correspondence was this entry into mar-
riage, what a symbol of the years that were to fol-
low ! Yes, even until their last breakfast together
before the murder, they had lived thus; she allow-
ing herself to be loved, with the indulgent pride
of a woman who knows herself to be the superiorin
refinement and distinction, and he-the hard-
working man of business, only a little above “the
people "—loving that refined and charming woman
with an idolatrous sense of her superiority, and a
single-hearted unconsciousness of his own. The
fatal poison of the heart is silence; I had already
learned this too well on my own behalf, and I felt
it on that of my father, whose sombre and reserved
nature I had inherited. And my mother went on
—how heartrending it was to hear her—dwelling
on my father's good qualities, on his uprightness,
his perseverance, and also certain points in his
character which had always puzzled her. “Since
he died so sadly,” she resumed, “I have often
asked myself whether I made him as happy as he
might have been. I was very young then, and we
had no tastes in common. I have always liked
society—that was born with me—and he did not


THE SOAV I47
care about it, he did not feel at ease in it. I was
very pious, and he was of the school of Voltaire.
He believed other men to be as good as himself,
and thought we could do without religion. .
We have seen since his time what that brings us
to. He was not jealous, he never once made a re-
mark to me upon the few men friends I had, but
there was a restless tendency in him. When he
was obliged to leave Paris for a short time, if I
chanced to send my daily letter to the post too
late, there would surely come a telegram urgently
requesting news of my health. If, in the even-
ing, I came home a little later than usual, I would
find him in great anxiety, full of the notion that
an accident had happened. And then, he was
subject to causeless fits of depression, prolonged
spells of silence. I did not venture to question
him. You take after him in this, my poor
André.”
She went on to speak of his mysterious death :
“I wept so much for it,” she said, “and I have
since thought so much of it. Your father had
not an enemy; his life was too upright for that.
My conviction is that the assassin reckoned on
his taking a large sum of money with him ; bear
in mind that we do not know what your father
had in his note-case. Ah, my André, you little


THE SOAV I49
creature who related all this past history to me
with such frank clear eyes, so sweet a voice, such
ingenuousness in the acknowledgement of her
mistakes, such evident, all-pervading sincerity,
must either have been entirely innocent of the
suffering she inflicted, or else she must now be a
monster of hypocrisy. At all events, I never
thought that of you, O my mother weak but
good woman as you were, capable indeed of
passing by pain unnoticed, but quite incapable of
wilfully inflicting it, and since that evening my
faith in you has never been assailed. No impious
doubt crossed my mind from thenceforth, during
the night which followed this interview, or the
day after, which was that of the funeral, or when
my mother had left me.
It was, however, quite another thing with
regard to my stepfather. When suspicion is
awakened upon a point of such tragic interest as
the murder of a father, that suspicion cannot be
lulled to sleep again, without having touched,
handled, grasped a certainty. I had grasped this
certainty, at the moment when I clasped my
mother in my arms, and heard her speak; but,
did my mother's innocence prove that of my step-
father also 2 No sooner was I alone, and free to
study the fatal letters, in minute detail this time,


I 50 THE SOAV
than the new aspect of the problem presented
itself to my mind. Except in those moments
when he was driven into injustice by excess of
pain, my father had always distinguished between
the responsibility of his wife and that of his
friend, in the relation that excited his jealousy.
In his thoughts he had always acquitted my
mother; but, on the other hand, he had never
treated Termonde's passion for her as doubtful.
There, then, was the positive, undeniable fact, of
which I had been ignorant until I read the letters
—this man had an immense interest in the “sup-
pression ” of my father. Before I read the letters
I was free to believe that his feelings toward my
mother were not awakened until she was free to
marry him. Notwithstanding my jealousy, I had
never denied that it was most natural for a young,
beautiful, and grief-stricken woman to inspire a
passionate desire to console her, easily trans-
formed into love, in even the most intimate
friend of her dead husband. Things now ap-
peared to me in a different light. In the solitude
of the house at Compiègne, where I lingered on
instead of returning to Paris, professedly in order
to regulate some affairs, but in reality because I
was like the wounded animals who slink away to
endure their pain, I read those letters over and


THA, SOAV - I5 I
over again. One relic in particular, among all
those in the house, aroused the desire for ven-
geance and for justice that had been so strong in
my childhood. This was a calendar, one of those
from which one tears off a leaf daily, that lay
beside the blotting-book formerly belonging to
my father and already mentioned, on a small
bureau in his old room, now mine. The calendar
was for the year 1864, and my aunt had kept it,
untouched, at the date of the day that had
brought her the terrible news of the murder.
Saturday, the 11th of June, was the day marked
by the leaf which lay uppermost upon the bulk
of the others, and those others marked the days
of that year, days which my father never saw.
The 11th of June, 1864 It was then, on Thurs-
day, the 9th, that he had been killed. I was nine
years old at that time, I was now twenty-four,
and his death was still unavenged. Why? Be-
cause chance had not furnished me with any indi-
cation; because I had not been able to form any
hypothesis resting upon a fact that was observed,
verified, certain. Now that I had laid hold of
one of those indications, however doubtful, one
of those hypotheses, however improbable, I had
no right to draw back, I was bound to push my
suspicions to their extreme. “If I were to go to


152 THE SON
M. Massol,” I reflected, “to place this corre-
spondence in his hands and to consult him, would
he regard that revelation of our domestic life, of
the feelings of the victim, and of those of my
mother's second husband, as a document to be
neglected 7” No-a thousand times no—so
strongly was I convinced of this, that I would
not have dared to take the letters to him. I
should have been afraid to set the bloodhounds
of justice on this track. He and I had pondered
and studied so long that crucial question—who
could possibly have had an interest in the crime 2
If he had thought of my stepfather, he had never
spoken of him. What indication did he possess
which could have authorized him for a moment
to raise so great a disturbance in my mind 2
None ; but I could now furnish him with such an
indication, and my instinct told me that it was
very grave, and of formidable significance. How
could I have prevented myself from fastening
upon it, turning it over and over in my mind, and
abandoning myself completely to its absorbing
suggestions?
A strange contrast existed between the tempest
within my breast and the profound quiet of the
house of the dead. My life glided on in apparent
monotony; but in reality it was one of torment


I54 THE SOAV
bility were to prevent investigation, how many
‘instructions' would be abandoned ?” When
these thoughts pressed upon me too heavily, I rose
and walked toward the wood. Around me spread
the vast silence of the afternoon in winter. ‘The
dry leaves crackled under my feet, while my
mind still toiled over the argument for and
against. Granted that M. Termonde is guilty.
He was, he is still passionate to the point of
violence; that is the first fact. He was madly in
love with my mother; that is a second fact. My
father was painfully jealous of him; that was a
third fact. Here begins the uncertainty l Was
M. Termonde aware of that jealousy 2 Had he
and my father had some of those silent scenes,
after which a man of the world is aware that the
house of his friend, to whose wife he is making
love, is about to be closed to him 2 This supposi-
tion would, I thought, be admitted without any
difficulty. It was less easy to understand the
transition from that point to the fierce longing
to be rid of an obstacle which is felt to be for
ever invincible; but yet the thing is possible.
At this stage of my analysis, I came in contact
with what I called the physical data of the crime.
The false Rochdale existed; this again was a fact.
He had been seen by certain persons, who had


THE SOAV 155
also heard him speak. He was waiting in a room
at the Imperial Hotel, while M. Termonde was at
our table talking with us. For M. Termonde to
be guilty of the crime, it would be necessary to
establish a complicity between the two men; one
of them, the false Rochdale, must needs have
been an instrument, a bravo hired to kill, for the
advantage of the other.
The exceptional character of this fresh hypoth-
esis was too evident for me to yield to it im-
mediately; indeed the first time the idea occurred
to me, I ridiculed myself mercilessly. I remem-
bered my childish terror and the many proofs
I had had of my readiness and ingenuity in con-
founding the imaginary with the real. How like
my former self I still was, how incapable of
chasing away the phantoms which suddenly ap-
peared before me ! In vain did I urge this upon
myself, because it was no more than an improb-
ability that the false Rochdale should be bribed
by M. Termonde to murder my father ; it was not
an absolute impossibility. The least reflection
shows that in the matter of crime everything
happens. I then set to work to recall all the ex-
traordinary stories of the Cour d’Assises which I
could remember. My imagination turned blood-
color, like the horizon where the sun was setting


156 THE SOAV
behind the long line of wintry trees. I re-entered
the house, I dined, as I had breakfasted, all alone,
and then I passed the evening in the salon, sitting
where my mother had sat. So afraid was I of
the furies of thought that I asked Julie to rejoin
me after her supper. The old woman settled
herself on a low Breton chair, in a corner of the
hearth, and went on with her knitting. Her
needles flashed as they moved in and out amid
the brown wool of which she was fabricating a
stocking, and her spectacles gleamed in the fire-
light. Sometimes she worked on the whole even-
ing without uttering a word, with Boule-de-Poil,
her favorite, purring at her feet, and Pierrot, who
was of a jealous disposition, rubbing his head
against her, and standing on his hind paws. At
other times she talked, answering my questions
about my aunt. She repeated what I already
knew so well; the solicitude of the dear old
woman for me, her dread of possible danger to
me, her terrible anxiety on her death-bed. She
dwelt upon my aunt's inconsolable regret for my
mother's second marriage, and her unconquerable
dislike to M. Termonde.
“Each time that she made up her mind to go
to your mother's house,” said Julie, “for your
sake, André, she was ill from agitation before-


THE SOAV 157
hand, and sunk in melancholy for a full week
after she came back.” These particulars were
not new to me, I had known them long before,
but in my present mood they threw me back upon
my cruel suspicions. I resumed the analysis of
my thoughts concerning M. Termonde from
another point of view. Granted that he is guilty,
I argued, is there a single fact since the event
which is not made clear by his culpability ? My
aunt's horror is, moreover, an indication that I
am not a madman, for she entertained suspicions
similar to my own. But she also suspected my
mother, otherwise she would have stedfastly op-
posed a marriage which she must have regarded
as a frightful sacrilege. Yes; but she may have
been mistaken about my mother, and right with
respect to my stepfather. Is not M. Termonde's
antipathy to me also a sign 2 Has there not
always been something more in this than the not-
uncommon antagonism between stepfather and
stepson? Is not that “something more ” bitter
detestation of one who recalls his victim at every
turn, sickening aversion to the presence of the
son of the murdered man? Again, I considered
the capricious humors of the man, his alternate
craving for excitement and for solitude, and the
fits of silence and brooding to which my mother


f 58 7A/E SOAV
told me he was subject. Hitherto I had ex-
plained these freaks by attributing them to the
liver-complaint which had hollowed out his
cheeks, darkened his eyelids, and from time to
time stretched him on his bed in such paroxysms
of pain that the strong man cried aloud. But,
these oddities, this malady itself, might not they
be the effect of that obscure but undeniable
phenomenon which assumes such strange and
various shapes—remorse? Did I not know by
experience the close relation between the moral
and the physical in man, the ravages which a
fixed idea makes in one's health, the killing and
irresistible power of thought, I, who could not go
through strong emotion of any kind without
being attacked by neuralgia? Once more, sus-
picion took hold of me. How wretched is he
whom such dreadful doubts assail! Tossed upon
a troubled sea, the sick and weary mind knows
no repose.


XI.
THERE was but one remedy to be applied to
this unbearable malady—that remedy which had
already been successful in the case of my suspi-
cions of my mother. I must at once proceed to
place the real in opposition to the suggestions of
imagination. I must seek the presence of the
man whom I suspected look him straight in the
face, and see him as he was, not as my fancy,
growing more feverish day by day, represented
him. Then I should discern whether I had or
had not been the sport of a delusion; and the
sooner I resorted to this test the better, for my
sufferings were terribly increased by solitude.
My head became confused; at last I ceased even
to doubt. That which ought to have been only a
faint indication, assumed to my mind the im-
portance of an overwhelming proof. In the
interest of my inquiry itself it was full time to
resist this, if I were ever to pursue my inquiry
farther, or else I should fall into the nervous state
which I knew so well, and which rendered any
kind of action in cold blood impossible to me. I
(159)


16o THE SOAV
made up my mind to leave Compiègne, see my
stepfather, and form my judgment of whether
there was or was not anything in my suspicions,
upon the first effect produced on him by my
sudden and unexpected appearance before him.
I founded this hope on an argument which I had
already used in the case of my mother, namely,
that if M. Termonde had really been concerned
in the assassination of my father, he had dreaded
my aunt's penetration beyond all things. Their
relations had been formal, with an undercurrent
of enmity on her part which had assuredly not
escaped a man so astute as he. If he were guilty,
would he not have feared that my aunt would
have confided her thoughts to me on her death-
bed ? The attitude that he should assume
toward me, at and after our first interview, would
be a proof, complete in proportion to its sudden-
ness, and he must have no time for preparation.
I returned to Paris, therefore, without having
informed even my valet of my intention, and
proceeded almost immediately to my mother's
hôtel. I arrived there at two o'clock in the after.
noon—an hour at which I was pretty sure of
finding M. Termonde at home, and smoking his
cigar in the hall after the second breakfast. A
little later he and my mother would go their


