vii
‘alissa is waiting for you in the garden,’ said my uncle, after having embraced me paternally, when
one day at the end of april i arrived at fongueusemare. if at first i was disappointed at not finding her
ready to welcome me, the next moment i was grateful that she had spared us both the first
commonplace greetings.
she was at the bottom of the garden. i made my way to the place at the head of the steps, where,
at this time of year, the shrubs that set it closely round were all in flower – lilacs, rowan trees,
laburnums, and weigelias: in order not to catch sight of her from too far, or so that she should not see
me coming, i took the other side of the garden, along the shady path, where the air was cool beneath
the branches. i advanced slowly; the sky was like my joy – warm, bright, delicately pure. no doubt
she was expecting me by the other path. i was close to her, behind her, before she heard me; i
stopped... and as if time could have stopped with me, ‘this is the moment,’ thought i, ‘the most
delicious moment, perhaps, of all, even though it should precede happiness itself – which happiness
itself will not equal.’
i meant to fall on my knees before her; i took a step which she heard. she got up suddenly, letting
the embroidery at which she was working roll to the ground; she stretched out her arms towards me,
put her hands on my shoulders. for a few moments we stayed so, with her arms outstretched, her face
smiling and bent towards me, looking at me tenderly without speaking. she was dressed all in white.
on her grave face – almost too grave – i recognized her childhood’s smile.
‘listen, alissa,’ i cried suddenly. ‘i have twelve days before me. i will not stay one more than
you please. let us settle on a sign, which shall mean: “tomorrow you must leave fongueusemare.”
the next day i will go, without recrimination, without complaint. do you agree?’
as i had not prepared what i was going to say, i spoke more easily. she reflected a moment; then:
‘the evening that i come down to dinner without wearing the amethyst cross you like... will you
understand?’
‘that is to be my last evening.’
‘but will you be able to go without a tear or a sigh?’
‘without a good-bye. i will leave you on that last evening exactly as i shall have done the
evening before, so simply that you will wonder whether i have understood. but when you look for
me the next morning, i shall just not be there.’
‘i shall not look for you the next morning.’
she held out her hand; as i raised it to my lips, i added:
‘but from now till the fatal evening, not an allusion to make me feel that it is coming.’
‘and you, not an allusion to the parting that will follow.’
the embarrassment, which the solemnity of this meeting was in danger of creating between us,
had now to be dispelled.
‘i should so much like,’ i went on, ‘that these few days with you should seem like other days... i
mean that we should not feel, either of us, that they are exceptional. and then... if we were not to try
too hard to talk just at first...’
she began to laugh. i added:
‘isn’t there anything we could do together?’
ever since we could remember we had taken great pleasure in gardening. an inexperienced
gardener had lately replaced the old one, and there was a great deal to be done in the garden, which
had been neglected for the last two months. some of the rose trees had been badly pruned; some,
luxuriant growers, were encumbered with dead wood; some of the ramblers had come down for want
of the necessary props; others were being exhausted by suckers. most of them had been grafted by us;
we recognized our nurslings; the attention of which they were in need took up a large part of our
time, and allowed us during the first three days to talk a great deal without saying anything of weight,
and, when we said nothing, it enabled us not to feel our silence burdensome.
in this way we once more grew accustomed to one another. it was on this familiarity that i
counted, rather than on any actual explanation. the very recollection of our separation was already
beginning to disappear from between us, and the fearfulness which i used to feel in her, the tension of
spirit which she used to fear in me, were already beginning to grow less. alissa seemed younger than
during my melancholy visit of the autumn, and i had never thought her prettier, i had not yet kissed
her. every evening i saw sparkling on her bodice the little amethyst cross, which she wore hanging
from a gold chain round her neck. hope sprang up again, confidently, in my breast. hope, do i say?
no! it was already certainty, and i thought i felt it too in alissa; for i was so little doubtful of myself
that i could no longer have any doubts of her. little by little our talk grew bolder.
‘alissa,’ i said to her one morning, when all the air breathed laughter and delight and our hearts
were opening like the flowers, ‘now that juliette is happy, won’t you let us too...’
i spoke slowly, with my eyes fixed upon her; on a sudden she turned pale, so extraordinarily, that
i could not finish my sentence.
‘dear!’ she began, without turning her eyes towards me, ‘i feel happier with you than i thought it
was possible to feel... but, believe me, we were not born for happiness.’
‘what can the soul prefer to happiness?’ i cried, impetuously. she whispered:
‘holiness...’ so low that i divined rather than heard the word.
my whole happiness spread its wings and flew away out of my heart and up to heaven.
