such was the dream i lived in. to-day, when i go over that time in retrospect, i ask myself whether i did not experience any anxiety. not the least. not for an instant did i see my sky overcast.
i was harshly undeceived on one point though. in using it i found out how second-rate the english article was. it answered the purpose all right as long as i kept still, but light as it seemed it was necessary to exert my hip to work it, which made me walk with a kind of unsightly swing and very quickly tired me.
i got into the habit of going out during the best hours of the day while the fine weather lasted. once outside, i walked slowly, putting on the air of a loiterer. as uninitiated passers-by might well think i was merely slightly lame, i now had to be doubly vigilant about avoiding the least contact with the crowd. alas! i was very unsteady; twice i nearly fell when someone bumped into me, and people did not apologise; the mufti i had taken to again seemed to rob me of the right to any consideration.
who would believe that i almost got as far as to regret the wooden stump? my last hopes were fixed on the american firm. i congratulated myself upon not having cancelled my order. a fellow-sufferer had just been introduced to me, who had been supplied[pg 510] with a leg by them, and i marvelled at his young and supple carriage.
why did i make a point of telling jeannine of my disillusionment? perhaps in order to get the answer, "what are you worrying about?" with ambitious coquetry i boasted in advance of the wonders expected from the other firm.
the reply was delayed for six days, and when it came was only four pages. the landrys were putting the finishing touch to their preparations. there was not a single allusion to my infirmity, which i had told her was well on the way to being cured. no doubt she had made a rule never to broach the subject. having once and for all given me proof of her tender pity she wished thenceforward to spare me the humiliation of feeling that she even thought of it.
some days slipped by. i had written to her again in an affectionate tone. though tempted to give her to understand that it would be less painful to show myself to her in a fortnight's time, i refrained from making such a mistake. that was a secondary matter. only let her come! let her come! oh, my love!
at this point, there was a long silence on her part. must it be put down to the postal service again? no, we received our other letters from paris quite regularly.
at the end of ten days i wrote her a line, saying that i was anxious. no answer—what could i make of it? i was seized with apprehension. was she ill perhaps? but i should have been told about it. had some accident happened to her? that was more likely. if so, what was it? my thoughts wandered, incapable of fixing themselves.
then, one morning, just as i got out of bed, the waiter brought me a card. what power there is in[pg 511] presentiments! as i took it from him i distinctly saw another, the one i had got from jeannine at f—— the day before we started. i immediately thought—why, i wonder? that was the first, and this—this, the last!
it was not the paris postmark. i undid it slowly, pretending—on whose account?—to be unmoved. one page, no more. it was headed juan-les-pins, december 17, 1914. jeannine expressed her regret at the fact that they had been prevented from making the detour they intended, because the time-tables fitted in so awkwardly. her grandmother was not very well, as a result of a great deal of worry, and found the journey long enough without adding to it. they had arrived the day before yesterday on the riviera, which was not justifying its reputation, since the sun was absent. it lacked joyousness above everything. she added that she could not tear her thoughts away from the cold northern regions, where so much youth, and all the promise of the future was succumbing. she ended by expressing the hope that we should see each other again some day. there was no allusion to our travelling plans, which i had mentioned to her several times.
i stood still, thunder-struck. i mechanically began to read over the lines again. the letters were dancing. i searched for an unexpected meaning in them. i refused to admit.... but the conviction was secretly gaining ground in my mind.
when i got to the signature again, there was not an unsteady stroke. the evolution was complete; i was ripe at last to understand. it was the emanation of a distant, a prodigiously distant being. how could i ever have thought—? my simplicity amazed me. here, endless overwhelming forebodings occurred to my[pg 512] mind. the imperceptibly, but totally changed tone of her letters; the note of friendship substituted for that of love; never a word in reference to my misfortune; the grandmother always refraining from adding a personal message, the long-delayed opportunity of seeing me again. lastly, the brutal decision: these four sentences of dismissal.