THE SOAV I61
separate ways until dinner-hour, which was seven
o'clock. I had come on foot in order to steady
my nerves by exercise, and all the way along I
had been pouring contempt upon myself, for, as I
drew near to the reality, the phantoms which I
had summoned up in my solitude seemed like the
dreams of a sick child. I remembered how the
humiliating and the ridiculous were mingled in
the arrival of my mother at Compiègne. I went
to meet her, as Orestes might have gone to meet
Clytemnestra, and I found a woman wholly oc-
cupied with her mourning, her traveling-bag, and
her little cushions. Would the same ironical
contrast present itself in this first interview with
my stepfather? Very likely, and I should be
convinced once more of my readiness to be in-
toxicated with my own ideas. It was always
painful to me to be convicted of that weakness,
and also of my abiding inability to form clear,
precise, and definite views. I mentally compared
myself with the bulls which I had seen in the
bull-ring at San Sebastian—stupid animals, they
foamed and stamped at a red rag instead of
rushing straight upon the alert “toreador,” who
mocked their rage. In this disheartened mood I
rang the bell. The door was opened, and the
narrow court, the glass porch, the red carpet of
II


162 THE SOAV
the staircase, were before me. The concierge,
who saluted me, was not he by whom I had
fancied myself slighted in my childhood; but the
old valet de chambre who opened the door to me
was the same. His close-shaven face wore its
former impassive expression, the look that used
to convey to me such an impression of insult and
insolence when I came home from school. What
childish absurdity To my question the man re-
plied that my mother was in, also M. Termonde,
and Madame Bernard, a friend of theirs. The
latter name brought me back at once to the
reality of the situation. Madame Bernard was a
prettyish woman, very slight and very dark, with
a “tip-tilted” nose, frizzy hair worn low upon
her forehead, very white teeth which were con-
tinually shown by a constant smile, a short upper
lip, and all the manners and ways of a woman of
society well up to its latest gossip. I fell at
once from my fancied height as an imaginary
Grand Justiciary into the shallows of Parisian
frivolity. I was about to hear chatter upon the
last new play, the latest suit for separation, the
latest love affairs, and the newest bonnet. It was
for this that I had eaten my heart out all these
days' The servant preceded me to the hall I
knew so well, with its Oriental divan, its green


THE SOAV 163
plants, its strange furniture, its slightly faded
carpet, its Meissonier on a draped easel, in the
place formerly occupied by my father's portrait,
its crowd of , ornamental trifles, and the wide-
spreading Japanese parasol open in the middle of
the ceiling. The walls were hung with large
pieces of Chinese stuff embroidered in black and
white silk. My mother was half-reclining in an
American rocking-chair, and shading her face
from the fire with a hand-screen ; Madame
Bernard, who sat opposite to her, was holding
her muff with one hand and gesticulating with
the other; M. Termonde, in walking-dress, was
standing with his back to the chimney, smoking a
cigar, and warming the sole of one of his boots.
On my appearance, my mother uttered a little
cry of glad surprise, and rose to welcome me.
Madame Bernard instantly assumed the air with
which a well-bred woman prepares to condole
with a person of her acquaintance upon a
bereavement. All these little details I perceived
in a moment, and also the shrug of M. Termonde's
shoulders, the quick flutter of his eyelids, the
rapidly-dismissed expression of disagreeable sur-
prise which my sudden appearance called forth.
But what then 2 Was it not the same with my-
self? I could have sworn that at the same


164 . THE SOAV
moment he experienced sensations exactly similar
to those which were catching me at the chest and
by the throat. What did this prove but that a
current of antipathy existed between him and me 2
Was it a reason for the man's being a murderer?
He was simply my stepfather, and a stepfather
who did not like his stepson.
Matters had stood thus for years, and yet, after
the week of miserable suspicion I had lived
through, the quick look and shrug struck me
strangely, even while I took his hand after I had
kissed my mother, and saluted Madame Bernard.
IIis hand 2 No, only his finger tips as usual,
and they trembled a little as I touched them.
How often had my own hand shrunk with uncon-
querable repugnance from that contact! I listened
while he repeated the same phrases of sympathy
with my sorrow which he had already written to
me while I was at Compiègne. I listened while
Madame Bernard uttered other phrases to the
same effect; and then the conversation resumed
its course, and, during the half-hour that ensued,
I looked on, speaking hardly at all, but mentally
comparing the physiognomy of my stepfather
with that of the visitor, and that of my mother.
The contemplation of those three faces produced
a curious impression upon me; it was that of


THE SOM 165
their difference, not only of age, but of intensity,
of depth. There was no mystery in my mother's
face, it was as easy to read as a page in clear hand-
writing! The mind of Madame Bernard, a worldly,
trumpery, poor mind, but harmless enough, was
readily to be discerned in her features which were
at once refined and commonplace. How little
there was of reflection, of decision, of exercise of
will, in short of individuality, behind the poetic
grace of the one and the pretty affectations of the
other | What a face, on the contrary, was that of
my stepfather, with his strong individuality, and
its vivid expression In this man of the world,
as he stood there talking with two women of the
world, in his blue, furtive eyes, too wide apart, and
always seeming to shun observation, in his prema-
turely gray hair, his mouth set round with deep
wrinkles, in his dark, blotched, bilious complexion,
there seemed to be a creature of another race.
What passions had worn those furrows? what
vigils had hollowed those eyeballs 2 Was this the
face of a happy man, with whom everything had
succeeded, who, having been born to wealth and
of an excellent family, had married the woman he
loved; who had known neither the wearing cares
of ambition, the toil of money-getting, nor the
stings of wounded self-love? It is true, he suf.


166 7"HE SOM’
fered from liver complaint; but why was it that,
although I had hitherto been satisfied with this
answer, it now appeared to me childish and even
foolish 2 Why did all these marks of trouble and
exhaustion suddenly strike me as effects of a secret
cause, and why was I astonished that I had not
sooner sought for it? Why was it that in his
presence, contrary to my expectations, contrary to
what had happened about my mother, I was
plunged more deeply into the gulf of suspicion
from which I had hoped to emerge with a free
mind? Why, when our eyes met for just one sec-
ond, was I afraid that he might read my thoughts
in my glance, and why did I shift them with a
pang of shame and terror? Ah coward that I
was, triple coward Either I was wrong to think
thus, and at any price I must know that I was
wrong; or, I was right and I must know that too.
The sole resource henceforth remaining to me for
the preservation of my self-respect, was ardent
and ceaseless search after certainty.
That such a search was beset with difficulty I
was well aware. How was I to get at facts?
The very position of the problem which I had
before me forbade all hope of discovering any-
thing whatsoever by a formal inquiry. What,
in fact, was the matter in question? It was to


THE SON 167
make myself certain whether M. Termonde was
or was not the accomplice of the man who had
led my father into the trap in which he had lost
his life. But I did not know that man himself;
I had no data to go upon except the particulars
of his disguise and the vague speculations of a
Judge of Instruction. If I could only have con-
sulted that Judge, and availed myself of his ex-
perience 2 How often since have I taken out
the packet containing the denunciatory letters,
with the intention of showing them to him and
imploring advice, support, suggestions, from him.
But I have always stopped short before the door
of his house; the thought of my mother barred
its entrance against me. What if he, the Judge
of Instruction in the case, were to suspect her
as my aunt had done 2 Then I would go back
to my own abode, and shut myself up for hours,
lying on the divan in my smoking-room and
drugging my senses with tobacco. During that
time I read and re-read the fatal letters, although
I knew them by heart, in order to verify my
first impression with the hope of dispelling it.
It was, on the contrary, deepened. The only gain
I obtained from my repeated perusals was the
knowledge that this certainty, of which I had
made a point of honor to myself, could only be


168 THE SOAV
psychological. In short, all my fancies started
from the moral data of the crime, apart from phys-
ical data which I could not obtain. I was there-
fore obliged to rely entirely, absolutely, upon
those moral data, and I began again to reason as
I had done at Compiègne. “Supposing,” said I
to myself, “that M. Termonde is guilty, what
state of mind must he be in 2 This state of mind
being once ascertained, how can I act so as to
wrest some sign of his guilt from him 2 " As to
his state of mind I had no doubt. Ill and de-
pressed as I knew him to be, his mind troubled to
the point of torment, if that suffering, that gloom,
that misery were accompanied by the recollection
of a murder committed in the past, the man was
the victim of secret remorse. The point was then
to invent a plan which should give, as it were, a
form to his remorse, to raise the spectre of the
deed he had done roughly and suddenly before
him. If guilty, it was impossible but that he
would tremble ; if innocent, he would not even
be aware of the experiment. But how was this
sudden summoning-up of his crime before the man
whom I suspected to be accomplished 2 On the
stage and in novels one confronts an assassin with
the spectacle of his crime, and keeps watch upon
his face for the one second during which he loses


THE SOM’ 169
his self-possession; but in reality there is no in-
strument except unwieldy, unmanageable speech
where with to probe a human conscience. I could
not, however, go straight to M. Termonde and say
to his face: “You had my father killed !” In-
nocent or guilty, he would have had me turned
from the door as a madman'
After several hours of reflection, I came to the
conclusion that only one plan was reasonable, and
available : this was to have a private talk with
my stepfather at a moment when he would least
expect it, an interview in which all should be
hints, shades, double meanings, in which each
word should be like the laying of a finger upon
the sorest spots in his breast, if indeed his reflec-
tions were those of a murderer. Every sentence
of mine must be so contrived as to force him to
ask himself: “Why does he say this to me if he
knows nothing 2 He does know something. How
much does he know 2° So well acquainted was I
with every physical trait of his, the slightest vari-
ations of his countenance, his simplest gestures,
that no sign of disturbance on his part, however
slight, could escape me. If I did not succeed in
discovering the seat of the malady by this process,
I should be convinced of the baselessness of those
suspicions which were constantly springing up


- 7 HE SOAV 171
go to look at the picture. How like we were to
each other, my father and I, although I was more
slightly built 1 How exactly the same we were !
How near to me I felt him, and how dearly I
loved him With what emotion I studied those
features, the lofty forehead, the brown eyes, the
rather large mouth, the rather long chin, the
mouth especially, half-hidden by a black mous-
tache cut like my own ; it had no need to open,
and cry out: “André, André, remember me !”
Ah, no, my dear dead father, I could not leave
you thus, without having done my utmost to
avenge you, and it was only an interview to be
faced, only an interview
My nervousness gave way to determination at
once feverish and fixed—yes, it was both—and it
was in a mood of perfect self-mastery, that, after
a long period of mental conflict, I repaired to the
hôtel on the boulevard, with the plan of my dis-
course clearly laid out. I felt almost sure of
finding my stepfather alone; for my mother was
to breakfast on that day with Madame Bernard.
M. Termonde was at home, and, as I expected,
alone in his study. When I entered the room, he
was sitting in a low chair, close to the fire, look-
ing chilly, and smoking. Like myself in my dark
hours, he drugged himself with tobacco. The


172 THE SOM’
room was a large one, and both luxurious and or-
dinary. A handsome bookcase lined one of the
walls. Its contents were various, ranging from
grave works on history and political economy, to
the lightest novels of the day. A large, flat
writing-table, on which every kind of writing-
material was carefully arranged, occupied the
middle of the room, and was adorned with photo-
graphs in plain leather cases. These were por-
traits of my mother and M. Termonde's father
and mother. At least one prominent trait of its
owner's character, his scrupulous attention to
order and correctness of detail, was revealed by
the aspect of my stepfather's study; but this
quality, which is common to so many persons of
his position in the world, may belong to the most
commonplace character as well as to the most re-
fined hypocrite. It was not only in the external
order and bearing of his life that my stepfather
was impenetrable, none could tell whether pro-
found thoughts were or were not hidden behind
his politeness and elegance of manner. I had
often reflected on this, at a period when as yet I
had no stronger motive for examining into the
recesses of the man's character than curiosity, and
the impression came to me with extreme intensity
at the moment when I entered his presence with


176 7 HE SOAV
this be true it must be admitted that ‘Messieurs
les assassins' have a kind of honor of their own,
however odd that may appear, since the child-
killing monster let his own head be cut off without
denouncing the other. Nevertheless, the accom-
plice must have put some bad time over him, after
the discovery of the body and the arrest of his
comrade. I, for my part, would not trust to that
honor, and if the humor took me to commit a
crime, I should do it by myself. Would you?”
I asked jestingly.
These two little words meant nothing, were
merely an insignificant jest, if the man to whom
I put my odd question was innocent. But, if he
were guilty, those two little words were enough
to freeze the marrow in his bones. He surrounded
himself with smoke while listening to me, his eye-
lids half veiled his eyes; I could no longer see
his left hand, which hung over the far side of his
chair, and he had put the right into the pocket
of his morning-coat. There was a short pause be-
fore he answered me—very short—but the interval,
perhaps a minute, that divided his reply from my
question, was a burning one for me. But what of
this? It was not his way to speak in a hurry;
and besides, my question had nothing interesting
in it if he were not guilty, and if he were, would


THE SOAV 177
he not have to calculate the bearing of the phrase
which he was about to utter with the quickness of
thought 2 He closed his eyes completely—his con-
stant habit—and said, in the unconcerned tone of a
man who is talking generalities:
“It is a fact that scraps of conscience do re-
main intact in very depraved individuals. One
sees instances of this especially in countries
where habits and morals are more genuine and
true to nature than ours. There's Spain, for
instance, the country that interests you so much;
when I lived in Spain, it was still infested by
brigands. One had to make treaties with them
in order to cross the Sierras in safety; there was
no case known in which they broke the contract.
The history of celebrated criminal cases swarms
with scoundrels who have been excellent friends,
devoted sons, and constant lovers. But I am of
your opinion, and I think it is best not to count
too much upon them.”
He smiled as he uttered the last words, and
now he looked full at me with those light blue
eyes which were so mysterious and impassible.
No, I was not of a stature to cope with him, to
read his heart by force. It needed capacity of
another kind than mine to play in the case of
this personage the part of the magnate of police
I 2