‘i cannot reach it without you,’ i said, and with my head on her knees, weeping like a child – but
for love, not for grief – i repeated again and again: ‘not without you; not without you!’
then that day, too, passed by like the others. but in the evening alissa came down without the
little amethyst ornament. faithful to my promise, the next morning at daybreak i left.
on the following day i received the strange letter which i give below, with these lines of
shakespeare’s as motto:
‘that strain again! it had a dying fall:
o, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
that breathes upon a bank of violets,
stealing and giving odour! enough; no more:
‘tis not so sweet now as it was before.
‘yes! in spite of myself, i looked for you the whole morning, my brother. i could not believe that you had gone.
i felt resentful against you for having kept to our engagement. i thought it must be a jest. i expected you to step out
from behind every bush. but no! you have really gone. thank you.
‘i spent the rest of the day haunted by the constant presence of thoughts, which i should like to communicate to
you, and by the peculiar and very definite fear that if i did not, i should have the feeling later on of having failed in
my duty towards you, of having deserved your reproaches...
‘in the first moments of your stay at fongueusemare it was astonishment that i felt – soon after it was
uneasiness – at the strange contentment that filled my whole being in your presence; “a contentment so great,” you
said, “that i desire nothing beyond!” alas! that is just what makes me uneasy...
‘i am afraid, my friend, lest you should misunderstand me. above all, i am afraid lest you should take for
subtlety (oh, how mistaken a subtlety!) what is merely the expression of the most violent feeling of my soul.
‘“if it did not suffice, it would not be happiness,” you said, do you remember? and i did not know what to
answer. no, jérôme, it does not suffice us. jérôme, it must not suffice us. i cannot take this delicious contentment
for the true one. did we not realize last autumn what misery it covered over!...
‘the true one! ah! god forbid! we were born for a happiness other than that...
‘just as it was our correspondence which spoilt our meeting last autumn, so now the memory of your presence
yesterday disenchants my letter of today. what has happened to the delight i used to take in writing to you? by
writing to each other, by being with each other, we have exhausted all that is pure in the joy to which our love dares
aspire. and now, in spite of myself, i exclaim, like orsino in twelfth night: “enough; no more: ‘tis not so sweet
now as it was before.”
‘good-bye, my friend. hic incipit amor dei. ah! will you ever know how much i love you?... until the end i
will be your
‘alissa’
against the snare of virtue i was defenceless. all heroism attracted and dazzled me, for i could
not separate it from love. alissa’s letter inspired me with a rash and intoxicating enthusiasm. god
knows that i strove after more virtue only for her sake. any path, provided it climbed upwards,
would lead me to her. ah! the ground could not too soon narrow enough to hold only her and me!
alas! i did not suspect the subtlety of her feint, and little imagined that it would be by a height where
there was room for only one, that she might escape me once more.
i replied lengthily. i remember the only passage of my letter that was at all clear-sighted.
‘i often think,’ i said, ‘that my love is the best part of me: that all my virtues are suspended to it;
that it raises me above myself, and that without it i should fall back to the mediocre level of a very
ordinary disposition. it is the hope of reaching you that will always make me think the steepest path
the best.’
what did i add which could have induced her to answer as follows:
‘but, my friend, holiness is not a choice; it is an obligation’ [the word was underlined three times in her letter].
‘if you are what i take you to be, you will not be able to evade it either.’
that was all. i understood, or rather i had a foreboding, that our correspondence would stop there,
and that neither the most cunning counsels nor the most steadfast determination would be of any
avail.
i wrote again, however, lengthily, tenderly. after my third letter i received this note:
‘my friend,
‘do not imagine that i have made any resolution not to write to you; i merely no longer take any pleasure in
writing. and yet your letters still interest me, but i reproach myself more and more for engrossing so much of your
thoughts.
