From that day forward, though initially terrified of taking such a course, he never left her side; he kept watch on her life, accompanying her on her visits, following her on her shopping expeditions, waiting for an hour at every shop door. Had he figured that this would thus actually prevent her from cheating on him, he would probably have given up for fear of incurring her hatred. But she let him continue because she enjoyed having him with her all the time, enjoyed it so much that her joy gradually took hold of him, slowly imbuing him with a confidence, a certainty that no material proof would have given him, like those hallucinating people whom one can sometimes manage to cure by having them touch the armchair, the living person who occupies the place where they think they see a phantom, and thus driving away the phantom from the real world by means of reality itself, which has no room for the phantom.
Thus, trailing Françoise and mentally filling all her days with concrete occupations, Honoré strove to suppress those gaps and shadows in which the evil spirits of jealousy and suspicion lay in ambush, pouncing on him every evening. He began to sleep again; his sufferings grew rarer, briefer, and if he then sent for her, a few moments of her presence calmed him for the entire night.
The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on forever.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The salon of Madame Seaune, née Princess de Galaise-Orlandes, whom we spoke about in the first part of this story under her Christian name, Françoise, remains one of the most sought-after salons in Paris. In a society in which the title of duchess would make her interchangeable with so many others, her nonaristocratic family name stands out like a beauty mark on a face; and in exchange for the title she lost when marrying Monsieur Seaune, she acquired the prestige of having voluntarily renounced the kind of glory that, for a noble imagination, exalts white peacocks, black swans, white violets, and captive queens.
Madame Seaune has entertained considerably this season and last, but her salon was closed during the three preceding years—the ones, that is, following the death of Honoré de Tenvres.
Honoré’s friends, delighted to see him gradually regaining his healthy appearance and his earlier cheerfulness, now kept finding him with Madame Seaune at all hours of the day, and so they attributed his revival to this affair, which they thought had started just recently.
It was a scant two months since Honoré’s complete recovery that he suffered the accident on the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, where both his legs were broken by a runaway horse.
The accident took place on the first Tuesday in May; peritonitis declared itself the following Sunday. Honoré received the sacraments on Monday and was carried off at six o’clock that evening. However, from Tuesday, the day of the accident, to Monday evening, he alone believed he was doomed.
On that Tuesday, toward six P.M., after the first dressing of the injuries, he had asked his servants to leave him alone, but to bring up the calling cards of people inquiring about his health.
That very morning, at most eight hours earlier, he had been walking down the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne. He had, breath by breath, been inhaling and exhaling the air, a blend of breeze and sunshine; women were admiring his swiftly moving beauty, and in the depths of their eyes he had recognized a profound joy—for an instant he was lost sight of in the sheer turning of his capricious merriment, then effortlessly caught up with and quite rapidly outstripped among the steaming, galloping horses, then he savored the coolness of his hungry mouth, which was moistened by the sweet air; and the joy he recognized was the same profound joy that embellished life that morning, the life of the sun, of the shade, of the sky, of the stones, of the east wind, and of the trees, trees as majestic as men standing and as relaxed as women sleeping in their sparkling immobility.
At a certain point he had checked his watch, had doubled back, and then . . . then it had happened. Within an instant, the horse, which Honoré had not seen, had broken both his legs. In no way did that instant appear to have been inevitable. At that same instant he might have been slightly further off, or slightly nearer, or the horse might have deviated, or, had it rained, he would have gone home earlier, or, had he not checked his watch, he would not have doubled back and he would have continued walking to the cascade. Yet that thing, which might so easily not have been, so easily that for a moment he could pretend it was only a dream—that thing was real, that thing was now part of his life, and not all his willpower could alter anything. He had two broken legs and a battered abdomen. Oh, in itself the accident was not so extraordinary; he recalled that less than a week ago, during a dinner given by Dr. S., they had talked about C., who had been injured in the same manner by a runaway horse. The doctor, when asked about C.’s condition, had said: “He’s in a bad way.” Honoré had pressed him, had questioned him about the injuries, and the doctor had replied with a self-important, pedantic, and melancholy air: “But it’s not just his injuries; it’s everything together; his sons are causing him problems; his circumstances are not what they used to be; the newspaper attacks have struck him to the quick. I wish I were wrong, but he’s in a rotten state.” Since the doctor, having said that, felt that he himself, on the contrary, was in an excellent state, healthier, more intelligent, and more esteemed than ever; since Honoré knew that Françoise loved him more and more, that the world accepted their relationship and esteemed their happiness no less than Françoise’s greatness of character; and since, finally, Dr. S.’s wife, deeply agitated by her visions of C.’s wretched end and abandonment, cited reasons of hygiene for prohibiting herself and her children from thinking about sad events or attending funerals—given all these things, each diner repeated one final time: “That poor C., he’s in a bad state,” downed a final flute of Champagne, and the pleasure of drinking it made them feel that their own “state” was excellent.