178 THE SOAV
who magnetizes a criminal. And yet, why did
my suspicions gather force as I felt the masked,
dissimulating, guarded nature of the man in all
its strength? Are there not natures so consti-
tuted that they shut themselves up without
cause, just as others reveal themselves; are there
not souls that love darkness as others love day-
light? Courage, then, let me strike again.
“M. Massol and I,” I resumed, “have been
talking about what kind of life Troppmann's
accomplice must be leading, and also Rochdale's,
for neither of us has relinquished the intention
of finding him. Before M. Massol's retirement
he took the precaution to bar the limitation by
a formal notice, and we have several years before
us in which to search for the man. Do these
criminals sleep in peace? Are they punished
by remorse, or by the apprehension of danger,
even in their momentary security? It would
be strange if they were both at this moment
good, quiet citizens, smoking their cigars like
you and me, loved and loving. Do you believe
in remorse?”
“Yes, I do believe in remorse,” he answered.
Was it the contrast between the affected levity
of my speech, and the seriousness with which he
had spoken, that caused his voice to sound grave


THE SOAV 179
and deep to my ears? No, no; I was deceiving
myself, for without a thrill he had heard the
news that the limitation had been barred, that
the case might be reopened any day—terrible
news for him if he were mixed up with the
murder—and he added, calmly, referring to the
philosophic side of my question only :
“And does M. Massol believe in remorse?”
“M. Massol,” said I, “is a cynic. He has seen
too much wickedness, known too many terrible
stories. He says that remorse is a question of
stomach and religious education, and that a man
with a sound digestion, who had never heard
anything about hell in his childhood, might rob
and kill from morning to night without feeling
any other remorse than fear of the police. He
also maintains, being a sceptic, that we do not
know what part that question of the other life
plays in solitude; and I think he is right, for I
often begin to think of death, at night, and I am
afraid;—yes, I, who don't believe in anything
very much, am afraid. And you,” I continued,
“do you believe in another world 2’”
“Yes.” This time I was sure that there was
an alteration in his voice.
“And in the justice of God?”


I8O THE SOAV
“In His justice and His mercy,” he answered,
in a strange tone.
“Singular justice,” I said vehemently, “which
is able to do everything, and yet delays to punish!
My poor aunt used always to say to me when I
talked to her about avenging my father: “I leave
it to God to punish, but, for my part, if I had
got hold of the murderer, and he was there be-
fore me—if I were sure—no, I would not wait for
the hour of that tardy justice of God.”
I had risen while uttering these words, carried
away by involuntary excitement which I knew to
be unwise. M. Termonde had bent over the fire
again, and once more taken up the tongs. He
made no answer to my outburst. Had he really
felt some slight disturbance, as I believed for an
instant, at hearing me speak of that inevitable
and dreadful morrow of the grave which fills my-
self with such fear now that there is blood upon
my hands? I could not tell. His profile was, as
usual, calm and sad. The restlessness of his
hands—recalling to my mind the gesture with
which he turned and returned his cane while my
mother was telling him of the disappearance of
my father—yes, the restlessness of his hands was
extreme; but he had been working at the fire
with the same feverish eagerness just before,


THE SOAV 181
Silence had fallen between us suddenly; but how
often had the same thing happened? Did it ever
fail to happen when he and I were in each other's
company 2 And then, what could he have to say
against the outburst of my grief and wrath,
orphan that I was 2 Guilty, or innocent, it was
for him to be silent, and he held his peace. My
heart sank; but, at the same time, a senseless
rage seized upon me. At that moment I would
have given my remaining life for the power of
forcing their secret from those shut lips, by any
mode of torture.
My stepfather looked at the clock—he, too, had
risen now—and said: “Shall I put you down
anywhere 2 I have ordered the carriage for three
o'clock, as I have to be at the club at half-past.
There's a ballot coming off to-morrow.” Instead
of the down-stricken criminal I had dreamed of,
there stood before me a man of society thinking
about the affairs of his club. He came with me
so far as the hall, and took leave of me with a
smile.
Why, then, a quarter of an hour afterwards,
when we passed each other on the quay, I, going
homewards on foot, he in his coupé—yes—why
was his face so transformed, so dark and tragic 2
He did not see me. He was sitting back in the


182 THE SOAV
corner, and his clay-colored face was thrown out
by the green leather behind his head. His eyes
were looking—where, and at what? The vision
of distress that passed before me was so different
from the smiling countenance of a while ago that
it shook me from head to foot with an extraordi-
nary emotion, and forced me to exclaim, as though
frightened at my own success:
“Have I struck home 2 ”


XII.
THIs impression of dread kept hold of me
during the whole of that evening, and for several
days afterwards. There is an infinite distance
between our fancies, however precise they may
be, and the least bit of reality. My father's let-
ters had stirred my being to its utmost depths,
had summoned up tragic pictures before my eyes;
but the simple fact of my having seen the agonized
look in my stepfather's face, after my interview
with him, gave me a shock of an entirely different
kind. Even after I had read the letters repeat-
edly, I had cherished a secret hope that I was mis-
taken, that some slight proof would arise and
dispel suspicions which I denounced as senseless,
perhaps because I had a foreknowledge of the
dreadful duty that would devolve upon me when
the hour of certainty had come. Then I should
be obliged to act on a resolution, and I dared not
look the necessity in the face. No, I had not so
regarded it, previous to my meeting with my
enemy, when I saw him cowering in anguish upon
the cushions of his carriage. Now I would force
(183)


184 THE SOM
myself to contemplate it. What should my course
be, if he were guilty? I put this question to my-
self plainly, and I perceived all the horror of the
situation. On whatever side I turned I was con-
fronted with intolerable misery. That things
should remain as they were I could not endure. I
saw my mother approach M. Termonde, as she
often did, and touch his forehead caressingly with
her hand or her lips. That she should do this
to the murderer of my father My very bones
burned at the mere thought of it, and I felt as
though an arrow pierced my breast. So be it !
I would act; I would find strength to go to my
mother and say: “ This man is an assassin,” and
prove it to her—and lo! I was already shrinking
from the pain that my words must inflict on her.
It seemed to me that while I was speaking I
should see her eyes open wide, and, through the
distended pupils, discern the rending asunder of
her being, even to her heart, and that she would
go mad or fall down dead on the spot, before my
eyes. No, I would speak to her myself. If I held
the convincing proof in my hands I would appeal
to justice. But then a new scene arose before me.
I pictured my mother at the moment of her
husband's arrest. She would be there, in the
room, close to him. “Of what crime is he ac-


THE SOM 185
cused ?” she would ask, and she would have to
hear the inevitable answer. And I should be the
voluntary cause of this, I, who, since my child-
hood, and to spare her a pang, had stifled all my
complaints at the time when my heart was laden
with so many sighs, so many tears, so much sor-
row, that it would have been a supreme relief to
lave poured them out to her. I had not done so
then, because I knew that she was happy in her
life, and that it was her happiness only that
blinded her to my pain. I preferred that she
should be blind and happy. And now? Ah
how could I strike her, such a cruel blow, dear
and fragile being that she was 2 The first glimpse
of the double prospect of misery which my future
offered if my suspicions proved just, was too ter-
rible for endurance, and I summoned all my
strength of will to shut out a vision which must
bring about such consequences. Contrary to my
habit, I persuaded myself into a happy solution.
My stepfather looked sad when he passed me in
his coupé ; true, but what did this prove 2 Had
he not many causes of care and trouble, beginning
with his health, which was failing from day to
day ? One fact only would have furnished me
with absolute, indisputable proof; if he had been
shaken by a nervous convulsion while we were


188 THE SOAV
so little able to restrain my quickly-varying emo-
tions, would never be able to extort his secret
from so resolute a man, one so completely mas-
ter of himself as my stepfather. My conscious-
ness of his strength and my weakness made me
dread his presence as much as I desired it. I
was like a novice in arms who was about to
fight a duel with a very skillful adversary; he
desires to defend himself and to be victorious, but
he is doubtful of his own coolness. What was
I to do now, when I had struck a first blow and
it had not been decisive 2 If our interview had
really told upon his conscience, how was I to
proceed to the redoubling of the first effect, to
the final reduction of that proud spirit 2 My
reflections had arrived and stopped at this point, I
was forming and re-forming plans only to abandon
them, when a note reached me from my mother,
complaining that I had not gone to her house since
the day on which I had missed seeing her, and
telling me that my stepfather had been very ill
indeed two days previously with his customary
liver complaint. Two days previously, that was
on the day after my conversation with him. Here
again it might be said that fate was making sport
of me, redoubling the ambiguity of the signs, the
chief cause of my despair. Was the imminence


190 THE SOM’
posal, “he asked to see you himself; he wants to
hear the news from you about yesterday's ballot
at the club.” Was this the real motive of a desire
to see me, which I could not but regard as singu-
lar, or did he want to prove that our interview
had left him wholly unmoved 2 Was I to inter-
pret the message which he had sent me by my
mother as an additional sign of the extreme im-
portance that he attached to the details of “so-
ciety’’ life, or was he, apprehending my supicions,
forestalling them 2 Or, yet again, was he, too,
tortured by the desire to know, by the urgent need
of satisfying his curiosity by the sight of my face,
whereon he might decipher my thoughts?
I entered the room—it was the same that had
been mine when I was a child, but I had not been
inside its door for years—in a state of mind simi-
lar to that in which I had gone to my former in-
terview with him. I had, however, no hope now
that M. Termonde would be brought to his knees
by my direct allusion to the hideous crime of
which I imagined him to be guilty. My stepfather
occupied the room as a sleeping-apartment when
he was ill, ordinarily he only dressed there. The
walls, hung with dark green damask, ill-lighted by
one lamp, with a pink shade, placed upon a pedes-
tal at some distance from the bed, to avoid fatigue


THE SOAV 19 I
to the sick man's eyes, had for their only ornament
a likeness of my mother by Bonnat, one of his
first female portraits. The picture was hung be-
tween the two windows, facing the bed, so that M.
Termonde, when he slept in that room, might turn
his last look at night and his first look in the
morning upon the face whose long-descended
beauty the painter had very finely rendered. No
less finely had he conveyed the something half-
theatrical which characterized that face, the
slightly affected set of the mouth, the far-off look
in the eyes, the elaborate arrangement of the hair.
First, I looked at this portrait; it confronted
me on entering the room; then my glance fell on
my stepfather in the bed. His head, with its white
hair, and his thin yellow face were supported by the
large pillows, round his neck was tied a handker-
chief of pale blue silk which I recognized, for I
had seen it on my mother's neck, and I also recog-
nized the red woollen coverlet that she had knitted
for him ; it was exactly the same as one she had
made for me; a pretty bit of woman's work on
which I had seen her occupied for hours, orna-
mented with ribbons and lined with silk. Ever
and always the smallest details were destined to
renew that impression of a shared interest in my
mother's life from which I suffered so much, and


192 THE SOAV
more cruelly than ever now, by reason of my sus-
picion. I felt that my looks must needs betray
the tumult of such feelings, and, while I seated
myself by the side of the bed, and asked my step-
father how he was, in a voice that sounded to me
like that of another person, I avoided meeting his
eyes. My mother had gone out immediately after
announcing me, to attend to some small matters
relative to the well-being of her dear invalid.
My stepfather questioned me upon the ballot at
the club which he had assigned as a pretext for his
wish to see me. I sat with my elbow on the mar-
ble top of the table and my forehead resting in
my hand; although I did not catch his eye I felt
that he was studying my face, and I persisted in
looking fixedly into the half-open drawer where a
small pocket-pistol, of English make, lay side by
side with his watch, and a brown silk purse, also
made for him by my mother. What were the dark
misgivings revealed by the presence of this weapon
placed within reach of his hand and probably
habitually placed there? Did he interpret my
thoughts from my steady observation ? Or had
he, too, let his glance fall by chance upon the pis-
tol, and was he pursuing the ideas that it sug-
gested in order to keep up the talk it was always
so difficult to maintain between us? The fact is


7THAE SOAV 193
that he said, as though replying to the question in
my mind: “You are looking at that pistol, it is
a pretty thing, is it not ?” He took it up, turned
it about in his hand, and then replaced it in the
drawer, which he closed. “I have a strange
fancy, quite a mania; I could not sleep unless I
had a loaded pistol, there, quite close to me. Af-
ter all it is a habit which does no harm to any one,
and might have its advantages. If your poor
father had carried a weapon like that upon him
when he went to the Imperial Hotel, things would
not have gone so easily with the assassin.”
This time I could not refrain from raising my
eyes and seeking his. How, if he were guilty,
did he dare to recall this remembrance 2 Why,
if he were not, did his glance sink before mine?
Was it merely in following out an association of
ideas that he referred thus to the death of my
father; was it for the purpose of displaying his
entire unconcern respecting the subject-matter of
our last interview; or was he using a probe to
discover the depth of my suspicion ? After this
allusion to the mysterious murder which had
made me fatherless, he went on to say:
“And, by-the-bye, have you seen M. Massol
again?”
I3


