The Confession of a Child of the Century Part 16

I MUST now recite what happened to my love, and the change that took place in me. What reason can I give for it? None, except as I repeat the story and as I say: "It is the truth."

For two days, neither more nor less, I was Madame Pierson's lover. One fine night, I set out and traversed the road that led to her house. I was feeling so well in body and soul, that I leaped for joy and extended my arms to heaven. I found her at the top of the stairway, leaning on the railing, a lighted candle beside her. She was waiting for me and when she saw me ran to meet me.

She showed me how she had changed her coiffure which had displeased me, and told me how she had pa.s.sed the day arranging her hair to suit my taste; how she had taken down a villainous black picture frame that had offended my eye; how she had renewed the flowers; she recounted all she had done since she had known me, how she had seen me suffer and how she had suffered herself; how she had thought of leaving the country, of fleeing from her love; how she had employed every precaution against me; how she had sought advice from her aunt, from Mercanson and from the cure; how she had vowed to herself that she would die rather than yield, and how all that had been dissipated by a single word of mine, a glance, an incident; and with every confession, a kiss. She said that whatever I saw in her room that pleased my taste, whatever bagatelle on her table attracted my attention, she would give me; that whatever she did in the future, in the morning, in the evening, at any hour, I should regulate as I pleased; that the judgments of the world did not concern her; that if she had appeared to care for them, it was only to send me away; but that she wished to be happy and close her ears; that she was thirty years of age and had not long to be loved by me. "And you will love me a long time? Are those fine words with which you have beguiled me, true?" And then, loving reproaches because I had been late in coming to her; that she had put on her slippers in order that I might see her foot but that she was no longer beautiful; that she could wish she were; that she was, at fifteen. She went here and there, silly with love, crimson with joy; and she did not know what to imagine, what to say or do, in order to give herself and all that she had.

I was lying on the sofa; I felt, at every word she spoke, a bad hour of my past life slipping away from me. I watched the star of love rising in my sky, and it seemed to me I was like a tree filled with sap that shakes off its dry leaves in order to attire itself in new foliage.

She sat down at the piano and told me she was going to play an air by Stradella. I love more than all else, sacred music, and that morceau which she sang for me a number of times, gave me great pleasure.

"Yes," she said when she had finished, "but you are very much mistaken, the air is mine, and I have made you believe it was Stradella's."

"It is yours?"

"Yes, and I told you it was by Stradella, in order to see what you would say of it. I never play my own music, when I happen to compose any; but I wanted to try it with you, and you see it has succeeded, since you were deceived."

What a monstrous machine is man! What could be more innocent? A bright child might have adopted that ruse to surprise his teacher. She laughed heartily the while, but I felt a strange coldness as though a cloud had settled on me; my countenance changed.

"What is the matter?" she asked. "Are you ill?"

"It is nothing; play that air again."

While she was playing, I walked up and down the room; I pa.s.sed my hand over my forehead as though to brush away the fog, I stamped my foot, shrugged my shoulders at my own madness; finally, I sat down on a cus.h.i.+on which had fallen to the floor; she came to me. The more I struggled with the spirit of darkness which had seized me, the thicker the night that gathered around my head.

"Verily," I said, "you lie so well? What! that air is yours? Is it possible you can lie so fluently?"

She looked at me with an air of astonishment.

"What is it?" she asked.

Unspeakable anxiety was depicted on her face. Surely she could not believe me fool enough to reproach her for such a harmless bit of pleasantry; she did not see anything serious in that sadness which I felt; but the more trifling the cause, the greater the surprise. At first she thought I, too, must be joking; but when she saw me growing paler every moment, as though about to faint, she stood with open lips and bent body, looking like a statue.

"G.o.d of Heaven!" she cried, "is it possible?"

You smile, perhaps, reader, at this page; I, who write it, still shudder as I think of it. Misfortunes have their symptoms as well as diseases, and there is nothing so terrible at sea as a little black point on the horizon.

However, my dear Brigitte drew a little round table into the center of the room and brought out some supper. She had prepared it herself and I did not drink a drop that was not first borne to her lips. The blue light of day, piercing through the curtains, illumined her charming face and tender eyes; she was tired and allowed her head to fall on my shoulder with a thousand terms of endearment.

I could not struggle against such charming abandon, and my heart expanded with joy; I believed I had rid myself of the bad dream that had just tormented me, and I begged her pardon for giving way to a sudden impulse which I, myself, did not understand.

"My friend," I said from the bottom of my heart, "I am very sorry that I unjustly reproached you for a piece of innocent badinage; but if you love me, never lie to me, even in the smallest matter, for a lie is an abomination to me and I can not endure it."

