René Boylesve

“ Can any one understand the sorrow from which he does not himself suffer?
On reaching Paris Odette was singularly impressed. When she had gone to Surville in 1914, to forget the war and think only of her dead, she had been surprised to find herself on the contrary all the nearer to the war. The trains of wounded, life among the wounded, the almost sole society of men but recently escaped from death; all this was far different from her recluse life in the apartment of the Rue de Balzac, which had indeed recalled the memory of Jean, but had also recalled the memory of the time of peace. ”

“ What fine art could flourish except by means of men not yet born, men who will not come into the world until after this horror is no longer spoken about?"
"Remember what those poor friends of ours used to say when they talked so well in our gatherings of former days: the flowers that bloom on graves are as fresh and the harvests that grow on battlefields are more abundant than those on fields that have never known crime and death; they are innocent, divinely innocent of all the past. The souls of artists are like flowers; and they purify the imaginations that have been soiled." ”

“ I have noticed that at the hospital, especially in the early days. I don't deny that it seems as if I were being rubbed the wrong way, but there is a sort of miraculous cure that acts of itself, penetrating like a drop of balm, to the very depths of the wound."
"I don't understand you at all," said Clotilde; "a thing that bores me bores me, and when anything hurts me I simply must push it away or go away myself."
"I used to be like you," said Odette; "I am still, in all that concerns my grief. For that there is no balm; nothing will ever heal it. ”

“ My poor Odette! You are hardly four days out of your hospital, and you go to pieces! We are only kept up by the presence of those who have suffered a thousand times more than we. You can't imagine what it is for me that my Pierrot has miraculously escaped death, with his body half destroyed. It is he who saves me from unhappiness. Those who have looked death in the face and yet have returned to life find it beautiful, whatever it is, and their wonder at it spreads to all around them. ”

“ Odette could not refrain from wiping her eyes.
La Villaumer, who lost nothing of her actions, said to her:
"You are weeping for another sorrow than your own?"
"Is that what you think?" asked Odette; "it is still my sorrow; it is he who makes me more alive to the sorrows of others."
"Yes, but from the moment when you can thus weep for others your own grief becomes more tolerable."
"I would not wish to suffer less."
"You are not suffering less; there is room in your heart for a still greater sorrow." ”

“ The low tide, the stormy sky, the wind, the grayish hillsides, the transports on the horizon, always this immense deserted beach, these wretched relics of the war, and she, disconsolate widow, imploring the wind to snatch her away and destroy her in its eddies! The constant reminders of the past, the sight of these same places, natural background of all the pleasant things of life! The thought of that water which had bathed the limbs of Jean, and of the August sun, and the restless multitude, gay and elegant, whom the many-colored sweaters set off like a profusion of tulips ”

“ Recall to mind the tragic and paradoxical truth that human life, which is the highest work and appears to have been the purpose of the creation of the world, is that for which, on the whole, that great work appears to care the least. Whatever part man may be called to play, his destiny is to pass away. That horror of war with which we are inspired by the extermination of men is in the long run kept up and perpetuated by material depredations; the memory of an illustrious building destroyed will last longer than that of a hundred thousand young men mown down in their youth. ”

“ One must have the courage to bestow upon them the gayety—which we don't possess. Social hypocrisy has not been practised all this time in vain, if it has taught this to some of us."
"I am ashamed of my weakness," said Odette. "I should not flinch before any sort of wound, but the thought that the war has deprived a man of the light of day forces me to ask myself whether I myself have a right to look upon these beautiful silks, this sunlight——"
"Take pleasure in the silks, in objects of art, and in sunlight, you who are made to charm that portion of humanity that remains intact. ”

“ At this instant she thought of herself in relation to the incalculable number of persons who were not she. It was not that the moans of humanity were now reaching her for the first time, but it was the first time that the sobs of others came to her ears with a tone of majestic sadness which forced her to grovel upon the earth, saying: "I no longer count; I am only the servant of grief."
It was a painful sentiment if there is one, and yet, by a curious contradiction, a sentiment in the same degree joyful. ”

“ The most deplorable ruins which the monster has spread abroad over our land are perhaps not so much the splendid monuments of Belgium and France, as the youth of humanity, that had seemed eternal, that was bearing it on to a great outburst of a common hope—faith in Fraternity, faith in Liberty, faith in Justice, potent religion of Progress. Cold reason, like the German gas, has poisoned all this fresh and ebullient vigor. The whole world has become allied, only to strangle a jackal. ”

