Doctor Pascal Part 11

"Yes."

"Then that is very senseless! Why did you not answer me?"

But she fell back into her former silence, refusing all explanation, and with a stubborn brow kept her gaze fixed steadily on the sky.

"There, come in and go to bed, naughty child. You will tell me to-morrow."

She did not stir, however; he begged her ten times over to go into the house, but she would not move. He ended by sitting down beside her on the short gra.s.s, through which penetrated the warmth of the pavement beneath.

"But you cannot sleep out of doors. At least answer me. What are you doing here?"

"I am looking."

And from her large eyes, fixed and motionless, her gaze seemed to mount up among the stars. She seemed wholly absorbed in the contemplation of the pure starry depths of the summer sky.

"Ah, master!" she continued, in a low monotone; "how narrow and limited is all that you know compared to what there is surely up there. Yes, if I did not answer you it was because I was thinking of you, and I was filled with grief. You must not think me bad."

In her voice there was a thrill of such tenderness that it moved him profoundly. He stretched himself on the gra.s.s beside her, so that their elbows touched, and they went on talking.

"I greatly fear, my dear, that your griefs are not rational. It gives you pain to think of me. Why so?"

"Oh, because of things that I should find it hard to explain to you; I am not a _savante_. You have taught me much, however, and I have learned more myself, being with you. Besides, they are things that I feel.

Perhaps I might try to tell them to you, as we are all alone here, and the night is so beautiful."

Her full heart overflowed, after hours of meditation, in the peaceful confidence of the beautiful night. He did not speak, fearing to disturb her, but awaited her confidences in silence.

"When I was a little girl and you used to talk to me about science, it seemed to me that you were speaking to me of G.o.d, your words burned so with faith and hope. Nothing seemed impossible to you. With science you were going to penetrate the secret of the world, and make the perfect happiness of humanity a reality. According to you, we were progressing with giant strides. Each day brought its discovery, its certainty. Ten, fifty, a hundred years more, perhaps, and the heavens would open and we should see truth face to face. Well, the years pa.s.s, and nothing opens, and truth recedes."

"You are an impatient girl," he answered simply. "If ten centuries more be necessary we must only wait for them to pa.s.s."

"It is true. I cannot wait. I need to know; I need to be happy at once, and to know everything at once, and to be perfectly and forever happy.

Oh, that is what makes me suffer, not to be able to reach at a bound complete knowledge, not to be able to rest in perfect felicity, freed from scruples and doubts. Is it living to advance with tortoiselike pace in the darkness, not to be able to enjoy an hour's tranquillity, without trembling at the thought of the coming anguish? No, no! All knowledge and all happiness in a single day? Science has promised them to us, and if she does not give them to us, then she fails in her engagements."

Then he, too, began to grow heated.

"But what you are saying is folly, little girl. Science is not revelation. It marches at its human pace, its very effort is its glory.

And then it is not true that science has promised happiness."

She interrupted him hastily.

"How, not true! Open your books up there, then. You know that I have read them. Do they not overflow with promises? To read them one would think we were marching on to the conquest of earth and heaven. They demolish everything, and they swear to replace everything--and that by pure reason, with stability and wisdom. Doubtless I am like the children. When I am promised anything I wish that it shall be given me at once. My imagination sets to work, and the object must be very beautiful to satisfy me. But it would have been easy not to have promised anything. And above all, at this hour, in view of my eager and painful longing, it would be very ill done to tell me that nothing has been promised me."

He made a gesture, a simple gesture of protestation and impatience, in the serene and silent night.

"In any case," she continued, "science has swept away all our past beliefs. The earth is bare, the heavens are empty, and what do you wish that I should become, even if you acquit science of having inspired the hopes I have conceived? For I cannot live without belief and without happiness. On what solid ground shall I build my house when science shall have demolished the old world, and while she is waiting to construct the new? All the ancient city has fallen to pieces in this catastrophe of examination and a.n.a.lysis; and all that remains of it is a mad population vainly seeking a shelter among its ruins, while anxiously looking for a solid and permanent refuge where they may begin life anew. You must not be surprised, then, at our discouragement and our impatience. We can wait no longer. Since tardy science has failed in her promises, we prefer to fall back on the old beliefs, which for centuries have sufficed for the happiness of the world."

"Ah! that is just it," he responded in a low voice; "we are just at the turning point, at the end of the century, fatigued and exhausted with the appalling acc.u.mulation of knowledge which it has set moving. And it is the eternal need for falsehood, the eternal need for illusion which distracts humanity, and throws it back upon the delusive charm of the unknown. Since we can never know all, what is the use of trying to know more than we know already? Since the truth, when we have attained it, does not confer immediate and certain happiness, why not be satisfied with ignorance, the darkened cradle in which humanity slept the deep sleep of infancy? Yes, this is the aggressive return of the mysterious, it is the reaction against a century of experimental research. And this had to be; desertions were to be expected, since every need could not be satisfied at once. But this is only a halt; the onward march will continue, up there, beyond our view, in the illimitable fields of s.p.a.ce."