But this was not the same thing at all. Honoré, now feeling overwhelmed by the thought of his misfortune, as he had often been by the thought of other people’s misfortunes, could no longer regain a foothold in himself. He felt the solid ground of good health caving in beneath him, the ground on which our loftiest resolutions flourish and our most gracious delights, just as oak trees and violets are rooted in the black, moist earth; and he kept stumbling about within himself. In discussing C. at that dinner, which Honoré again recalled, the doctor had said: “When I ran into C. even before the accident and after the newspaper attacks, his face was sallow, his eyes were hollow, and he looked awful!” And the doctor had passed his hand, famous for its skill and beauty, across his full, rosy face, along his fine, well-groomed beard, and each diner had pleasurably imagined his own healthy look the way a landlord stops to gaze contentedly at his young, peaceable, and wealthy tenant. Now, peering at his reflection in the mirror, Honoré was terrified by his own “sallow face,” his “awful look.” And instantly, he was horrified at the thought that the doctor would say the same thing about him as he had said about C., with the same indifference. Even people who would approach him full of pity would also rather quickly turn away from him as from a dangerous object; they would finally obey their protests of their good health, of their desire to be happy and to live. Then his mind turned back to Françoise, and, his shoulders sagging, his head bowing in spite of himself, as if God’s commandment had been raised against him there, Honoré realized with an infinite and submissive sadness that he must give her up. With a sick man’s resignation he experienced the humility of his body, which, in its childlike feebleness, was bent by this tremendous grief, and he pitied himself when, as so often at the start of his life, he had tenderly seen himself as an infant, and now he felt like crying.
He heard a knocking at the door. The concierge was bringing the cards that Honoré had asked for. Honoré knew very well that people would inquire about his condition, for he was fully aware that his accident was serious; nevertheless, he had not expected so many cards, and
he was terrified to see that there were so many callers who barely knew him and who would have put themselves out only for his wedding or for his funeral. It was an overflowing mountain of cards, and the concierge carried it gingerly to keep it from tumbling off the large tray. But suddenly, when all those cards were within reach, the mountain looked very small, indeed ridiculously small, far smaller than the chair or the fireplace. And he was even more terrified that it was so small, and he felt so alone that, in order to take his mind off his loneliness, he began feverishly reading the names; one card, two cards, three cards—ah! He jumped and looked again: “Count François de Gouvres.” Now Honoré would certainly have expected Monsieur de Gouvres to inquire about his condition, but he had not thought about the count for a long time, and all at once he recalled de Buivres’s words: “There was someone there tonight who had quite a fling with her—It was François de Gouvres. He says she’s quite hot-blooded! But it seems her body isn’t all that great, and he didn’t want to continue”; and feeling all the old suffering which in an instant resurfaced from the depths of his consciousness, he said to himself: “Now I’ll be delighted if I’m doomed. Not die, remain fettered here, and spend years envisioning her with someone else whenever she’s not near me, part of each day and all night long! And now there would be nothing unhealthy about envisioning her like that—it’s certain. How could she still love me? An amputee!” All at once he stopped. “And if I die, what happens after me?”
She was thirty; he leaped in one swoop over the more or less long period in which she would remember him, stay faithful to him. But a moment would come. . . . “He said, ‘She’s quite hot-blooded. . . .’ I want to live, I want to live and I want to walk, I want to follow her everywhere, I want to be handsome, I want her to love me!”
At that moment he was frightened by the whistling in his respiration, he had a pain in his side, his chest felt as if it had shifted to his back, he no longer breathed freely, he tried to catch his breath but could not. At each second he felt himself breathing and not breathing enough. The doctor came. Honoré had only had a light attack of nervous asthma. When the doctor left, Honoré felt sadder; he would have preferred a graver illness in order to evoke pity. For he keenly sensed that, if it was not grave, something else was grave and that he was perishing. Now he recalled all the physical sufferings of his life, he was in grief; never had the people who loved him the most ever pitied him under the pretext that he was nervous. During the dreadful months after his walk home with de Buivres, months of dressing at seven o’clock after walking all night, Honoré’s brother, who stayed awake for at most fifteen minutes after any too copious dinner, said to him:
“You listen to yourself too much, there are nights when I can’t sleep either. And besides, a person thinks he doesn’t sleep, but he always sleeps a little.”
It was true that he listened to himself too much; in the background of his life he kept listening to death, which had never completely left him and which, without totally destroying his life, undermined it now here, now there. His asthma grew worse; he could not catch his breath; his entire chest made a painful effort to breathe. And he felt the veil that hides life from us (the death within us) being lifted, and he perceived how terrifying it is to breathe, to live.