THE SOAV 195
would suffer too much ; ” and was his motive
merely the solicitude of a man who desires to
save his wife from the revival of a sad remem-
brance? She came in ; with the same glance she
saw us both, lighted by the same ray from the
lamp, and she gave us a smile, meant for both of
us in common, and fraught with the same tender-
ness for each. It had been the dream of her life
that we should be together thus, and both of us
with her, and, as she had told me at Compiègne,
she imputed the obstacles which had hindered the
realization of her dream to my moody disposition.
She came toward us, smiling, and carrying a
silver tray with a glass of Vichy water upon it;
this she held out to my stepfather, who drank the
water eagerly, and, returning the glass to her,
kissed her hand. -
“Let us leave him to rest,” she said, “his
head is burning.” Indeed, in merely touching
the tips of his fingers, which he placed in mine, I
could feel that he was highly feverish; but how
was I to interpret this symptom, which was
ambiguous like all the others, and might, like
them, signify either moral or physical distress?
I had sworn to myself that I would know; but
how 2–how?
I had been surprised by my stepfather's having


196 THE SOAV
expressed a wish to see me during his illness;
but I was far more surprised when, a fortnight
later, my servant announced M. Termonde in
person, at my abode. I was in my study, and
occupied in arranging some papers of my father's
which I had brought up from Compiègne. I had
passed these two weeks at my poor aunt's house,
making a pretext of a final settlement of affairs,
but in reality because I needed to reflect at
leisure upon the course to be taken with respect
to M. Termonde, and my reflections had increased
my doubts. At my request, my mother had
written to me three times, giving me news of the
patient, so that I was aware he was now better
and able to go out. On my return, the day be.
fore, I had selected a time at which I was almost
sure not to see any one for my visit to my
mother's house. And now, here was my step-
father, who had not been inside my door ten times
since I had been installed in an apartment of my
own, paying me a visit without the loss bf an
hour. My mother, he said, had sent him with a
message to me. She had lent me two numbers
of a review, and she now wanted them back as
she was sending the yearly volume to be bound;
so, as he was passing the door, he had stepped in
to ask me for them. I examined him closely


THE SOAV 197
while he was giving this simple explanation of
his visit, without being able to decide whether
the pretext did or did not conceal his real motive.
His complexion was more sallow than usual, the
look in his eyes was more glittering, he handled
his hat nervously.
“The reviews are not there,” I answered ; “we
shall probably find them in the smoking-room.”
It was not true that the two numbers were not
...there; I knew their exact place on the table in
my study; but my father's portrait hung in the
smoking-room, and the notion of bringing M.
Termonde face to face with the picture, to see how
he would bear the confrontation, had occurred to
me. At first he did not observe the portrait at
all ; but I went to the side of the room on which
the easel supporting it stood, and his eyes, follow-
ing all my movements, encountered it. His eye-
lids opened and closed rapidly, and a sort of dark
thrill passed over his face; then he turned his
eyes carelessly upon another little picture hanging
upon the wall. I did not give him time to re-
cover from the shock; but, in pursuance of the
almost brutal method from which I had hitherto
gained so little, I persisted :
“Do you not think,” said I, “that my father's
portrait is strikingly like me? A friend of mine


198 7 HE SOAV
was saying the other day that if I had my hair
cut in the same way, my head would be exactly
like—”
He looked first at me, and then at the picture,
in the most leisurely way, like an expert in paint-
ing examining a work of art, without any other
motive than that of establishing its authenticity.
If this man had procured the death of him whose
portrait he studied thus, his power over himself
was indeed wonderful. But—was not the experi-
ment a crucial one for him 2 To betray his trouble
would be to avow all ? Howardently I longed to
place my hand upon his heart at that moment and
to count its beats.
“You do resemble him,” he said at length,
“but not to that degree. The lower part of the
chin especially, the nose and the mouth, are alike,
but you have not the same look in the eyes, and
the brows, forehead, and cheeks are not of the
same shape.” -
“Do you think,” said I, “that the resemblance
is strong enough for me to startle the murderer if
he were to meet me suddenly here, and thus?”—
I advanced upon him, looking into the depths of
his eyes as though I were imitating a dramatic
scene. “Yes,” I continued, “would the likeness
of feature enable me to produce the effect of a


THE SON 199
spectre, on saying to the man, “Do you recognize
the son of him whom you killed?’”
“Now we are returning to our former discus.
sion,” he replied, without any farther alteration
of his countenance; “that would depend upon
the man's remorse, if he had any, and on his
nervous system.”
Again we were silent. His pale and sickly but
motionless face exasperated me by its complete
absence of expression. In those minutes—and
how many such scenes have we not acted together
since my suspicion was first conceived—I felt my-
self as bold and resolute as I was the reverse
when alone with my own thoughts. His impas-
sive manner drove me wild again; I did not limit
myself to this second experiment, but immediately
devised a third, which ought to make him suffer
as much as the two others, if he were guilty. I
was like a man who strikes his enemy with a
broken-handled knife, holding it by the blade in
his shut hand; the blow draws his own blood also.
But no, no ; I was not exactly that man ; I could
not doubt or deny the harm that I was doing to
myself by these cruel experiments, while he, my
adversary, hid his wound so well that I saw it not.
No matter, the mad desire to know overcame my
pain.


THE SOAV 20 ſ
workings of the soul are reflected. The bent
brow was, however, merely a contraction of the
muscles of the eye, caused by regarding an object
closely, and it cleared immediately. He handed
me back the letters without any question as to
their contents.
“This time,” said he, simply, “there really is
an astonishing resemblance.” Then returning to
the ostensible object of his visit—“And the re-
views 2 " he asked. -
I could have shed tears of rage. Once more I
was conscious that I was a nervous youth engaged
in a struggle with a resolutely self-possessed man.
I locked up the letters in the safe, and I now rum-
maged the small bookcase in the smoking-room,
then the large one in my study, and finally pre-
tended to be greatly astonished at finding the two
reviews under a heap of newspapers on my table.
What a silly farcel Was my stepfather taken in
by it? When I handed him the two numbers, he
rose from the chair that he had sat in during my
pretended search in the chimney-corner of the
smoking-room, with his back to my father's por-
trait. But, again, what did this attitude prove 2
Why should he care to contemplate an image
which could not be anything but painful to him,
even if he were innocent 2


2O2 7 HAE SOAV
“I am going to take advantage of the sunshine
to have a turn in the Bois,” said he. “I have my
coupé; will you come with me?”
Was he sincere in proposing this téte-à-téte
drive which was so contrary to our habits? What
was his motive: the wish to show me that he had
not even understood my attack, or the yearning
of the sick man who dreads to be alone? I
accepted the offer at all hazards, in order to con-
tinue my observation of him, and a quarter of an
hour afterwards we were speeding toward the
Arc de Triomphe in that same carriage in which
I had seen him pass by me, beaten, broken, almost
killed, after our first interview. This time, he
looked like another man. Warmly wrapped in an
overcoat lined with seal fur, smoking a cigar,
waving his hand to this person or that through
the open window, he talked on and on, telling me
anecdotes of all sorts, which I had either heard or
not heard previously, about people whose car-
riages crossed ours. He seemed to be talking
before me and not with me, so little heed did he
take of whether he was telling what I might
know, or apprising me of what I did not know. I
concluded from this—for, in certain states of
mind, every mood is significant—that he was
talking thus in order to ward off some fresh at-


THAE SOAV 203
tempt on my part. But I had not the courage to
recommence my efforts to open the wound in his
heart and set it bleeding afresh so soon. Imerely
listened to him, and once again I remarked the
strange contrast between his private thoughts and
the rigid doctrines which he generally professed.
One would have said that in his eyes the high
society, whose principles he habitually defended,
was a brigand's cave. It was the hour at which
women of fashion go out for their shopping and
their calls, and he related all the scandals of their
conduct, false or true. According to him, one of
these great ladies was the mistress of her hus-
band's brother, another was notoriously under the
protection of an old diplomatist who had enriched
himself by a disgraceful marriage, a third had
married an imbecile widower, and, in order that
she might inherit the whole of his fortune, had
incited the man's son to so vicious a life that it
had killed him at nineteen. He dwelt on all
these stories and calumnies with a horrid pleasure,
as though he rejoiced in the vileness of humanity.
Did this mean the facile misanthropy of a profli-
gate, accustomed to such conversations at the
club, or in sporting circles, during which each
man lays bare his brutal egotism, and voluntarily
exaggerates the depth of his own disenchantment


7 HE SOAV 2O5
horse, shaking its head and its bit, and driven by
a wooden-faced coachman—then, the man. He
walked by my side, a tall figure in a long over-
coat. The collar of dark brown fur brought out
the premature whiteness of his hair. He held a
cane in his gloved hand, and struck away the
pebbles with it impatiently. Why does his image
return to me at this hour with an unendurable
exactness 2 It is because, as I observed him
walking along the wintry road, with his head
bent forward, I was struck as I had never been
before with the sense of his absolute unremitting
wretchedness. Was this due to the influence of
our conversation of that afternoon, to the de-
jection which his sneering, sniggering talk had
produced in me, or to the death of nature all
around us? For the first time since I knew him,
a pang of pity mingled with my hatred of him,
while he walked by my side, trying to warm him-
self in the pale sunshine, a shrunken, weary,
lamentable creature. Suddenly he turned his face,
which was contracted with pain, to me, and said:
“I do not feel well. Let us go home.” When
we were in the carriage, he said, putting his sud-
den seizure upon the pretext of his health :
“I have not long to live, and I suffer so much
that I should have made an end of it all years


2O6 THE SOAV
ago, had it not been for your mother.” Then he
went on talking of her with the blindness that I
had already remarked in him. Never, in my most
hostile hours, had I doubted that his worship of
his wife was perfectly sincere, and once again I
listened to him, as we drove rapidly into Paris in
the gathering twilight, and all that he said proved
how much he loved her. Alas ! his passion rated
her more highly than my tenderness. He praised
the exquisite tact with which my mother dis-
cerned the things of the heart, to me, who knew
so well her want of feeling ! He lauded the keen-
ness of her intelligence to me, whom she had so
little understood l And he added, he who had so
largely contributed to our separation:
“Love her dearly, you will soon be the only
one to love her.”
If he were the criminal I believed him to be,
he was certainly aware that in thus placing my
mother between himself and me, he was putting
in my way the only barrier which I could never,
never break down, and I on my side understood
clearly, and with bitterness of soul, that the ob-
stacles so placed would be stronger than even the
most fatal certainty. What, then, was the good
of seeking any further? Why not renounce my
useless quest at once 2 But it was already too late.


XIII.
HAVE I been a coward 7 When I think of what
I have accomplished with the same hand that
holds my pen, I am forced to answer: “No.”
How then shall I explain that these first scenes,
that in which I had tried to torture my stepfather
by talking to him of crimes committed by confed-
erates, and the danger of complicity; that in
which I said to him as I sat by his bedside and
looked him full in the face : “No, M. Massol has
not forgotten you ; ” that in my room, when I
placed the accusing letters in his hands;–yes,
how shall I explain that these three scenes were
succeeded by so many days of inaction ? The
proof that lies to one's hand, that stares one in
the face like a living thing, was furnished to me
by chance. It was not I who dragged it out of
the darkness where it lurked into the light. But
was this my fault 2. From the moment when my
stepfather had the courage to resist my first at-
tack, the most sudden and unexpected of the
three, what was there for me to do beyond watch-
ing for the slightest indications, and probing the
(207)


THE SOAV 209
well. Whom shall we ask to dinner on Wednes-
day?” It was on Wednesday they received their
friends that winter and until the spring. Thus
spoke the soft voice of my mother, and the evi-
dence of their perfect union tortured me ; but the
thirst to know was stronger and fiercer than that
pain. My suspicions rose to fever heat, and pro-
duced in me an irresistible craving to keep him
always under my eyes, to inflict the torment of
my constant presence upon him. He yielded to
this with a facility which always surprised me.
Had he sensations analogous to mine 7 Now, when
the whole mystery is unveiled, and I know the
part he took in the horrible plot, I understand the
torturing kind of attraction which I had for him.
He was wholly possessed by the fixed idea of his
accomplished crime, and I formed a living portion
of that fixed idea, just as he formed a living por-
tion of my dark and continuous reflections.
Henceforth he could think only of me, just as I
could think of none but him. Our mutual late
drew us together like a mutual love. When we
were apart the tempest of wild fancies broke out
with too great fury. At least, this was so in my
case ; and although his presence was painful to
me, it stilled at the same time the kind of internal
hurricane which hurled me from one extremity of
I4


2 IO . THE SON
the possible to the other, when he was out of my
sight. No sooner was I alone than the wildest
projects suggested themselves to me. I had a
vision of myself, seizing him by the throat, with
the cry of “Assassin assassin " and forcing him
to confession by violence. I fancied myself in-
ducing M. Massol to resume the abandoned In-
struction on my account, and pictured his coming
to my mother's house with the new data supplied
by me. I fancied myself bribing two or three
rascals, carrying off my stepfather and shutting
him up in some lonely house in the suburbs of
Paris, until he should have confessed the crime.
My reason staggered under these vagaries into
which the excess of my desire, still further stim-
ulated by the sense of my powerlessness, drove
me. And he too must have lived through hours
like these ; when I was not there, he must have
formed and renounced a hundred plans. He asked
of himself, “What does he know ** he answered,
according to the hours, “He knows all—he
knows nothing. What will he do?” and con-
cluded, by turns, either that I would do all, or
that I would do nothing. But, when we were
together, face to face, the reality asserted itself,
and put fancy to flight. We remained together,
studying each other, like two animals about to