For a moment they remained silent, still motionless on their backs, their gaze lost among the myriads of worlds s.h.i.+ning in the dark sky. A falling star shot across the constellation of Ca.s.siopeia, like a flaming arrow. And the luminous universe above turned slowly on its axis, in solemn splendor, while from the dark earth around them arose only a faint breath, like the soft, warm breath of a sleeping woman.

"Tell me," he said, in his good-natured voice, "did your Capuchin turn your head this evening, then?"

"Yes," she answered frankly; "he says from the pulpit things that disturb me. He preaches against everything you have taught me, and it is as if the knowledge which I owe to you, transformed into a poison, were consuming me. My G.o.d! What is going to become of me?"

"My poor child! It is terrible that you should torture yourself in this way! And yet I had been quite tranquil about you, for you have a well-balanced mind--you have a good, little, round, clear, solid headpiece, as I have often told you. You will soon calm down. But what confusion in the brains of others, at the end of the century, if you, who are so sane, are troubled! Have you not faith, then?"

She answered only by a heavy sigh.

"a.s.suredly, viewed from the standpoint of happiness, faith is a strong staff for the traveler to lean upon, and the march becomes easy and tranquil when one is fortunate enough to possess it."

"Oh, I no longer know whether I believe or not!" she cried. "There are days when I believe, and there are other days when I side with you and with your books. It is you who have disturbed me; it is through you I suffer. And perhaps all my suffering springs from this, from my revolt against you whom I love. No, no! tell me nothing; do not tell me that I shall soon calm down. At this moment that would only irritate me still more. I know well that you deny the supernatural. The mysterious for you is only the inexplicable. Even you concede that we shall never know all; and therefore you consider that the only interest life can have is the continual conquest over the unknown, the eternal effort to know more.

Ah, I know too much already to believe. You have already succeeded but too well in shaking my faith, and there are times when it seems to me that this will kill me."

He took her hand that lay on the still warm gra.s.s, and pressed it hard.

"No, no; it is life that frightens you, little girl. And how right you are in saying that happiness consists in continual effort. For from this time forward tranquil ignorance is impossible. There is no halt to be looked for, no tranquillity in renunciation and wilful blindness.

We must go on, go on in any case with life, which goes on always.

Everything that is proposed, a return to the past, to dead religions, patched up religions arranged to suit new wants, is a snare. Learn to know life, then; to love it, live it as it ought to be lived--that is the only wisdom."

But she shook off his hand angrily. And her voice trembled with vexation.

"Life is horrible. How do you wish me to live it tranquil and happy?

It is a terrible light that your science throws upon the world. Your a.n.a.lysis opens up all the wounds of humanity to display their horror.

You tell everything; you speak too plainly; you leave us nothing but disgust for people and for things, without any possible consolation."

He interrupted her with a cry of ardent conviction.

"We tell everything. Ah, yes; in order to know everything and to remedy everything!"

Her anger rose, and she sat erect.

"If even equality and justice existed in your nature--but you acknowledge it yourself, life is for the strongest, the weak infallibly perishes because he is weak--there are no two beings equal, either in health, in beauty, or intelligence; everything is left to haphazard meeting, to the chance of selection. And everything falls into ruin, when grand and sacred justice ceases to exist."

"It is true," he said, in an undertone, as if speaking to himself, "there is no such thing as equality. No society based upon it could continue to exist. For centuries, men thought to remedy evil by character. But that idea is being exploded, and now they propose justice. Is nature just? I think her logical, rather. Logic is perhaps a natural and higher justice, going straight to the sum of the common labor, to the grand final labor."

"Then it is justice," she cried, "that crushes the individual for the happiness of the race, that destroys an enfeebled species to fatten the victorious species. No, no; that is crime. There is in that only foulness and murder. He was right this evening in the church. The earth is corrupt, science only serves to show its rottenness. It is on high that we must all seek a refuge. Oh, master, I entreat you, let me save myself, let me save you!"

She burst into tears, and the sound of her sobs rose despairingly on the stillness of the night. He tried in vain to soothe her, her voice dominated his.

"Listen to me, master. You know that I love you, for you are everything to me. And it is you who are the cause of all my suffering. I can scarcely endure it when I think that we are not in accord, that we should be separated forever if we were both to die to-morrow. Why will you not believe?"

He still tried to reason with her.

"Come, don't be foolish, my dear--"

But she threw herself on her knees, she seized him by the hands, she clung to him with a feverish force. And she sobbed louder and louder, in such a clamor of despair that the dark fields afar off were startled by it.

"Listen to me, he said it in the church. You must change your life and do penance; you must burn everything belonging to your past errors--your books, your papers, your ma.n.u.scripts. Make this sacrifice, master, I entreat it of you on my knees. And you will see the delightful existence we shall lead together."