Henry Bordeaux

“ She plunged herself into the flood of that love which none had known or could ever know, that joyous love of old which she had thought suppressed for ever and which she now felt welling forth again to her sorrow—plunged herself so deep that she seemed almost to taste the savor of death upon her lips. She was awakened from her misery by her mother’s kiss upon her hair.
“Paule,” said Madame Guibert, “why are you crying? You must be brave in your happiness, as you have been in your trials.” ”

“ Strengthened by the thought of Paule, he strove to elude his temptress, whose soft arm he felt—not without a flutter of the heart—hang so heavily on his. Her burning, eager face under its mantling blush wore a look of discouragement.
“Do you remember, Jean, the wood at La Chênaie?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, remembering that it was there that Marcel’s fate had been settled.
“I should love to go back there with you. Did you like me better when I was a young girl? Be candid.”
“You are more beautiful now and yet different. I always see your husband behind you.” ”

“ The young wife looked enquiringly at her.
“Why, of course,” said the mother. “If I had let you marry Commander Guibert you would have been a widow now.”
Alice said nothing. In terror she searched the secret places of her soul and asked herself if as a widow she could not have been less miserable. The sorrow which comes to us from fate is deeper but less depressing than that whose source is ourselves, our weakness, our fear of living. Having broken our hearts, the former sorrow purifies and strengthens them. The other wears us out uselessly and crushes us slowly with its petty wounds. ”

“ At this moment Jean’s attention was turned to the steps, where Paule had just appeared, so he did not see two tears gush from Madame Guibert’s eyes. When he looked at her she was already prepared for the new sacrifice which life asked of her, and it was in a firm voice that she said:
“May God bless your plans! Here is my girl, Jean. She has known loneliness and sorrow too long. She needs happiness. How happy she will be with your love! She will feel her youth, which she had forgotten. Jean, you may tell her that you love her.” ”

“ Never had he experienced such a passion for that masterful profile, those bold eyes, those red and sensual lips, those brilliant teeth, all that abounding youthful grace.
“Am I not a wizard? I foretold your marriage that evening in the railway carriage.”
“Yes, my mother has often told me, ‘My dear, after a week all men are the same—fortune and youth are both fleeting things, but the first alone can bestow a prize upon the second.’”
“Your mother is a wise woman,” said Jean.
“Everybody is so in Italy. Poetry is only a matter of language with them.” ”

“ Paule went slowly up the steps. She had laid her hand upon her breast as if she were breathing with difficulty and then she quickened her step. Passing before the drawing-room mirror she stopped, surprised at her own beauty. The friendly daylight showed her a more charming face than she had expected to see. She smiled sadly at her image and her smile meant to say, “What is the good of being beautiful if you have no dowry? What is the good of having all this tenderness and devotion burning in an empty heart like a lamp in a deserted sanctuary.” ”

“ The man who is about to die should act like a man who is about to die, not as a man who has plenty of time left. You think, you doctors, to soothe him by hiding his danger from him; you take away from him a part of his life whose importance could never be measured in duration. He will waste his remaining strength, if he has kept his mind intact, in guessing at the truth, in scrutinising the blank faces around him, in questioning the throbs of his pulse, the beating of his heart. He will be a prey to all the terrors of doubt, when he has the right to finish his life by preparing for death. ”

“ Life, Alice, does not mean just amusement and worldly excitement. To live means to feel one’s soul, all one’s soul. It means to love, to love with all one’s strength, always, to the end, and even to the point of sacrifice. You must not fear [Pg 381] either suffering or great joy or great sorrow. They reveal our higher nature. We must take from the fleeting days the happiness that endures. The girl who marries comes to share in work and danger, not just to seek greater ease or more frivolous pleasures. In her very devotion she will find more delight. ”

“ It was the thrilling hour when all nature gathers herself together before mingling with the shadows, before sinking into death. The last rays of the setting sun still lit up Alice’s pure face and golden hair. And her white shawl made a light spot among the trees.
She still stood silent and motionless. She foresaw both the impossibility of the struggle with her mother and the equal impossibility of marriage with M. de Marthenay. She did not know how much we can shape our destiny when we dare to grasp it with a firm hand. ”