2 I 2 7//E SOAV
out having made any appointment: we were drawn
toward each other by the force of our common
obsession. While we were riding side by side,
talking of indifferent matters, I observed him
handling his horse so roughly that several times
he narrowly escaped being thrown, although he
was a good horseman. He preferred restive
horses, and displayed a cold ferocity in his treat-
ment of the animals. What he did with his
horses, unjust, despotic, and implacable as he was,
I thought within myself he had done with life,
bending all things and all persons about him to
his will. He was excessively vindictive, to the
point indeed of asserting that he did not attach
any meaning to the word “forgiveness,” and he
had made for himself a place apart in the world,
being little liked, much feared, and yet received
by the most exclusive section of society. Under
the perfect elegance and correct style of his exte-
rior, he hid the daring courage which had been
proved during the war, when he had fought with
great gallantry under the walls of Paris. From
his bearing on horseback, I arrived at far other
conclusions; his innate violence convinced me
that he was capable of anything to gratify his
passions. In the courage which he displayed in
1870, I thought I could discern a kind of bargain


7THE SOAV 213
made with himself, a rehabilitation of himself in
own eyes, if indeed he had committed the crime.
Again, I wondered whether it was merely an
outcome of his innate ferocity, only a vent for
the pent-up despair in which he lived, for all his
outside show of happiness. But whence this
despair? Was it only the moral effect of his bad
health 2 Then, as I rode by his side, I set myself
to examine the physiology of the man, searching
for a correspondence between the construction of
his frame, and the signs and tokens given in spe-
cialist books upon the subject, as those which in-
dicate criminals; the upper part of his body was
too heavy for his legs, his arms were too strongly
developed, the expression of the lower jaw was
hard, and his thumb too long. The latter pecul-
iarity assumed additional importance to my mind
from the fact that my stepfather had a habit of
closing his hand with the thumb inwards as though
to hide it. I was well aware that I must not set
any real store by observations of this kind ; I re-
jected them as puerile, but I returned to them
again, in order to supplement them by others which
gave value and importance to the former.
I reflected deeply upon the hereditary probabil-
ities of M. Termonde's character, during our rides
in the Bois. His maternal grandfather had shot


7 HE SOAV 215
violent emotion with the mask of calmness. Now,
it gave me a sort of pleasure to contemplate the
depth of his hypocrisy. He had such an inveter-
ate habit of dissimulation, such a mania for it, in-
deed, that he kept silence respecting the smallest
events of his life, even to his wife. He never
spoke of the visits he made, the people he met,
the plans he formed, or the books he read. He
had evidently trained himself to forecast the most
remote consequences of every sentence that he
uttered. This unremitting watch kept upon him-
self in a life apparently so easy, prosperous, and
happy, could not fail to impress even the least ob-
servant people with an idea that the man was an
enigmatical personage. On putting together the
various pieces of his strange character and con-
necting his dissimulation with the passionate frenzy
which I had observed in him, he appeared to me in
the light of an infinitely dangerous being. He
asked a great many questions, and he spoke very
deliberately, very temperately, unless he were in a
certain singular mood like that in which he had
intoxicated himself with his own words, on the oc-
casion of our drive in his coupé. Then he would
talk on and on, with a nervous, sneering laugh,
and give utterance to theories so cynical, and to
ideas and conceits so peculiar that the whole thing


216 THE SOM
made me shudder. He had, for instance, an ex-
traordinary knowledge of all questions relating to
medical jurisprudence. A case, which made a
great sensation, was tried during that winter, and
in the course of an animated discussion in which
several persons took part, my stepfather chanced
to mention the date of the arrest of the notorious
criminal Conty de la Pommerais. I verified the
statement; it was correct. How strangely full of
things connected with crime his mind must have
been, and how strongly this bore upon certain
data, for which I was indebted to my interviews
with M. Massol For, was it not an instance of
the all absorbing, single thought which the old
judge declared he had discerned in the great ma-
jority of murderers, that which leads them to re-
turn to the scene of murder, to approach the body
of their victim when it is exposed in a public
place, to read every line of the newspapers in
which details of their crimes are to be found, to
follow the record of deeds similar to their own
with eager attention? At other times, my step-
father fell into a deep silence from which it was
impossible to rouse him, and he smoked cigar after
cigar while the silent mood was upon him, not.
withstanding the reiterated prohibition of the doc-
tors. Tobacco by day, morphine by night—what


THE SOAV 217
suffering was it he tried to baffle by such an abuse
of narcotics? Was it the pain of his malady, or
torture of another kind, such as I imagined when
I gave myself up to my tragic conjectures?
Again, he had intervals of lassitude so great that
even my presence could not rouse him—the lassi-
tude of a man who has reached the limit of what
he can suffer, and who can feel no more, because
he has felt too much. I found him in this condi-
tion two or three times, alone in the twilight, so
utterly sunk in weariness that he took no notice
of me when I seated myself opposite to him and
gazed at him, also in silence. I was tempted to
cry out to him: “Confess, confess, confess at
once l’’. And I should not have been surprised had
he surrendered, allowed his secret to escape him,
and answered: “It is true.” On these occasions
I felt the inanity of the small facts I had so care-
fully collected. What if he were not guilty? I
kept silence, a prey to the fever of doubt which
had been devouring me for weeks, and at last he
emerged from his taciturnity to talk to me of my
mother. Why? Was he thinking of her so in-
tently just then because he was very ill and be-
lieved that he was on the eve of an eternal part-
ing 2 Or was he merely striving to defend him-
self against me with that buckler before which I


2 I 8 7 HE SOAV
always must retreat 2 Was this a supplication to
me to spare her a supreme grief? Yes; the latter
was the true explanation. With his inborn cour-
age and his natural violence, he would not have
endured the outrage of my steady immovable
gaze, the menacing allusions I frequently made,
the continuous threat of my presence, but for his
desire to spare my mother a scene between us, at
any cost, although he might be ever so sure that
no solidly certain proof could spring up accident-
ally in the course of it. But—rather than be ac-
cused of this thing in her presence—he preferred
to suffer as he was suffering. For he loved her.
However intolerable that sentiment might appear
to me, it was indispensable that I should admit it,
even in the hypothesis of the crime, in that case
above all indeed. And then I knew that notwith-
standing our mutual enmity we felt ourselves
obliged to act in common so as not to endanger
the happiness of the being who was so dear to
both of us. Nevertheless, the difference between
us was great. He might have a feeling of sullen
jealousy because of my attachment to my mother,
but it could not give him the shudder of horror
that passed over me with the thought that he
loved her as much as I did, and was beloved by


THE SOAV 219
her, and yet had my father's blood upon his con-
science
He loved her It was for her that he had
bought the assassin's hand, and caused that blood
to be shed, and it was she who brought him to
destruction at last, she who moved about between
us with the same look of happy tenderness she
had cast upon us both, on the evening when she
found me by her ailing husband's bedside, and
when her smile had beamed so softly upon him
and me—the very same smile ! The efforts he
made to preserve the tranquillity of that woman's-
heart of hers were destined to destroy him.
Yes, all the precautions he had taken with a view
to warding off eventualities which he thought
possible, were the cause of his ultimate ruin,
from the cunning disclosures he made to the
gentle unsuspecting creature, even to the false
affection which he pretended for me in her
presence. If he and I had not made a pretence
of mutual regard, she would never have spoken
to me as she did speak, I should never have
learned from her what I did learn, with the result
that the silent duel in which my useless energies
were being exhausted was brought to a sudden
end. Is there then an overruling fate, as certain
men have believed, ay, even those who, like


7HAE SOAV 22 I
detail, passing no judgment on myself. And now,
as the scene approaches which determined the
new and last period of the drama of my life, my
spirit shrinks. Coward coward coward Once
more I yield to a kind of stupefaction at the
thought that it is really my own story I am set-
ting down, that thus I acted, that there is in my
memory. No, I have pledged my word; I
will go on. Yes, with this hand that holds my
pen I have done the deed. Yes, I have blood,
blood, an indelible stain upon these fingers.
They falter, but they must needs obey me and
write out the story to its end.


XIV.
AT the beginning of the summer, six months
after my aunt's death, I was in exactly the same
position with respect to my stepfather as on that
already distant day when, maddened with sus-
picion by my father's letters, I entered his study,
to play the part of the physician who examines a
man's body, searching with his finger for the
tender spot that is probably a symptom of a
hidden abscess. I was full of intuitions now, just
as I was at the moment when he passed me in his
carriage with his terrible face, but I did not grasp
a single certainty. Would I have persisted in a
struggle in which I felt beforehand that I must
be beaten ? I cannot tell; for, when I no longer
expected any solution to the problem set before
me for my grief, a grief, too, that was both sterile
and mortal, a day came on which I had a con-
versation with my mother so startling and ap-
palling that to this hour my heart stands still
when I think of it. I have spoken of never-to-be-
forgotten dates; among them is the 25th of May,
1879.
(222)


THE SOAV 223
My stepfather, who was on the eve of his de-
parture for Vichy, had just had a severe attack
of liver-complaint, the first since his illness after
our terrible conversation in the month of Janu-
ary. I know that I counted for nothing—at least
in any direct or positive way—in this acute re-
vival of his malady. The fight between us,
which went on without the utterance of a word
on either side, and with no witnesses except our-
selves, had not been marked by any fresh episode;
I therefore attributed this complication to the
natural development of the disease under which
he labored. I can exactly recall what I was
thinking of on the 25th of May, at five o'clock in
the evening, as I walked up the stairs in the
hôtel on the Boulevard de Latour-Marbourg. I
hoped to learn that my stepfather was better, be-
cause I had been witnessing my mother's distress
for a whole week, and also-I must tell all—be-
cause to know he was going to this watering-
place was a great relief to me, on account of the
separation it would bring about. I was so tired
of my unprofitable pain ' My wretched nerves
were in such a state of tension that the slightest
disagreeable impression became a torment. I
could not sleep without the aid of narcotics, and
such sleep as these procured was full of cruel


THE SOAV 225
his raising, that his absence gave me breathing-
time, without my being obliged to reproach my-
self with weakness. Such were my reflections as
I mounted the wooden staircase, covered with a
red carpet, and lighted by stained-glass windows,
that led to my mother's favorite hall. The
servant who opened the door informed me in
answer to my question that my stepfather was
better, and I entered the room with which my
saddest recollections were connected, more cheer-
fully than usual. Little did I think that the dial
hung upon one of the walls was ticking off in
minutes one of the most solemn hours of my life'
My mother was seated before a small writing-
table, placed in a corner of the deep glazed pro-
jection which formed the garden-end of the hall.
Her left hand supported her head, and in the
right, instead of going on with the letter she had
begun to write, she held her idle pen, in a golden
holder with a fine pearl set in the top of it (the
latter small detail was itself a revelation of her
luxurious habits). She was so lost in reverie that
she did not hear me enter the room, and I
looked at her for some time without moving,
startled by the expression of misery in her refined
and lovely face. What dark thought was it that
closed her mouth, furrowed her brow, and trans-
I5


230 THE SOAV
fide this thing, except to you ? From whom ask
counsel ?” And then she went on as though she
were speaking to herself, “If he were ever to
apply to him 2 °
“He | Whom 2 ”
“André, will you swear to me by your love for
me, that you will never, you understand me,
never, make the least allusion to what I am going
to tell you?”
“Mother | " I replied, in the same tone of re-
proach, and then added at once, to draw her on,
“I give you my word of honor l’”
“Nor—” she did not pronounce a name, but
she pointed anew to the door of the sick man's
I'OOnn.
“Never.”
“You have heard of Edmond Termonde, his
brother ?” Her voice was lowered, as though
she were afraid of the words she uttered, and now
her eyes only were turned toward the closed
door, indicating that she meant the brother of her
husband. I had a vague knowledge of the story :
it was of this brother I had thought when I was
reviewing the mental history of my stepfather's
family. I knew that Edmond Termonde had dis-
sipated his share of the family fortune, no less
than 1,200,000 francs, in a few years; that he had


THE SON 231
then enlisted, that he had gone on leading a de-
bauched life in his regiment; that, having no
money to come into from any quarter, and after a
heavy loss at cards, he had been tempted into
committing both theft and forgery. Then, find-
ing himself on the brink of being detected, he had
deserted. The end was that he did justice on
himself by drowning himself in the Seine, after he
had implored his brother's forgiveness in terms
which proved that some sense of moral decency
still lingered in him. The stolen money was
made good by my stepfather; the scandal was
hushed up, thanks to the scoundrel's disappear-
ance. I had reconstructed the whole story in my
mind from the gossip of my good old nurse, and
also from certain traces of it which I had found
in some passages of my father's correspondence.
Thus, when my mother put her question to me in
so agitated a way, I supposed she was about to
tell me of family grievances on the part of her
husband which were totally indifferent to me, and
it was with a feeling of disappointment that I
asked her:
“Edmond Termonde 2 The man who killed
Himself 2 ”
She bent her head to answer, yes, to the first


234 THE SOAV
wretch for some time—he has kept his word—
André, he is in Paris!”
I had listened to my mother with growing at-
tention. At any period of my life, I, who had not
the same notions of my stepfather's sensitiveness
of feeling which my dear mother entertained,
would have been astonished at the influence exer-
cised by this disgraced brother. There are simi-
lar pests in so many families, that it is plainly to
the interest of society to separate the various rep-
resentatives of the same name from each other.
At any time I should have doubted whether M.
Termonde, a bold and violent man as I knew him
to be, had yielded under the menace of a scandal
whose real importance he would have estimated
quite correctly. Then I would have explained
this weakness by the recollections of his child.
hood, by a promise made to his dying parents,
but now, in the actual state of my mind, full as 1
was of the suspicions which had been occupying
my thoughts for weeks, it was inevitable that an-
other idea should occur to me. And that idea
grew, and grew, taking form as my mother went
on speaking. No doubt my face betrayed the
dread with which the notion inspired me, for she
interrupted her narrative to ask me :
“Are you feeling ill, André 2"