“ She pointed around to the photographs of the dead. It was as if she were in a cemetery, herself living in one of its vaults. Her eyes filled with sudden tears.
"I love him as on the day he died; as on that other day, that dreadful day when he left me—I cannot cry all this upon the housetops. You, madame, have suffered like me, more even than me, the pain of this horrible war; we can no longer speak of our dead! We have no right to show our grief! There are too many griefs, too many dead. ”

“ Those of our day who sing of love and practise it are more surely serving the future than those who conceive of restraint as the sole virtue."
In spite of herself, these unpremeditated words brought a sudden light into the perplexed thoughts with which Odette's persistent sorrow and her natural disposition as a loving young woman inspired Clotilde. She felt impelled to cry out to her: "You think you are loving a dead man, my poor dear! but you are not twenty-eight years old; you are in love with love; it is always here, and is waiting for you!" ”

“ Do we profess to worship that bravery of man which all the past has justified? Why, by the scientific character of war it has become—one dares permit himself the blasphemy—almost a sign of inferiority. We reckon upon the mystical value of our bravery, and we send our men by the thousands against an army of tools! By virtue of our century-old prejudices we honor only the man who exposes himself, sacrifices himself, furnishes, however uselessly, his proofs of courage, when the glory of our arms will belong to him who shall most securely have sheltered his divisions behind gigantic steam-hammers! ”

“ In a general way, scientific inventions—don't confuse them with the sciences, which merit all veneration—conspire to give to this war a character of atrocity to which no armed conflict has ever attained, and I wish that it could be proved to me that they alleviate it in equal proportion. Think only of the horror which this 'progress' in the art of extermination inspires. How many brains are unable to resist it? Civilians are dying every day, and the best of them, who go to pieces merely from imagining the war. We see them fall like the hollow bark which still seems to support a tree. ”

“ Odette burst into sobs.
"My child, my dear little friend," said Mme. de Calouas, "I beg you not to give way to despondency of any sort. Believe what I say, and do not think me hard, as I may appear to be. I am not hard. I have simply covered myself with a shell, because we are engaged in a merciless conflict. Let us not permit ourselves to be weakened whether by catastrophe or painful loss or bitter trial. To give way to grief is to grow less strong. For the time, we can be sure only of suffering. Each grief should give us the opportunity not to weep, but to do more than before. ”

“ Why should Clotilde deprive herself of her bouquet of carnations, her pot of hyacinths, her perfumed cigarettes, while they serve to create around her the illusion by which she lives, and of which, when the occasion comes, she gives her weary friends the benefit for a whole hour? Yet, could I do like her? No; decidedly not. Did not I, then, love love as she does? I do not know, I loved Jean. Then I am less simple than she; everything affects me. And everything is shaken. I am not flattering myself when I recognize that I am alive to more than one thing. ”

“ The streets crossed at right angles; nearly all of them were bordered by hedges beyond which one could see a garden, the wire cage of a tennis-court, a Norman villa, and no one. Often, the whole length of her walk she met only one human being, a big man, almost impotent, whose duty it was to sweep up the dead leaves—an absurd duty since the wind scattered them as fast as he swept, and the trees shed down behind him another layer of little golden, rolling, dead things.
Sometimes, walking daringly, Odette crossed the long terrace, and braving the wind went as far as to the sea. ”

“ It is the salvation of men that they always limit their thoughts to the most immediate duty. The thought of a pair of shoes, of the place where one's livret is hidden, of saying good-by to this one or that one, checks the vertigo which the enormity of the event might well produce.
At first Odette had felt oppressed and wept like a nervous child who hears a sudden alarm. She had been unable, for her tears, to see the letter-box into which she dropped that letter to Jean which no longer signified anything and would doubtless never reach him to whom it was addressed. ”

“ In almost every heart the sublimity of the French struggle, the universal respect which it evoked throughout the world, overcame apprehension, stifled the sense of uncounted losses, and dominated that crater on the banks of the Meuse, in eruption over an extent of thirty-five kilometres, its lava overwhelming a whole countryside.
Odette was invited to dine with officers who had returned from that hell, who were going back to it; and these men talked futilities like every one else: partly from kindliness, partly for their own pleasure, or in courteous resumption of the decorum of former days. ”