i leant on the window looking over the hotel garden from the second floor. a bare lawn, and leafless trees. a cold and dreary wind was blowing, this winter morning. i pictured her, too, at her window opening on to the sea. my thoughts sought her thoughts. yes, i wanted her to feel me moved by her cold, heart-breaking epistle at that moment. ah, and if she could have read my heart, she would have seen that it held for her nothing but a desperate, resigned devotion.
move her to pity? a dead ambition. demand an explanation? what was the good? i saw it quite clearly. curse her, blaspheme against her? how far that was from my thoughts. i did not accuse her of treachery. it seemed to me certain that at the time of the uplifting struggle she had dreamt of me as her bridegroom of to-morrow. but since i had been damaged. my god! what could i have reproached her with?
had i still supposed myself worthy to inspire contentment in a youthful creature, inexperienced and perfect? when no engagement bound us! for on what foundations had i built? on nothing more than an odd avowal or two hidden here and there between the lines. sand scattered by the wind! i might read over her letters, those written during the last few months and even those at the beginning. when once my own ardour had abated i should not find in[pg 513] them either oath or promise; there was nothing there, nothing had ever been expressed but a sisterly affection.
it occurred to my mind that more than one girl of former days, brought up in the pious ideas of devotion and self-sacrifice, would have felt herself especially bound to proclaim as her fiancé the man who had suffered at the hands of fate—inspirations to be respected, but, i admitted, out of date. this generation, less sensible—i have already said jeannine was not the least—to the impress of religion, showed more common sense. it was permissible for a child of our century, however generous she might be, to trust to time to cure all heartaches, in others and in herself, to aspire to a happiness other than sacrifice.
jeannine might have suffered, might be suffering still. yes, she must regret that what was not, might not be. it was possible that she might carry away a picture of me which would illuminate a chaste corner of her memory: an idol that she had not been able to bring herself to destroy by seeing me again. it was reason. i bowed to the sovereign i always recognised. does one not usually end by repenting of a sacrifice? i glanced into the glass—i have said that i was not dressed: ugliness, a lack of harmony, weakness. if i had given her my arm, she would have been the one to support me. what shame, what remorse even, there would have been for me, in paralysing this creature, so vividly alive, in eternally hearing her pitied, she who was born to be envied.
i dressed with my mind a blank. i abstained, when i was ready, from knocking at the door of the room next to mine, where my father slept. i was afraid of letting him see the distracted look on my face.
i went downstairs and out of doors. where should[pg 514] i go to? i avoided the frequented streets, and the park where i liked to sit. it was a long round. how my leg weighed on me. but i forced myself to walk quickly, as long as i continued to meet any one. when i got beyond the suburbs some power or other abruptly ceased to support me. faint, and at the end of my strength, i was only just able to reach a heap of stones, upon which i sank down.
there was a nip in the air. the sun, like a dull ball, appeared behind a livid curtain of cloud.
what a feeling of irremediable collapse! all my strength, physical and moral, was annulled. my despair alone lived on in the depths of my frozen heart. for a long while i experienced a secret, harrowing joy in imagining the future, such as it might have been. my sorrow was exasperated by turning over such visions in my mind, and reached a state of paroxysm. i could not bear it. i got up, picked up my stick, and went on along the road.
not far away, beyond some fields, a line of poplars made me guess where the allier lay. i was drawn on by a fatal longing to reach the bank of the river. poor soul, born but to disappear!
swollen by the autumn rains, the river filled its huge bed to the brink. it was a glaucous, sinister stretch of water. eddying foam was swept along on a strong current.
i was tempted. i approached the bank. it fell away in a steep slope towards the stream which swished along it with a monotonous gurgle. i planted my stick at the extreme edge among the fragments of slate. i leant over—it was horribly alluring—and i granted myself a certain delay.
what a stirring moment that was while my fate[pg 515] hung in the balance. i had come to the end of my tether. what had brought me there? was it not the paltry idea of bringing remorse to birth in jeannine's heart? but what would she know of my wretched fate? and why revenge myself so basely? i scrupled to annihilate the vestige of strength which i constituted. lastly, there was the disdain for an act of romantic impotence.