THE SOAV 235
I found strength to answer, “No ; I am upset
by having found you in tears. It is nothing.”
She believed me; she had just seen me over-
come by her emotion ; she kissed me tenderly, and
I begged her to continue. She then told me that
one day in the previous week a stranger, coming
ostensibly from one of their friends in London,
had asked to see my stepfather. He was ushered
into the hall, and into her presence, and she
guessed at once by the extraordinary agitation
which M. Termonde displayed that the man was
Edmond. The two brothers went into my step-
father's private room, while my mother remained
in the hall, half dead with anxiety and suspense,
every now and then hearing the angry tones of
their voices, but unable to distinguish any words.
At length the brother came out, through the hall,
and looked at her as he passed by with eyes that
transfixed her with fear.
“And the same evening,” she went on,
“Jacques took to his bed. Now, do you under-
stand my despair? Ah, it is not our name that I
care for. I wear myself out with repeating,
* What has this to do with us? How can we be
spattered by this mud.” It is his health, his pre-
cious health ! The doctor says that every violent
emotion is a dose of poison to him. Ah!” she


236 THE SOM’
cried, with a gesture of despair, “this man will
kill him.”
To hear that cry, which once again revealed to
me the depth of her passion for my stepfather, to
hear it at this moment, and to think what I was
thinking !
“You saw him?” I asked, hardly knowing what
I said.
“Have I not told you that he passed by me,
there?” and, with terror depicted in her face, she
showed me the place on the carpet.
“And you are sure that the man was his
brother ?”
“Jacques told me so in in the evening; but I
did not require that; I should have recognized
him by the eyes. How strange it is Those two
brothers, so different; Jacques so refined, so dis-
tinguished, so noble-minded, and the other, a big,
heavy, vulgar lout, common-looking, and a rascal
—well, they have the same look in their eyes.”
“And under what name is he in Paris?”
“I do not know. I dare not speak of him any
more. If he knew that I have told you this, with
his ideas ' But then, dear, you would have heard
it at some time or other; and besides,” she added
with firmness,” “I would have told you long ago
about this wretched secret if I had dared You


THE SOAV 237
are a man now, and you are not bound by this ex-
cessively scrupulous fraternal affection. Advise
me, André, what is to be done 7”
“I do not understand you.”
“Yes, yes. There must be some means of in-
forming the police and having this man arrested
without its being talked of in the newspapers or
elsewhere. Jacques would not do this, because
the man is his brother; but if we were to act, you
and I, on our own side 2 I have heard you say
that you visit M. Massol, whom we knew at the
time of our great misfortune; suppose I were to
go to him and ask his advice? Ah I must keep
my husband alive—he must be saved I love him
too much ’’
Why was I siezed with a panic at the idea that
she might carry out this project, and apply to the
former Judge of Instruction—I, who had not ven-
tured to go to his house since my aunt's death for
fear he should divine my suspicions merely by
looking at me? What was it that I saw so clearly,
that made me implore her to abandon her idea in
the very name of the love she bore her husband 2
“You will not do this,” I said; “you have no
right to do it. He would never forgive you, and
he would have just cause; it would be betraying
him.”


238 THE SOM’
“Betraying him It would be saving him 1"
“And if his brother's arrest were to strike
him a fresh blow 2 If you were to see him ill,
more ill than ever, on account of what you had
done?”
I had used the only argument that could have
convinced her. Strange irony of fate I calmed
her, I persuaded her not to act—I, who had
suddenly conceived the monstrous notion that the
doer of the murderous deed, the docile instru-
ment in my stepfather's hands, was this infamous
brother—that Edmond Termonde, and Rochdale
were one and the same man!


XV.
THE night which followed that conversation
with my mother remains in my memory as the
most wretched I had hitherto endured; and yet
how many sleepless nights had I passed, while all
the world around me slept, in bitter conflict with
a thought which held mine eyes waking and de-
voured my heart! I was like a prisoner who has
sounded every inch of his dungeon—the walls,
the floor, the ceiling—and who, on shaking the
bars of his window for the hundredth time, feels
one of the iron rods loosen under the pressure.
He hardly dares to believe in his good fortune,
and he sits down upon the ground almost dazed
by the vision of deliverance that has dawned
upon him. “I must be cool-headed now,” said I
to myself, as I walked to and fro in the smoking-
room, whither I had retired without tasting the
meal that was served on my return. Evening
came, then the black night; the dawn followed,
and once more the full day. Still I was there,
striving to see clearly amid the cloud of supposi-
tions in which an event, simple in itself (only
(239)


240 THE SOAV
that in my state of mind no event would have
seemed simple), had wrapped me. I was too
well used to these mental tempests not to know
that the only safety consisted in clinging to the
positive facts, as though to immovable rocks. In
the present instance, the positive facts reduced
themselves to two: first, I had just learned that
a brother of M. Termonde, who passed for dead,
and of whom my stepfather never spoke, existed;
secondly, that this man, disgraced, proscribed,
ruined, an outlaw in fact, exercised a dictator-
ship of terror over his rich, honored, and irre-
proachable brother. The first of these two facts
explained itself. It was quite natural that
Jacques Termonde should not dispel the legend
of the suicide, which was of his own invention,
and had saved the other from the galleys. It is
never pleasant to have to own a thief, a forger, or
a deserter, for one's nearest relation; but this,
after all, is only an excessively disagreeable
matter. The second fact was of a different
kind. The disproportion between the cause
assigned by my stepfather and its result in the
terror from which he was suffering was too great.
The dominion which Edmond Termonde exer-
cised over his brother was not to be justified by
the threat of his return, if that return were not to


THE SON 243
took up the history of the crime from the moment
at which my father's correspondence concerning
Jacques Termonde became explicit, that is to say,
in January, 1864. -
So as to rid my judgment of every trace of
personal enmity, I suppressed the names in my
thoughts, reducing the dreadful occurrence by
which I had suffered to the bareness of an ab-
stract narrative. A man is desperately in love
with the wife of one of his intimate friends, a
woman whom he knows to be absolutely, spot-
lessly virtuous; he knows, he feels, that if she
were free she would love him ; but that, not being
free, she will never, never be his. This man is of
the temperament which makes criminals, his pas-
sions are violent in the extreme, he has no scru-
ples and a despotic will; he is accustomed to see
everything give way to his desires. He perceives
that his friend is growing jealous; a little later
and the house will no longer be open to him.
Would not the thought come to him—if the hus-
band could be got rid of 2 And yet 2 This
dream of the death of him, who forms the sole
obstacle to his happiness, troubles the man's head,
it recurs once, twice, many times, and he turns
the fatal idea over and over again in his brain
until he becomes used to it. He arrives at the


THE SOAV 245
The rich brother proposes the blood-bargain to the
poor brother. He offers him money; a hundred
thousand francs, two hundred thousand, three
hundred thousand. From what motive should
the scoundrel hesitate to accept the offer 2 Moral
ideas? What is the morality of a rake who has
gone from libertinism to theft 2 Under the in-
fluence of my vengeful thoughts I had read the
criminal news of the day in the journals, and the
reports of criminal trials, too assiduously for years
past, not to know how a man becomes a murderer.
How many cases of stabbing, shooting, and pois-
oning have there not been, in which the gain was
entirely uncertain, and the conditions of danger
extreme, merely to enable the perpetrators to go,
presently, and expend the murder money in some
low haunt of depravity | Fear of the scaffold 2
Then nobody would kill. Besides, debauchees,
whether they stop short at vice or roll down the
descent into crime, have no foresight of the
future. Present sensation is too strong for them :
its image abolishes all other images, and absorbs
all the vital forces of the temperament and the
soul. An old dying mother, children perishing of
hunger, a despairing wife; have these pictures
of their deeds ever arrested drunkards, gamblers,
or profligates? No more have the tragic phantoms


THE SOAV 249
passion for the wife of the murdered man, my
aunt knew it well, she had in her hands indis-
putable proofs of my father's suspicions, how
came she not to have thought as I was now think-
ing 2 And how did I know that she had not
thought just as I was thinking 2 She had been
tormented by suspicions, even she, too; she had
lived and died haunted by them. The only dif-
ference was that she had included my mother in
them, being incapable of forgiving her the suffer-
ings of the brother whom she loved so deeply. To
act against my mother was to act against me, so
she had forsworn that idea for ever. But, if she
would have acted against my mother, how could
she have gone beyond the domain of vague induc-
tions, since she, no more than I, could have di-
vined my stepfather's alibi, or known of the actual
existence of Edmond Termonde 2 No ; that I
should be the first to explain the murder of my
father as I did, proved only that I had come into
possession of additional information respecting
the surroundings of the crime, and not that the
Conjectures drawn from it were baseless.
Other objections presented themselves. If my
stepfather had employed his brother to commit
the murder, how came he to reveal the existence
of that brother to his wife 2 An answer to this


252 THE SOAV
from justice by the statute of limitation. He was
ill. What, then, was more natural than that he
should wish to recover those papers which might
become a means of levying blackmail upon his
widow after his death, and dishonoring his
memory in the heart of that woman whom he had
loved—even to crime—at any price? Such a
negotiation could only be conducted in person.
My stepfather would have reflected that his
brother would not fulfill his threat without mak-
ing a last attempt; he would come to Paris, and
the accomplices would again be face to face after .
all these years. A fresh but final offer of money
would have to be made to Edmond, the price of
the relinquishment of the sole proof whereby the
mystery of the Imperial Hotel could be cleared
up. In this calculation my stepfather had
omitted to forecast the chance that his brother
might come to the hôtel on the Boulevard de
Latour-Maubourg, that he would be ushered into
my mother's presence, and that the result of the
shock to himself—his health being already under-
mined by his prolonged mental anguish—would
be a fresh attack of his malady. In events, there
is always the unexpected to put to rout the skil-
ful calculations of the most astute and the most
prudent, and when I reflected that so much cun-


THA; SOAV 253
ning, such continual watchfulness over himself
and others had all come to this—unless indeed
these surmises of mine were but fallacies of a
brain disturbed by fever and the consuming de-
sire for vengeance-I once more felt the passage
of the wind of destiny over us all.
However, whether reality or fancy, there they
were, and I could not remain in ignorance or in
doubt. At the end of all my various arguments
for and against the probability of my new ex-
planation of the mystery, I arrived at a positive
fact: rightly or wrongly I had conceived the
possibility of a plot in which Edmond Termonde
had served as the instrument of murder in his
brother's hand. Were there only one single
chance, one against a thousand, that my father
had been killed in this way, I was bound to follow
up the clue to the end, on pain of having to
despise myself as the veriest coward that lived.
The time of sorrowful dreaming was over; it was
now necessary to act, and to act was to know.
Morning dawned upon these thoughts of mine.
I opened my window, I saw the faces of the lofty
houses livid in the first light of day, and I swore
solemnly to myself, in the presence of re-awaken-
ing life, that this day should see me begin to do
what I ought, and the morrow should see me con-


254 7 HE SOAV
tinue, and the following days should see the
same, until I could say to myself: “I am
certain.” I resolutely repressed the wild feelings
which had taken hold of me during the night,
and I fixed my mind upon the problem: “Does
there exist any means of making sure whether
Edmond Termonde is, or is not, identical with
the man who in 1864 called himself Rochdale 2"
For the answer to this question I had only my-
self, the resources of my own intelligence, and
my personal will to rely upon. I must do myself
the justice to state that not for one minute, dur-
ing all those cruel hours, was I tempted to rid
myself once for all of the difficulties of my tragic
task by appealing to justice, as I should have
done had I not taken my mother's sufferings into
account. I had resolved that the terrible blow of
learning that for fifteen years she had been the
wife of an assassin should never be dealt to her
by me. In order that she might always remain
in ignorance of this story of crime, it was neces-
sary for the struggle to be strictly confined to
my stepfather and myself. And yet, I thought,
what if I find that he is guilty? At this idea, no
longer vague and distant, but liable to-day, to-
morrow, at any time, to become an indisputable
truth, a terrible project presented itself to my


THE SOAV 259
in its eyes and mouth an injunction never to wound
the heart of the woman he had so dearly loved—
even for the sake of avenging him. “I will obey
you,” I made answer to my father, and bade adieu
to that part of my vengeance. It was very hard,
very cruel to myself; nevertheless, it was possible;
for, after all, did I hate the wretch himself? He
had struck the blow, it is true, but only as a serv-
ile tool in the hand of another. Ah! that other,
I would not let him escape, when he should be in
my grip, he who had conceived, meditated, ar.
ranged, and paid for the deed, he who had stolen
all from me, all, all, from my father's life even to
my mother's love, he, the real, the only culprit.
Yes, I would lay hold of him, and contrive and
execute my vengeance, while my mother should
never suspect the existence of that duel out of
which I should come triumphant. I was intoxi-
cated beforehand with the idea of the punishment
which I would find means to inflict upon the man
whom I execrated. It warmed my heart only to
think of how this would repay my long, cruel mar-
tyrdom. “To work to work ' " I cried aloud.
I trembled lest this should be nothing but a delu-
'sion, lest Edmond Termonde should have already
left the country, my stepfather having previously
purchased his silence. At nine o'clock I was in