I told her I would remain until she was asleep. I saw her close her beautiful eyes, and heard her murmur something in her sleep as I bent over and kissed her adieu. Then I went away with a tranquil heart, promising myself that I would henceforth enjoy my happiness and allow nothing to disturb it.

But the next day Brigitte said to me, as though by chance:

"I have a large book in which I have written my thoughts, everything that has occurred to my mind, and I want you to see what I said of you the first day I met you."

We read together what concerned me, to which we added a hundred foolish comments, after which I began to turn the leaves in a mechanical way. A phrase, written in capital letters caught my eye on one of the pages I was turning; I distinctly saw some words that were insignificant enough and I was about to read the rest when Brigitte stopped me and said:

"Do not read that."

I threw the book on the table.

"Why, certainly not," I said, "I did not think what I was doing."

"Do you still take things seriously?" she asked, smiling, doubtless seeing my malady coming on again; "take the book, I want you to read it."

The book lay on the table within easy reach, and I did not take my eyes from it. I seemed to hear a voice whispering in my ear, and I thought I saw, grimacing before me, with his glacial smile, and dry face, Desgenais. "What are you doing here, Desgenais?" I asked, as if I really saw him. He looked as he did that evening, when he leaned over my table and unfolded to me his catechism of vice.

I kept my eyes on the book and I felt vaguely stirring in my memory some forgotten words of the past. The spirit of doubt hanging over my head had injected into my veins a drop of poison; the vapor mounted to my head and I staggered like a drunken man. What secret was Brigitte concealing from me? I knew very well that I had only to bend over and open the book; but at what place? How could I recognize the leaf on which my eye had chanced to fall?

My pride, moreover, would not permit me to take the book; was it indeed pride? "O G.o.d!" I said to myself with a frightful sense of sadness, "is the past a specter? and can it come out of its tomb? Ah! wretch that I am, can I never love?"

All my ideas of contempt for women, all the phrases of mocking fatuity which I had repeated as a schoolboy his lesson, suddenly came to my mind; and strange to say, while formerly I did not believe in making a parade of them, now it seemed that they were real or at least that they had been.

I had known Madame Pierson four months, but I knew nothing of her past life and had never questioned her about it. I had yielded to my love for her with confidence and without reservation. I found a sort of pleasure in taking her just as she was, for just what she seemed, while suspicion and jealousy are so foreign to my nature that I was more surprised at feeling them toward Brigitte than she was in discovering them in me.

Never, in my first love, nor in the affairs of daily life have I been distrustful, but on the contrary, bold and frank, suspecting nothing. I had to see my mistress betray me before my eyes before I would believe that she could deceive me. Desgenais himself, while preaching to me after his manner, joked me about the ease with which I could be duped. The story of my life was an incontestable proof that I was credulous rather than suspicious; and when the words in that book suddenly struck me, it seemed to me I felt a new being within me, a sort of unknown self; my reason revolted against the feeling, and I did not dare ask whither all that was leading me.

But the suffering I had endured, the memory of the perfidy that I had witnessed, the frightful cure I had imposed on myself, the opinions of my friends, the corrupt life I had led, the sad truths I had learned, all those that I had unconsciously surmised during my sad experience, finally, debauchery, contempt of love, abuse of everything, that is what I had in my heart although I did not suspect it; and at the moment when life and hope were again being born within me, all these furies that were growing numb with time, seized me by the throat and cried out that they were there.

I bent over and opened the book, then immediately closed it and threw it on the table. Brigitte was looking at me; in her beautiful eyes there was neither wounded pride nor anger; there was nothing but tender solicitude as if I were ill.

"Do you think I have secrets?" she asked, embracing me.

"No," I replied, "I know nothing except that you are beautiful and that I would die, loving you."

When I returned home to dinner I said to Larive:

"Who is that Madame Pierson?"

He looked at me in astonishment.

"You have lived here many years," I continued; "you ought to know better than I. What do they say of her here? What do they think of her in the village? What kind of a life did she lead before I knew her? Whom did she receive as her friends?"

"In faith, sir, I have never seen her do otherwise than she does every day, that is to say, walk in the valley, play piquet with her aunt, and visit the poor. The peasants call her Brigitte la Rose; I have never heard a word against her except that she goes through the woods alone at all hours of the day and night; but that is when engaged in charitable work. She is the ministering angel in the valley. As for those she receives, there are only the cure and M. de Dalens, during vacation."

"Who is this M. de Dalens?"

"He owns the chateau at the foot of the mountain on the other side; he only comes here for the chase."

"Is he young?"

"Yes."

"Is he related to Madame Pierson?"

"No, he was a friend of her husband."

"Has her husband been dead long?"