Now he was transported to the moment when she would be consoled, and then, who would it be? And his jealousy was driven insane by the uncertainty of the event and its inevitability. He could have prevented it if alive; he could not live, and so? She would say that she would join a convent; then, when he was dead, she would change her mind. No! He preferred not to be deceived twice, preferred to know.—Who?—de Gouvres, de Alériouvre, de Buivres, de Breyves? He saw them all and, gritting his teeth, he felt the furious revolt that must be twisting his features at that moment. He calmed himself down. No, it will not be that, not a playboy. It has to be a man who truly loves her. Why don’t I want it to be a playboy? I’m crazy to ask myself that, it’s so obvious. Because I love her for herself, because I want her to be happy.—No, it’s not that, it’s that I don’t want anyone to arouse her senses, to give her more pleasure than I’ve given her, to give her any pleasure at all. I do want someone to give her happiness, I want someone to give her love, but I don’t want anyone to give her pleasure. I’m jealous of the other man’s pleasure, of her pleasure. I won’t be jealous of their love. She has to marry, has to make a good choice. . . . But it’ll be sad all the same.
Then one of his childhood desires came back, the desire of the seven-year-old, who went to bed at eight every evening. If, instead of remaining in her room, next to Honoré’s, and turning in at midnight, his mother had to go out around eleven and get dressed by then, he would beg her to dress before dinner and to go anywhere else, for he could not stand the thought of someone in the house preparing for a soirée, preparing to go out, while the boy tried to fall asleep. And in order to please him and calm him, his mother, all in evening attire and décolleté by eight o’clock, came to say good night, then went to a friend’s home to wait for the ball to start. On those sad evenings when his mother attended a ball, that was the only way the boy, morose but tranquil, could fall asleep.
Now, the same plea he had made to his mother, the same plea to Françoise came to his lips. He would have liked to ask her to marry him immediately, so she would be ready and so he could at last go to sleep forever, disconsolate but calm, and not the least bit worried about what would occur after he fell asleep.
During the next few days, he tried to speak to Françoise, who, just like the doctor, did not consider Honoré doomed and who gently but firmly, indeed inflexibly, rejected his proposal.
Their habit of being truthful to one another was so deeply entrenched that each told the truth even though it might hurt the other, as if at their very depths, the depths of their nervous and sensitive being, whose vulnerabilities had to be dealt with tenderly, they had felt the presence of a God, a higher God, who was indifferent to all those precautions—suitable only for children—and who demanded and also owed the truth. And toward this God who was in the depths of Françoise and toward this God who was in the depths of Honoré, Honoré and Françoise had, respectively, always felt obligations that overrode the desire not to distress or offend one another, overrode the sincerest lies of tenderness and compassion.
Thus when Françoise told Honoré that he would go on living, he keenly sensed that she believed it, and he gradually persuaded himself to believe it too:
“If I have to die, I will no longer be jealous when I’m dead; but until I’m dead? As long as my body lives, yes! However, since I’m jealous only of pleasure, since it’s my body that’s jealous, since what I’m jealous of is not her heart, not her happiness, which I wish for her to find with the person most capable of making her happy; when my body fades away, when my soul gets the better of my flesh, when I am gradually detached from material things as on a past evening when I was very ill, when I no longer wildly desire the body and when I love the soul all the more—at that point I will no longer be jealous. Then I will truly love. I can’t very well conceive of what that will be like since my body is still completely alive and rebellious, but I can imagine it vaguely when I recall those times in which, holding hands with Françoise, I found the abatement of my anguish and my jealousy in an infinite tenderness free of any desire. I’ll certainly be miserable when I leave her, but it will be the kind of misery that once brought me closer to myself, that an angel came to console me for, the misery that revealed the mysterious friend in the days of unhappiness, my own soul, that calm misery thanks to which I will feel worthier when appearing before God, and not the horrible illness that pained me for such a long time without elevating my heart, like a physical pain that stabs, that degrades, and that diminishes. It is with my body, with my body’s desire, that I will be delivered from that.—Yes, but until then what will become of me? Feebler, more incapable of resisting than ever, hampered on my two broken legs, when, wanting to hurry over to her and make sure she
is not where I will have pictured her, I will remain here, unable to budge, ridiculed by all those who can ‘have a fling with her’ as long as they like, before my very eyes, the eyes of a cripple whom they no longer fear.”
The night of Sunday to Monday he dreamed he was suffocating, feeling an enormous weight on his chest. He begged for mercy, did not have the strength to displace all that weight; the feeling that all this weight had been upon him for a very long time was inexplicable; he could not endure it another second, it was smothering him. Suddenly he felt miraculously relieved of that entire burden, which was drawing further and further away after releasing him forever. And he said to himself: “I’m dead!”
And above him he saw everything that had been weighing down on him and suffocating him for such a long time, saw it all rising; at first he believed it was de Gouvres’s face, then only his suspicions, then his desires, then those past days when he had started waiting in the morning, crying out for the moment when he would see Françoise, then his thoughts of Françoise. At each moment that rising burden kept assuming a different shape, like a cloud; it kept growing, growing nonstop, and now he could no longer explain how this thing, which he knew was as vast as the world, could have rested on him, on his small, feeble human body, on his poor, small, listless human heart, rested on him without crushing him. And he also realized that he had been crushed and that he had led the life of a crushed man. And this immense thing that had weighed on his chest with all the force of the world—he now realized it was his love.