26o THE SOAV
an abominable Private Inquiry Office—merely to
have passed its threshold would have seemed to
me a shameful action, only a few hours before.
At ten, I was with my broker, giving him instruc-
tions to sell out 100,000 francs worth of shares
for me. That day passed, and then a second.
How I bore the succession of the hours, I know
not. I do know that I had not courage to go
to my mother's house, or to see her again. I
feared she might detect my wild hope in my eyes,
and unconsciously forewarn my stepfather by a
sentence or a word, as she had unconsciously in-
formed me. Towards noon, on the third day, I
learned that my stepfather had gone out that
morning. It was a Wednesday, and on that day
my mother always attended a meeting for some
charitable purpose in the Grenelle quarter. M.
Termonde had changed his cab twice, and had
alighted from the second vehicle at the Grand
Hotel. There he had paid a visit to a traveler
who occupied a room on the second floor (No.
353); this person's name was entered in the list
of arrivals as Stanbury. At noon I was in pos-
session of these particulars, and at two o'clock I
ascended the staircase of the Grand Hotel, with a
loaded revolver and a note-case containing one


7 HE SOAV - - 263
rather than sitting in an arm-chair, with his feet
on a table ; he was reading a newspaper and
smoking, and his back was turned to the door.
He did not trouble himself to rise and see whose
hand had opened the door, thinking, no doubt,
that a servant had come in, he merely turned his
head slightly, and I did not give him time to look
completely round.
“M. Rochdale 2 ” I asked.
He started to his feet, pushed away the chair,
and rushed to the other side of the table, staring
at me with a terrified countenance; his light blue
eyes were unnaturally distended, his face was
livid, his mouth was half open, his legs bent under
him. His tall, robust frame had sustained one of
those shocks of excessive terror which almost
paralyze the forces of life. He uttered but one
word –Cornélisſ
At last I held in my victorious hand the proof
that I had been seeking for months, and in that
moment I was master of all the resources of my
being. Yes, I was as calm, as clear of purpose as
my adversary was the reverse. He was not ac-
customed to live, like his accomplice, in the daily
habit of studied dissimulation. The name,
“Rochdale,” the terrifying likeness, the un-
looked for arrival! I had not been mistaken in my


7//E SOAV 265
I should extract from my enemy the proof of the
truth of all my conjectures, that proof which
would place my stepfather at my mercy. This
was a fresh phase of the struggle.
I glanced round the room in which I was shut
up with the assassin. On the bed, placed on my
left, lay a loaded cane, a hat and an overcoat, on
a small table were a steel “knuckle-duster" and
a revolver. Among the articles laid out on a
chest of drawers on my right a bowie-knife was
conspicuous, a valise was placed against an un-
used door, a wardrobe with a looking-glass stood
before another unused door, then came the toilet-
stand, and the man, crouching under the aim of
my revolver, between the table and the window.
He could neither escape, nor reach to any means
of defence without a personal struggle with me;
but he would have to stand my fire first, and be-
sides, if he was tall and robust, I was neither short
nor feeble. I was twenty-five, he was fifty. All
the moral forces were for me, I must win.
“Now,” said I, as I took a seat, but without
releasing him from the covering barrel of my
pistol, “let us talk.”
“What do you want of me?” he asked roughly.
His voice was both hoarse and muffled ; the blood
had gone back into his cheeks, his eyes, those


266 7A/A: SOAV
eyes so exactly like his brother's, sparkled. The
brute-nature was reviving in him after having
sustained a fearful shock, as though astonished
that it still lived.
“Come, then,” he added, clenching his fists,
“I am caught. Fire on me, and let this end.”
Then, as I made him no answer, but continued
to threaten him with my pistol, he exclaimed :
“Ah! I understand ; it is that blackguard
Jacques who has sold me to you in order to get
rid of me himself. There's the statute of limi-
tations—he thinks he is safe " But has he told you
that he was in it himself, good, honest man, and
that I have the proof of this? Ah he thinks I
am going to let you kill me, like that, without
speaking 2 No, no, I shall call out, we shall be
arrested, and all will be known.”.
Fury had seized upon him ; he was about to
shout “Help!” and the worst of it was that rage
was rising in me also. It was he, with that same
hand which I saw creeping along the table, strong,
hairy, seeking something to throw at me—yes—it
was he who had killed my father. One impulse
more of anger and I was lost; a bullet was lodged
in his body, and I saw his blood flow. Oh, what
good it would have done me to see that sight !
But no, I had made the sacrifice of this particular


263 7//E SOAV
sounds of feet, voices, and peals of laughter. This
was enough to recall me to the necessity of con-
trolling myself, and him to the consciousness that
he was playing a dangerous game. A shot, a cry,
and some one would enter the room, for it opened
upon the corridor. Edmond Termonde had heard
me with extreme attention, a gleam of hope
succeeded by a singular look of suspicion had
passed over his face.
“Make your conditions,” said he.
“If I had intended to kill you,” I resumed, so
as to convince him of my sincerity by the evi-
dence of his senses, “you would be dead already.”
I raised the revolver. “If I had intended to have
you arrested, I would not have taken the trouble
to come here myself; two policemen would have
been sufficient, for you don't forget that you are a
deserter, and still amenable to the law.”
“True,” he replied simply, and then added, fol-
lowing out a mental argument which was of vital
importance to the issue of our interview:
“If it is not Jacques, then who is it that has
sold me?”
“I held you at my disposal,” I continued, with-
out noticing what he had said, “and I have not
availed myself of that. Therefore I had a strong
reason for sparing you yesterday, ere yesterday,


THE SOAV 269
this morning, a little while ago, at the present
moment; and it depends upon yourself whether I
spare you altogether.”
“And you want me to believe you,” he an-
swered, pointing to my revolver which I still con-
tinued to hold in my hand, but no longer covering
him with it. “No, no,” and he added—with an
expression which smacked of the barrack-room,
“I don't tumble to that sort of thing.”
“Listen to me,” said I, now assuming a tone of
extreme contempt. “The powerful motive which
I have for not shooting you like a mad dog, you
shall learn. I do not choose that my mother
should ever know what a man she married in your
brother. Do you now understand why I resolved
to let you go ; provided you are of the same mind,
however; for even the idea of my mother would
not stop me, if you pushed me too far. I will
add, for your guidance, that the limitation by
which you supposed yourself to be safe from pur-
suit for the murder in 1864 has been traversed;
you are therefore staking your head at this
moment. For ten years past you have been suc-
cessfully levying black-mail on your brother. I
do not suppose you have merely played upon the
chord of fraternal love. When you came from
America to assume the personality of Rochdale,


THE SOA . 27t
by either. With his first rush he had flung me to
the ground; but I was strong, and the strange
premonitions of danger, from which I suffered in
my youth, had led me to develop all my physical
energy and adroitness. I felt his breath on my
face, his skin upon my skin, his muscles striving
against mine, and at the same time the dread that
our conflict might be overheard gave me the cool-
ness which he had lost. After a few minutes of
this tussle, and just as his strength was failing, he
fastened his teeth in my shoulder so savagely that
the pain of the bite maddened me; I wrenched
one of my arms from his grasp and seized him by
the throat at the risk of choking him. I held him
under me now, and I struck his head against the
floor as though I meant to smash it. He remained
motionless for a minute, and I thought I had killed
him. I first picked up my pistol, which had rolled
away to the door, and then bathed his forehead
with water in order to revive him.
When I caught sight of myself in the glass, with
my coat-collar torn, my face bruised, my cravat in
rags, I shuddered as if I had seen the spectre of
another André Cornélis. The ignoble nature of
this adventure filled me with disgust; but it was
not a question of fine gentleman fastidiousness.
My enemy was coming to himself, I must end this.


THE SOAV 275
bent under me, and I feared I was about to fall.
How was I to account for the disorder of my
clothes? I made a great effort, concealed the
torn ends of my cravat, turned up the collar of
my coat to hide the condition of my shirt, and did
my best to repair the damage that had been done
to my hat. I then wiped my face with my hand-
kerchief, and went down-stairs with a slow and
careless step. The inspector of the first floor was,
doubtless, occupied at the other end of the cor-
ridor; but two of the waiters saw me and were
evidently surprised at my aspect. They were,
however, too busy, luckily for me, to stop me and
inquire into the cause of my discomposure. At
last I reached the courtyard. If anybody who
knew me had been there? I got into the first cab
and gave my address. I had kept my word. I
had conquered.


XVII.
WHAT was I going to do with those letters of my
stepfather's which I had bought so dear, since I
had paid for them by the sacrifice of one-half of
my vengeance 2 The letters placed him at my
mercy, even as they had held him for long years
at the mercy of his brother—what was I going to
do with them 2
I began to read them in the cab on my way to
the Avenue Montaigne. The first, which was of
great length, reminded Edmond of his past faults
and the hopelessness of his actual condition, and
then indicated, without entering into any par-
ticulars, a possible means of at least partially re-
pairing all these disasters and once more gaining
a fortune. The first condition was that the out-
law should scrupulously obey the orders of his
brother. He was to begin by announcing his de-
parture from New York to all his ordinary asso-
ciates, and then to remove into another quarter of
the city under a new name, and wait there for the
next letter. That one, the second, made it evi-
dent that an answer from Edmond had been
(276)


THE SOAV . 277
received prior to its despatch, and that he had
accepted the offer. By this second letter the
wretch was enjoined to go to Liverpool and to
await further instructions there. These instruc-
tions, contained in the third letter—a mere note—
were limited to an appointment at an early date,
at ten o'clock in the evening, in Paris, on the
portion of the footpath of the Rue de Jussieu
which faces the Rue Guy-de-la-Brosse. At that
hour, those two streets, situated between the old
Jardin des Plantes and the buildings of the
Entrepôt des Wins, are as solitary as the streets
of a country town. There was no more mention
in this note than in the two preceding letters of
the plan that had been laid by Jacques Termonde,
and which was to be discussed by the brothers at
their first meeting after so many years; but, even
if I had not had the false Rochdale's own avowal,
extorted by his surprise and terror, the coinci-
dence of date between this clandestine recall and
the assassination of my father constituted an un-
deniable proof. I read and re-read those accusing
pages—as I had read and re-read my father's
letters written at the same time—first in the cab,
and then in the solitude of my own apartment, and
the horrible plot which had made me fatherless


THE SOAV 279
words spoken in that place. And then there
came to me an equally distinct vision of the in-
famous scoundrel whose bite still made it painful
for me to move my left shoulder. I saw him
arranging his disordered dress after I had left his
room, strapping his trunks, calling the waiter,
asking for his bill, paying it with one of the notes
which I had flung to him, and leaving the house.
His luggage was hoisted up on the carriage, and
he was driven off in haste to a railway station—
no doubt that of Le Nord, because it is nearest to
the frontier. He took the first train and de-
parted, and never more should I hold him at my
mercy. Again rage seized upon me ! IIe had
not yet had time to get very far away. What if
I were to go to the Préfecture de Police? My
description of him would be sufficient; he would
be arrested. I had sworn to him by my father's
memory that I would let him go free. Well,
what then 2 An oath to such a wretch | He
would be arrested; they would be arrested—and
my mother? What of her? For the first time
since the suspicion of the fatal truth had dawned
upon me, I recoiled from the thought of her. At
the moment my anger burned so fiercely at the
image of the escaping murderer, that I reproached
myself, as though it were a weakness, for the


28O THE SOAV
filial pity which had induced me to sacrifice one-
half of my vengeance to the peace of my dearly-
beloved mother. “Let her suffer,” I said to my-
self; “let her be punished for her unfaithfulness
to the memory of the dead!” But I was
ashamed a little later of having allowed such a
thought to flit across my mind; I repelled it as a
crime. To have lived with an assassin for fifteen
years, and borne his name ! Ah, she never could
endure such a discovery, or I the remorse of hav-
ing revealed so hideous a truth to her. No, no,
let him escape I looked at the clock, and with
each swing of the pendulum the chances of the
villain's escape were increased. What route had
he taken? Had he set out for England? A few
hours more and he would be in London, secure,
hidden, and lost amid the swarming multitudes
of the great city. “Oh, mother, mother,” I cried
as I flung myself upon the sofa and writhed in
mental agony, “what have I not done for you !”
After a while I arose and resolutely put away
the image of Edmond Termonde, substituting
that of his brother. He at least could not escape
me. If “vengeance is a dish to be eaten cold,” I
had full leisure to prepare mine at my ease. My
stepfather could not fly as his accomplice had
done; his marriage with my mother, the success-


THE SOM 283
collect my mind and force it in upon itself, and I
had to confess to myself: “I am afraid.” Afraid
of what? Afraid of a word For it was only a
word. My vengeance, to which I had sacrificed
even the respect due to the wishes of the dying—
had I not failed to fulfill the desire of my aunt in
her last moments?—now caused me a thrill of
terror, because the work that was to be done was
repugnant. To what? To the prejudices of my
class and my time. I am afraid to kill; but had
I been born in Italy, in the fifteenth century,
would I have hesitated to poison my father's
murderer? Would I have hesitated to shoot him,
had I been born in Corsica fifty years ago? Am
I then nothing but a civilized person, a wretched
and impotent dreamer, who would fain act, but
shrinks from soiling his hands in the action? I
forced myself to contemplate the dilemma in
which I stood, in its absolute, imperative, inevita-
ble distinctness. I must either avenge my father
by handing over his murderer to be dealt with by
the law, since M. Massol had prudently fulfilled
all the formalities necessary to bar the limitation,
or I must be my own minister of justice. There
was a third alternative ; that I should spare the
murderous wretch, allow him to live on in oc-
cupation of his victim's place in my mother's
º