and then, what pulled me up short was the thought of the old man, who must have heard me go out, who was alarmed no doubt already, whose life hung upon my return. then i sat down. ceasing to hypnotise myself by gazing at the torrent eating away the bank at my feet, my eyes strayed to the horizon. by a stretch of the imagination it seemed to me that i dominated the field where my individual happiness had been shattered.
the war! had i not come—i remember the day before—to deify the word! yes, it was a progressive spell. the war! while childishly attributing the rejuvenation of my soul to it, i had ended by seeing in it the fairy who was cruel to be kind. so many thinkers and poets had bowed down to this terrible goddess, before me.
my aberration fell to pieces. the war! the abominations which were really contained in this term rose up and quelled me.
those villages, blazing like torches. the meuse rolling by with its purple slime; the woods of montrolles with their grasses stained with mottled patches violet, the traces of our brothers massacred there. o death, sole enemy of man, sneering at the orgies of the sword! so many beings who moved and loved, struck off the rolls, so many lights put out! de valpic,[pg 516] the great-hearted, and henriot and little frémont; my excellent bouillon, prunelle, icard; descroix and playoust, too, all or almost all, without discrimination—a crowd of friends and companions, now grimacing underground. and the anonymous multitude, those foul masses of corpses whose odour had pursued us all through our fighting from end to end. all that, oh! merely a prologue! as if it was enough that a million young men should be sacrificed. to death, to death with their elders, the fellows from thirty to forty. the trench fighting instituted, which would last how long, o god! the sons of the hostile races, face to face in their burrows, spitting murder and hatred at each other, tracing with their blood the baleful line of fire. frenzy gaining the two fronts little by little, the zones of slaughter being displaced and stretched out, others being made. where would the conflagration end? a craze for butchery sweeping through the world. would there be an acre in europe, to-morrow, which had not seen human remains decaying beneath the beaks of carrion crows, or which did not contain them in its depths, infecting the sources of their poisoned juices?
ah! when the awakening came at last, and the diplomats, old vultures, were collected round the council-board to talk, they might congratulate themselves as they audited the balance sheet. broken up, ground and crushed, these two, three, four generations of men who might have been great, and collaborated in the common cause. so many wounded who would soon succumb, wan wrecks, and so many others who, like myself, would only drag out the shadow of an existence. and all the rest! the ravaged homes, the wives abandoned to the terrors of their widowhood,[pg 517] the old parents dying with curses on their lips, the children delivered over without guidance to life's buffetings, the surplus girls especially, deprived of their natural associates, devoted to the sorrows of debauchery. with many of those who came back safely, the mind at least would be affected, their faith in work sapped, their brutal instincts let loose, and their desire for immediate enjoyment aroused. the public wealth destroyed, want bringing revolt in its train, the emasculated nations incapable of recovering, or even of governing themselves. the snare of revolutions, of frightful social convulsions. what could one depend upon henceforth? there would be no law or rule of any sort. the religions, art, science, all these would be humiliated before force. the ideal broken and trampled underfoot. an infected breath tainting the sacred legacies of the past. the genius of destruction hovering over a civilisation in ruins. that was what war meant!
a monstrous survival of primitive errors. how i abhorred them all of a sudden, the politics and morals which revere this scourge of god.
as to war raising the hearts of individuals and nations, alas, who could answer for it? for one soul purified, how many others would be vilified! and, above all, how terrible was the remedy, a thousand times worse than the complaint.
war might be necessary, and it was in this case, for the defence of our native land. then it might give birth to the most noble effervescence. then in its radiance virtues might thrive like plants beneath a tropical sun. but it remained no less the supreme calamity; the triumph of the powers of death.
care must be taken not to magnify it, not to flatter[pg 518] the fluctuating mind of the nations with bellicose dreams. we must needs greet a like catastrophe with a fiercely hostile heart, abhor it, blaspheme against it, we miserable creatures, who had but one life to live, one brief chance of being happy.