‘the summer is not far off. i propose that we give up our correspondence for a time, and that you come and
spend the last fortnight of september with me at fongueusemare. do you accept? if you do, i have no need of a
reply. i shall take your silence for consent, and hope, therefore, that you will not answer.’
i did not answer. no doubt this silence was only the last trial to which she was subjecting me.
when, after a few months’ work and a few weeks’ travel, i returned to fongueusemare, it was with
the most tranquil assurance.
how should i, by a simple recital, make clear at once what i myself understood at first so ill?
what can i paint here save the occasion of the wretchedness which from that moment overwhelmed
me wholly? for if i have no forgiveness in my heart today for my failure to recognize that love that
was still throbbing, hidden under a semblance so artificial, it was at first only this semblance that i
was able to see; and so, no longer finding my friend, i accused her... no! even then, alissa, i did not
accuse you, but wept despairingly that i could recognize you no longer. now that i can gauge the
strength of your love by the cunning of its silence and by its cruel workings, must i love you all the
more, the more agonizingly you bereft me?
disdain? coldness? no; nothing that could be overcome; nothing against which i could even
struggle: and sometimes i hesitated, doubting whether i had not invented my misery, so subtle
seemed its cause, and so skilful was alissa’s pretence of not understanding it. what should i have
complained of? her welcome was more smiling than ever; never had she shown herself more cordial,
more attentive; the first day i was almost taken in by it. what did it matter, after all, that she did her
hair in a new way, which flattened it and dragged it back from her face, so that her features were
harshened and their true expression altered – that an unbecoming dress, dull in colour and ugly in
texture, turned the delicate rhythm of her body to clumsiness?... there was nothing here, i thought
blindly, that might not be remedied the very next day, either of her own accord or at my request. i
was more unpleasantly affected by the cordiality, by the attentions, which were so foreign to our
habits, and in which i was afraid i saw more deliberation than spontaneity, and, though i scarcely
dare say so, more politeness than love.
that evening, when i went into the drawing-room, i was astonished not to find the piano in its
usual place; alissa answered my exclamation of disappointment in her most tranquil voice:
‘it has gone to be done up, dear.’
‘but i repeatedly told you, my child,’ said my uncle, in a tone of reproach that was almost severe,
‘that as it had done well enough up till now, you might have waited until jérôme had gone before
sending it away; your haste has deprived us of a great pleasure.’
‘but, father,’ said she, turning aside to blush, ‘i assure you it had got so jingly latterly that jérôme
himself wouldn’t have been able to get anything out of it.’
‘when you played it, it didn’t seem so bad,’ said my uncle.
she stayed a few moments in the shadow, stooping down, as if she were engaged in taking the
measurements of a chair cover, then she left the room abruptly, and did not return till later, when she
brought in the tray with the cup of tisane which my uncle was in the habit of taking every evening.
the next day she changed neither the way of doing her hair nor her dress; seated beside her father
on a bench in front of the house, she went on with the mending on which she had already been
engaged the evening before. on the bench or the table beside her was a great basket full of stockings
and socks into which she dipped. a few days later it was towels and sheets. this work absorbed her,
it seemed, to such a pitch that every gleam of expression vanished from her lips and her eyes.
‘alissa!’ i exclaimed the first evening, almost terrified by this obliteration of all poetry from her
face, which i could hardly recognize, and at which i had been gazing for some moments without her
seeming to feel my look.
‘what is it?’ said she, raising her head.
‘i wanted to see if you would hear me. your thoughts seemed so far away from me.’
‘no; they are here; but this darning requires a great deal of attention.’
‘would you like me to read to you while you are sewing?’
‘i am afraid i shouldn’t be able to listen very well.’
‘why do you choose such absorbing work to do?’
‘someone must do it.’
‘there are so many poor women who would be glad to do it for the sake of earning a trifle. it
can’t be from economy that you undertake such a tedious task?’
she at once assured me that she liked no other kind of sewing so much, that it was the only kind
she had done for a long time past, and that she was doubtless out of practice for doing anything else.
she smiled as she spoke. never had her voice been sweeter than now, when she was so grieving me.
‘i am saying nothing but what is natural,’ her face seemed to declare, ‘why should it make you sad?’
and my whole heart’s protest no longer even rose to my lips – it choked me.
a day or two later, as we had been picking roses, she invited me to carry them for her to her
room, into which i had not as yet been this year. what flattering hopes arose in me at once! for i had
not got beyond blaming myself for my sadness; one word from her would have healed my heart.
i never went into this room without emotion; i cannot tell what it was that made up the kind of
melodious peace which breathed in it, and in which i recognized alissa. the blue shadow of the
curtains at the windows and round the bed, the furniture of shining mahogany, the order, the
spotlessness, the silence, all spoke to my heart of her purity and pensive grace.
i was astonished that morning to see that two large photographs of some masaccios, which i had
brought back from italy, were no longer on the wall beside her bed; i was on the point of asking her
what had become of them when my glance fell on the bookshelf close by, where she used to keep her
bedside books. this little collection had been gradually formed, partly by the books i had given her,
partly by others which we had read together. i had just noticed that all these books had been
removed, and that they had been replaced exclusively by a number of insignificant little works of
vulgar piety, for which i hoped she had nothing but contempt. raising my eyes suddenly, i saw that
alissa was laughing – yes, laughing – as she watched me.