“ The words had been spoken to some one in the next room, who drew near to the window, and she had heard a woman's voice exclaiming, with a moan or in desperate appeal, such as one seldom hears.
Odette had risen, and she too had looked out. She had never been superstitious, and was especially not inclined to doleful prognostications. She had always been happy; her life had flowed along, so to speak, like one continued festival. Being alone in her room, she did not speak; but all her flesh quivered.
It may well be that similar phenomena occur sometimes without attracting our attention ”

“ Newspapers, conversations, the tramways, the metro, the taxi chauffeur who gave you change, the woman who sold you a magazine, servants, masters, the rich, the poor, bank employees, even to the sellers of violets in the streets, all brought to mind the war and Verdun, yet mutely, less by outcries than by quiet words, less by words than by changed color, the graying of the hair or of the beard, faded eyes, new wrinkles, and a certain indefinable manner. The whole earth and everything that it bears, every creature moving upon it, were a single sensitiveness, raised to its most acute degree. ”

“ Odette dared not forbid herself to look at it.
Autos were rumbling by, some of them covered, others displaying to the light of day a heap of men, motionless, bandaged, covered with clay, an agglutinated mass of flesh in which all individuality if not all life seemed to be held in suspense, a cart-load of humanity: not a single man but a mass of bloody pulp in which the suffering that it covered must be a common suffering. ”

“ She read over again the books that they had read together; or rather, she pleased herself by telling herself that she had read these books with Jean. Or she walked in her little garden, making forty turns over the tour of the hedge-bordered alley, strewn with golden flakes which the poplars shed like rain. Sometimes she would pause before the latticed gate upon the road, amusing herself with counting the minutes that one might stand there without seeing a single passer-by. One day she thought she recognized Mme. de Calouas hastening past on a bicycle, light and fleet as a dragon-fly. ”

“ Early in the following spring, when the gardens that surrounded the villas of Surville were gay with flowering plums, and the countryside was again covered with those lovely trees of rosy snow that it is a pain to look at when men are killing one another, when the woods were venturing to confide to the brisk air their new-born foliage, Odette was obliged to make a visit to Paris. ”

“ This torn flesh, these rags of French uniform, wrought in the mind of every being not utterly insensible a change in his idea of the pathetic; something of the atmosphere of the firing-line entered and asepticized every heart.
The next morning the sense of familiarity returned. But in that one hour of the dark winter night, while the surgeon, bending over each victim, was asking him almost tenderly: "And you, my child?"—something august, an exhalation of the colossal human sacrifice, penetrated into this commonplace old hotel hall, sanctifying it for all time to come. ”

“ She knew the situation of the staircase leading to the basements, where the food was brought in and the dead carried out. She knew that at a corner of the building looking upon the sea was the operating-theatre, visible from without. And in fact, passing by it, she perceived a group of white-robed men and women, their sleeves turned back, leaning over something or some one. Then she fled toward the sea like a coward and was ashamed. In reality, this assemblage of suffering creatures at once repelled and attracted her, producing a complex sentiment, unfamiliar and incongruous. ”

“ I have seen her utterly insensible to an accident to a civilian; most of those women in the hospital had a passion for their duties there, thought themselves degraded when they had not the number of beds that satisfied their pride, lamented as if for a public misfortune when, by chance, fewer wounded soldiers came. There are even people whose passion it is to have no passions—and they are the most to be dreaded. ”

“ She was expecting to find consternation in a family crushed by their fate, and during the drive she reflected with astonishment that it was not altogether painful to her to visit people in grief; in her inmost heart she would rather meet the little de Blauve girls mourning, unhappy, than her consolatory friends, overflowing with kind and beautiful words, but not personally sorrowing. "It is not the sight of happiness that consoles us in our sorrows," she said to herself, "but to come into touch with a grief that is like our own." ”

“ And yet not one of those beautiful old days ever aroused in me so much feeling as the crossing over of those ten war-blinded soldiers. I do not cease to regret the time when these poor young fellows enjoyed the light; but I am asking myself by what mystery the greatest suffering uplifts us above the greatest pleasure. I even believe that the stimulus of the greatest pleasure is short-lived and degenerates rapidly, while the other lasts long and is endlessly purified."
"You are being converted, La Villaumer!" ”

“ It holds within itself many possibilities. Your grief began with embracing your personal calamity; that alone; and it still hugs it to itself, that is most natural; but it has unconsciously taken a further step, embracing the sorrows of others, a change which you never looked for. And that is making of you another person."
"Will every one like me find themselves a tone above or below what they used to be—as if the whole keyboard had been transposed?"
"I do not think so," said La Villaumer. "Nature changes little. Only sensitive souls are modified, and they are rare. ”