284 THE SOAV
home, from which he had driven me; but at the
thought of this my rage revived. The scruples of
the civilized man did indeed give him pause; but
that hesitation did not hinder the savage, who
slumbers in us all, from feeling the appetite for
retaliation which stirs the animal nature of man
—all his flesh, and all his blood—as hunger and
thirst stir it. “Well, then,” said I to myself, “I
will assassinate my stepfather, since that is the
right word. Was he afraid to assassinate my
father? He killed ; he shall be killed. An eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; that is the primi-
tive law, and all the rest is a lie.”
Evening had come while this strife was raging
in my soul. I was laboring under excitement
which contrasted strangely with the calmness I
had felt a few hours previously, when ascending
the stairs in the Grand Hotel. The situation also
had undergone a change ; then I was preparing
for a struggle, a kind of duel; I was about to
confront a man whom I had to conquer, to attack
him face to face without any treachery, and I had
not flinched. It was the mean hypocrisy of clandes-
tine murder that had made me shrink from the
idea of killing my stepfather, by luring him into a
snare. I had controlled this trembling the first
time ; but I was afraid of its coming again, and


286 THE SOAV
own destiny, came home to me too strongly.
What had I done to Fate to deserve that I should
be the one only person, amid all this crowd, con-
demned to such an experience 2 Why had my
path been crossed by a man capable of pushing
passion to the point of crime, in a society in which
passion is ordinarily so mild, so harmless, and so
lukewarm 2 Probably there did not exist in all
the “good" society of Paris four persons with
daring enough to conceive such a plan as that
which Jacques Termonde had executed with such
cool deliberation under the influence of his pas-
sion. And this villain, who could love so in-
tensely, was my stepfather l Once more the breath
of fatality, which had already thrilled me with a
kind of mysterious horror, passed over me, and I
felt that I could no longer bear the sight of the
human face. Turning my back upon the lit-up,
noisy quarter of the Champs-Elysées, I walked on
toward the Arc de Triomphe. Without thinking
about it I took the road to the Bois, bore to the
right to avoid the vehicles, and turned into one of
the loneliest paths. Had I unconsciously obeyed
one of those almost animal impulses of memory,
which bring us back to ways that we have already
trodden 2 By the soft, bluish light of the spring
moon I recognized the place where I had walked


7//E SOAV 287
with my stepfather in the winter, on the occasion
of our first drive to the Bois. It was on that day
I obliged him to look the portrait of his victim in
the face, on that day he came to me on the pre-
text of asking for the Review which my mother
had lent me. In my thoughts I beheld him, as he
then was, and recalled the strange pity which had
stirred my head at the sight of him, so sad,
broken-down, and, so to speak, conquered. He
stood before me, in the light of that remembrance,
as living and real as if he had been there, close
beside me, and the acute sensation of his existence
made me feel at the same time all the signification
of those fearful and mysterious words: to kill.
To kill? I was going to kill him, in a few hours it
might be, at the latest in a few days. I heard
voices, and I withdrew into the shade. Two forms
passed me, a young man and a girl, lovers, who
did not see me. The moonlight fell upon them,
as they went on their way, hand in hand. I burst
into tears, and wept long, unrestrainedly; for I
too was young ; in my heart there was a flood of
pent-up tenderness, and here I was, on this per-
fumed, moonlit, starlit night, crouching in a dark
corner, meditating murder
No, not murder, an execution. Has my step-
father deserved death 2 Yes. Is the executioner


290 7THE SOAV
wife with that reciprocated devotion by which I
had suffered so much, would he consent that she
should know the truth, that she should regard
him as a base, cowardly assassin 2 No, never; he
would rather die. My heart, weary and worn
with pain, rushed toward this door of hope, so
suddenly opened. “I shall have done my duty,”
I thought, “and I shall have no blood on my
hands. My conscience will not be stained.” I
experienced an immense relief from the weight of
foreseen remorse that had caused me such agony,
and I went on drawing a picture of the future,
freed at last from one dark image which had veiled
the sunshine of my youth. “He will kill himself;
my mother will weep for him; but I shall be able
to dry her tears. Her heart will bleed, but I will
heal the wound with the balm of my tenderness.
When the assassin is no longer there, she and I
will live over again all the dear time that he stole
from us, and then I shall be able to show her how
I love her. The caresses which I did not give her
when I was a child, because the other froze me by
his mere presence, I will give her then ; the words
which I did not speak, the tender words that were
stopped upon my lips, she shall hear then. We
will leave Paris, and get rid of these sad remem-
brances. We will retire to some quiet spot, far,
*


7THE SOAV 291
º
far away, where she will have none but me, I none
but her, and I will devote myself to her old age.
What do I want with any other love, with any
other tie? Suffering softens the heart; her grief
will make her love me more. Ah! how happy we
shall be.” But once more the voice within re-
sumed : “What if the wretch refuse to kill him-
self? What if he were not to believe me when I
threaten to denounce him 2 * Had I not been
acting for months as his accomplice in maintain-
ing the deceit practiced upon my mother ? Did
he not know how much I loved her, he who had
been jealous of me as her son, as I had been jealous
of him as her husband 2 Would he not answer:
“Denounce me !” being well assured that I would
not deal such a blow at the poor woman 2 To
these objections I replied, that, whereas I had sus.
pected previously, now I knew. No, he will not
be entirely convinced that the evidence I hold will
make me dare everything. Well then, if he re-
fuse, I shall have attempted the impossible to
avoid murder—let destiny be accomplished


XVIII.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon on the fol-
lowing day, when I presented myself at the hôtel
on the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg. I knew
that my mother would most probably be out. I
also thought it likely my stepfather would be feel-
ing none the better of his early excursion to the
Grand Hôtel on the previous day, and I therefore
hoped to find him at home, perhaps in his bed. I
was right; my mother was out, and he had re-
mained at home. He was in his study, the room
in which our first explanation had taken place.
That upon which I was now bent was of far
greater importance, and yet I was less agitated
than on the former occasion. At last I was com-
pletely certain of the facts, and with that cer.
tainty a strange calmness had come to me. I can
recall my having talked for a few moments with
the servant who announced me, about a child of
his who was ill. I also remember to have ob-
served for the first time that the smoky chimney
of some manufacturing works at the back of the
garden, built, no doubt, during the last winter,
(292)


294 7 HE SOAV
lightened him as to the mood in which I came to
him. Very quietly, he laid down his book and
the Spanish knife he had been using, on a large
table within his reach, and then he rose from his
chair, leaned his back against the mantlepiece,
and crossing his arms, looked at me with the
haughty stare I knew so well, and which had so
often humiliated me in my boyhood. I was the
first to break the silence ; replying to his polite
greeting in a harsh tone, and looking him straight
in the face, I said:
“The time of lies is past. You have guessed
that I know all ?”
He bent his brows into the stern frown he
always assumed when he felt anger he was bound
to suppress, his eyes met mine with indomitable
pride, and he merely replied:
“I do not understand you.”
“You do not understand me? Very well, I am
about to enlighten you.” My voice shook in
uttering these words; my coolness was forsaking
me. The day before, and in my conversation
with the brother, I had come in contact with the
vile infamy of a knave and a coward; but the
enemy whom I was now facing, although a greater
scoundrel than the other, found means to preserve.
a sort of moral superiority, even in that terrible


7 HE SOM’ 295
hour when he knew well he was face to face with
his crime. Yes, this man was a criminal, but of a
grand kind, and there was no cowardice in him.
Pride sat upon that brow so laden with dark
thoughts, but fear set no mark upon it, any more
than did repentance. In his eyes—exactly like
those of his brother—a fierce resolution shone; I
felt that he would defend himself to the end. He
would yield to evidence only, and such strength
of mind displayed at such a moment had the
effect of exasperating me. The blood flew to my
head, and my heart beat rapidly, as I went on :
“Allow me to take up the matter a little
farther back. In 1864, there was in Paris a man
who loved the wife of his most intimate friend.
Although that friend was very trusting, very
noble, very easily duped, he became aware of this
love, and he began to suffer from it. He grew
jealous—although he never doubted his wife's
purity of heart—jealous as every one is who loves
too well. The man who was the object of his
jealousy perceived it, understood that he was
about to be forbidden the house, knew that the
woman whom he loved would never degrade her-
self by listening to a lover, and this is the plan
which he conceived. He had a brother some-
where in a distant land, an infamous scoundrel


296 7THA, SOAV
who was supposed to be dead, a creature sunk in
shame, a thief, a forger, a deserter, and he be-
thought him of this brother as an instrument
ready to his hand where with to rid himself of the
friend who stood in the way of his passion. He
sent for the fellow secretly, he appointed to meet
him in one of the loneliest corners of Paris—in a
street adjoining the Jardin des Plantes, and at
night—you see I am well informed. It is easy to
imagine how he persuaded the former thief to play
the part of bravo. A few months after, the hus-
band was assassinated by this brother, who eluded
justice. The felon-friend married almost imme-
diately the woman whom he loved ; he is now a
man in society, wealthy, and respected, and his
pure and pious wife loves, admires, nay, worships
him. Do you now begin to understand 2’”
“No more than before,” he answered, with the
same impassive face. He did well not to flinch.
What I had said might be only an attempt to
wrest his secret from him by feigning to know all.
Nevertheless, the detail concerning the place
where he had appointed to meet his brother had
made him start. That was the spot to hit, and
quickly.
“The cowardly assassin,” I continued, “yes,
the coward, because he dared not commit the


298 7 HAE SOAV
“How much did that wretch Edmond ask as
the price of the forgery which he fabricated in
revenge for my refusal to give him money?”
“Be silent, you—” said I still more fiercely.
“Is it to me that you dare to speak thus—to me?
Did I need those letters in order to learn all 2
Have we not known for weeks past, I, that you
had committed the crime, and you, that I had di-
vined your guilt 2 What I still needed was the
written, indisputable, undeniable proof, that
which can be laid before a magistrate. You re-
fused him money? You were about to give him
money, only that you mistrusted him, and chose
to wait until the day of his departure. You did
not suspect that I was upon your track. Shall I
tell you when it was you saw him for the last
time 2 Yesterday, at ten o'clock in the morning,
you went out, you changed your cab first at the
Place de la Concorde, and a second time at the
Palais Royal. You went to the Grand Hôtel,
and you asked whether Mr. Stanbury was in his
room. A few hours later, I, I myself, was in that
same room. Ah! how much did Edmond Ter-
monde ask from me for the letters ? Why, I tore
them from him, pistol in hand, after a struggle in
which I was nearly killed. You see now that you


THE SOAV . 299
can deceive me no more, and that it is no longer
worth your while to deny.”
I thought he was about to drop dead before me.
His face changed, until it was hardly human, as I
went on, on, on, piling up the exact facts, track-
ing his falsehood, as one tracks a wild beast, and
proving to him that his brother had defended him-
self after his fashion, even as he had done. He
clasped his hands about his head, when I ceased
to speak, as though to compress the maddening
thoughts which rushed upon him; then, once more
looking me in the face, but this time with infinite
despair in his eyes, he uttered exactly the same
sentence as his brother had spoken, but with quite
another expression and tone :
“This hour too was bound to come. What do
you want from me now 2°
“That you should do justice on yourself.” I
answered. “You have twenty-four hours be-
fore you. If, to-morrow at this hour, you are
still living, I place the letters in my mother's
hands.”
Every sort of feeling was depicted upon his
livid face while I placed this ultimatum before
him, in a firm voice which admitted of no farther
discussion. I was standing up, and I leaned
against the large table ; he came toward me, with


THE SOAV 3O3
gpring. I saw his smile of contempt, and then
with all my strength I struck him with the knife
in the direction of the heart. The blade entered
his body to the hilt. No sooner had I done this
thing than I recoiled, wild with the terror at the
deed. He uttered a cry. His face was distorted
with terrible agony, and he moved his right hand
toward the wound, as though he would draw out
the dagger. He looked at me, convulsed with un-
bearable agony; I saw that he wanted to speak;
his lips moved, but no sound issued from his
mouth. The expression of a supreme effort
passed into his eyes, he turned to the table, took
a pen, dipped it into the inkstand, and traced two
lines on a sheet of paper within his reach. He
looked at me again, his lips moved once more,
then he fell down like a log.
I remember—I saw the body stretched upon
the carpet, between the table and the tall mantel-
piece, within two feet of me. I approached him,
I bent over his face. His eyes seemed to follow
me even after death. Yes, he was dead. The
doctor who certified the death explained after-
wards that the knife had passed through the
cardiac muscle without completely penetrating
the left cavity of the heart, and that, the blood
not being shed all at once, death had not been


31O THE SOAV
is not for having seized the weapon and struck the -
blow, it is that I owe to him—to him—that infa-
mous good service which he did me—that I cannot
to the present hour shake from me the horrible gift
I have received from that man. If I had destroyed
the paper, if I had gone and given myself up, if I
had appeared before a jury, revealing, proclaiming
my deed, I should not be ashamed; I could still
hold up my head. What relief, what joy it would
be if I might cry aloud to all men that I killed
him, that he lied, and I lied, that it was I, I, who
took the weapon and plunged it into him ' And
yet, I ought not to suffer from having accepted—
no—endured the odious immunity. Was it from
any motive of cowardice that I acted thus? What
was I afraid of? Of torturing my mother, noth-
ing more. Why then do I suffer this unendurable
anguish 2 Ah, it is she, it is my mother who, with-
out intending it, makes the dead so living to me,
by her own despair. She lives, shut up in the
rooms where they lived together for sixteen years;
she has not allowed a single article of furniture to
be touched; she surrounds the man's accursed
memory with the same pious reverence that my
aunt formerly lavished on my unhappy father. I
recognize the invincible influence of the dead in
the pallor of her cheeks, the wrinkles in her eye-
*
º
*


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#S