‘i beg your pardon,’ said she at once: ‘your face made me laugh; it fell so abruptly when you saw
my bookcase.’
i felt very little inclined for pleasantry.
‘no, really, alissa, is that what you read now?’
‘yes, certainly. what is it surprises you?’
‘i should have thought that a mind accustomed to substantial food would have been disgusted by
such sickly stuff.’
‘i don’t understand you,’ said she. ‘these are humble souls who talk to me simply, and express
themselves as best they can. i take pleasure in their society. i know beforehand that they will not fall
into any snare of fine language, and that i, as i read, shall not be tempted by any profane admiration.’
‘do you read nothing but that, then, now?’
‘almost. yes, for the last few months. but i haven’t much time for reading now. and i confess
that quite lately, when i tried to re-read one of the great authors whom you taught me to admire, i felt
like the man in the scriptures, who strives to add a cubit to his height.’
‘who is this “great author” who has given you such an odd opinion of yourself?’
‘he didn’t give it me, but it was while reading him that i got it... it was pascal. perhaps i lighted
on some passage that was not so good...’
i made an impatient movement. she spoke in a clear monotonous voice, as if she were reciting a
lesson, not lifting her eyes from her flowers, which she went on arranging and rearranging
interminably. she stopped for an instant at my movement and then continued in the same tone:
‘such surprising grandiloquence and such effort! – and to prove so little! i wonder sometimes
whether his pathetic intonation is not the result of doubt rather than of faith. the voice of perfect faith
speaks with fewer tears, with fewer tremors.’
‘it is just those very tremors, those very tears which make the beauty of his voice,’ i endeavoured
to retort, although dispiritedly; for in her words i could recognize nothing of what i loved in alissa. i
write them down as i remember them, and without any after addition of either art or logic.
‘if he had not first emptied this life of its joy,’ she went on, ‘it would weigh heavier in the balance
than...’
‘than what?’ i asked, for i was amazed at her strange sayings.
‘than the uncertain felicity he holds out.’
‘don’t you believe in it, then?’ i exclaimed.
‘no matter!’ she answered: ‘i wish it to remain uncertain, so that every suspicion of a bargain
may be removed. the soul that loves god steeps itself in virtue out of natural nobility, and not for the
hope of reward.’
‘and that is the reason of the secret scepticism in which nobility such as pascal’s finds a refuge?’
‘not scepticism – jansenism,’ said she smiling. ‘what have i to do with such things? these poor
souls, here,’ she added, turning towards her books, ‘would be at a loss to say whether they are
jansenist or quietist or what not. they bow down before god like the grass which is bent by the
wind, without guile or anxiety or beauty. they consider themselves of little account, and know that
their only value lies in their effacement before god.’
‘alissa!’ i cried, ‘why do you tear off your wings?’ her voice remained so calm and natural that
my exclamation seemed to me all the more absurdly emphatic.
she smiled again, and shook her head. ‘all that i brought away from my last visit to pascal...’
‘was what?’ i asked, for she stopped.
‘this saying of christ’s: “whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it.” and as for that,’ she
went on, smiling still more and looking me steadily in the face, ‘i really hardly understood him any
longer. when one has lived any time in the society of such lowly ones as these, it is extraordinary
how quickly the sublimity of the great leaves one breathless and exhausted.’
would my discomposure allow me no answer?
‘if i were obliged to read all these sermons and tracts with you now...’
‘but,’ she interrupted, ‘i should be very sorry to see you read them! i agree with you; i think you
were meant for much better things than that.’
she spoke quite simply and without seeming to suspect that my heart might be rent by these
words which implied the separation of our lives. my head was burning; i should have liked to go on
speaking; i should have liked to cry; perhaps my tears would have vanquished her; but i remained
without saying a word, my elbows on the mantelpiece, my head buried in my hands. she went on
calmly arranging her flowers, seeing nothing – or pretending to see nothing of my suffering...
at this moment the first bell rang.
‘i shall never be ready for lunch,’ said she. ‘you must go away now.’ and as if it had been
nothing but play: ‘we will go on with this conversation another time.’
we never went on with the conversation. alissa continually eluded me; not that she ever appeared
to be avoiding me; but every casual occupation became a duty of far more urgent importance. i had to
wait my turn; i only came after the constantly recurring cares of the household, after she had attended
to the alterations that were being carried out in the barn, after her visits to the farmers, and after her
visits to the poor, with whom she busied herself more and more. i had the time that was left over, and
very little it was; i never saw her but she was in a hurry – though it was still, perhaps, in the midst of
these trivial occupations, and when i gave up pursuing her, that i least felt how much i had been
dispossessed. the slightest talk showed it me more clearly. when alissa granted me a few minutes, it
was, indeed, for the most laborious conversation to which she lent herself as one does to playing with
a child. she passed beside me swiftly, absent-minded and smiling; and i felt she had become more
distant than if i had never known her. it even seemed to me sometimes that there was a kind of
challenge in her smile, or at any rate a kind of irony, and that she took amusement in thus eluding my
wishes... and at that it was myself that i turned to upbraid, not wishing to give way to reproaches,
and, indeed, hardly knowing what might be expected from her, nor with what i could reproach her.
thus the days from which i had promised myself so much felicity passed by. i contemplated their
flight with stupor, but without desiring to increase their number or delay their passage, so greatly
each one aggravated my grief two days before my departure, however, alissa came with me to the
bench beside the deserted marl-pit; it was a bright autumn evening: as far as the cloudless horizon,
every blue-tinted detail of the landscape stood out distinct and clear, and in the past the dimmest of
its memories. i could not withhold my lamentations as i showed her my present unhappiness – as i
showed her the happiness i had lost.
‘but what is it i can do, my friend?’ she said at once. ‘you are in love with a phantom.’
‘no, not with a phantom, alissa.’
‘with a creature of your imagination.’
‘alas! i am not inventing. she was once my friend. i call upon her. alissa! alissa! it was you i
loved. what have you done with yourself? what have you made yourself become?’
she remained a few moments without answering, slowly pulling a flower to pieces and keeping
her head down. then, at last:
‘jérôme, why don’t you simply admit that you love me less?’
‘because it’s not true! because it’s not true!’ i exclaimed indignantly: ‘because i never loved you
more.’
‘you love me – and yet you regret me!’ she said, trying to smile, and slightly shrugging her
shoulders.
‘i cannot put my love into the past.’
the ground was giving way beneath me; and i caught at anything.
‘it must pass with the rest.’
‘a love like mine will pass only with me.’
‘it will gradually grow less. the alissa whom you think you still love, already exists only in your
memory; a day will come when you will only remember that you loved her.’
‘you speak as if her place might be taken in my heart, or as if my heart were going to stop loving.
do you no longer remember that you once loved me yourself that you take such pleasure in torturing
me?’
i saw her pale lips tremble; in an almost inaudible voice she whispered:
‘no, no; alissa has not changed in that.’
‘why, then nothing has changed,’ i said, seizing her arm...
she went on firmly:
‘one word would explain everything; why don’t you dare say it?’
‘what word?’
‘i have grown older.’
‘hush!’
i protested immediately that i myself had grown as much older as she, that the difference of age
between us remained the same... but she had regained control of herself; the one and only moment
had gone by, and by beginning to argue i let slip my advantage; the ground gave way beneath me.
two days later i left fongueusemare, discontented with her and with myself, full of a vague
hatred against what i still called ‘virtue’, and of resentment against the habitual occupation of my
heart. it seemed as though during this last meeting, and through the very exaggeration of my love, i
had come to the end of all my fervour; each one of alissa’s phrases, against which i had at first
rebelled, remained alive and triumphant within me, after my protestations had died away. yes, no
doubt, she was right! it was nothing but a phantom that i cared for; the alissa that i had loved, that i
still loved, was no more... yes, no doubt we had grown old! this frightful obliteration of all poetry
which had chilled my very heart, was nothing, after all, but a return to the natural course of things; if
by slow degrees i had exalted her, if out of her i had made myself an idol, and adorned it with all that
i was enamoured of, what now remained to me as the result of my labours but my fatigue? as soon as
she was left to herself, alissa had relapsed to her own level – a mediocre level, on which i found
myself too, but on which i no longer desired her. ah! how absurd and fantastic seemed this
exhausting effort of virtue in order to reach her there, on the heights where she had been placed by
my own sole endeavour. a little less pride and our love would have been easy... but what sense was
there in persisting in a love without object? this was to be obstinate, not to be faithful. faithful to
what? to a delusion. was it not wiser to admit to myself that i had been mistaken?
in the meantime i had been offered a place in the school of athens; i agreed to take it up at once,
with no feeling of either ambition or pleasure, but welcoming the idea of departure as though it had
been an escape.