“ Paule and Jean witnessed this autumnal magic. They saw the trees in the woods adorn themselves with a thousand splendid fleeting tints, and the vines which slope down to the shore dress themselves in gold. Their hearts learned the better to appreciate the lesson, already familiar to them, of the insecurity of love when it makes itself its sole end, and, taking the time of a kiss for the time of day, fails to build upon the only sure foundation—a life lived in sympathetic accord and consecrated to the continuity of the race. ”

“ JEAN
What would not those who have been stricken by the grief of some faraway disaster give to hear about their loved one from some witness of the fatal scene, to learn the details of the tragedy, known to them only through the bare outlines of the official despatch—even though these details should open their wounds afresh and make their tears flow once more? They think themselves happy in their very misery, if they can but know the exact truth, if death’s mysterious horror can be banished, which tortures their hearts by day and haunts their pillows by night. ”

“ Next year you will have Étienne and his wife and in two years you will see us.”
But when Madame Guibert turned to him, he saw with surprise that she was not crying and that the consolations came from her, not Paule.
“In two years,” she thought, “where shall I be?” But she answered gravely: “Jean, love your wife dearly. When you are far from me, that thought will be my strength. God is so good and watches over us. We shall be more closely united than ever when we are separated. Our thoughts and our hearts will be one. Distance is nothing when one is sure of love.” ”

“ She had placed her mother near the fire in an armchair, a blanket over her knees. Stricken to the inmost depths of a mother’s heart, Madame Guibert sat without a movement, without a gesture, without a tear, in a state of prostration more alarming than loud despair. She complained no more—nor did she pray, she looked straight ahead, seeing nothing and making no sound. Crushed by fate, she seemed completely numbed. She could no longer feel her wounded heart beating in her breast. She let herself sink into the abyss of her misery like a drowning man in a fathomless sea. ”

“ The great minds in art, literature, and history, are only great when they animate us, when they quicken the movement of our blood and stir our resolution. They realise for us the changing beauty of the world and the transient charm of our days. No artist is great without unlimited love of life. I will quote only one example, the most touching; that of Beethoven. Financial worries, family troubles, a most cruel malady—that deafness which shut him up within himself—moral loneliness, unrealised love, such was the record of his life. A weak soul would have given way to despair. ”

“ In the death of the leader after victory, in the pierced forehead behind which the brain so lately lived, in the heart now cold which had been the home of love, in the face of all that strength and courage, shattered like a tree in its vigor; in all these things was manifest the frailty of human life, by contrast with which the light of day shines the brighter. ”

“ They came back to Le Maupas when the vines had been gathered and the meadows harvested, when the brilliance of the sun, the softness of the air, and the grace of the earth increased in proportion to the barrenness round about and strove to detach man from self-centred thoughts. Paule kept very near her mother, as if to forget the threat of the future. And the future cast its shadow upon the present hour which saw mother and daughter reunited. Madame Guibert had been obliged to tell Paule of her wish to stay in Savoy. Jean then generously offered to give up his plans. ”

“ And as he looked at her, above all others dear to him, his mother, leaning on the balcony and gathering together in her mind all her flock of scattered children, he realised the strength of his filial affection and felt at the same time that superstitious, piercing dread inspired in us at times by the insecurity of the lives of those we love. Jean saw his friend’s face become clouded and he pointed out to him the plough patiently fertilising the ground, as if thereby bidding him trust in Providence.
Slowly Madame Guibert went into the house.
“Poor dear mother,” thought Marcel. ”

“ Never has the possibility of a future life been so insolently rejected, and never have we, as some of us now do, exposed ourselves with such foolhardiness to all dangers of destruction, as though it were necessary to make a blaze of this, our only life, in order to discover in it some divine fire. We plunge it in the whirl-wind of death to increase its intensity for a few precarious moments.
Romanticism, by proclaiming the right to passion, the right to happiness, the right to freedom, encouraged the development of individual force. ”

“ Isabelle grew impatient and, eager to make sure of her happiness, rose from her seat.
“It is stifling here. Will you take me into the hall, Captain Berlier?”
With a stare she passed by her discomfited guardian and went out on Jean’s arm. In the promenade and on the steps of the big staircase she leant on his arm with all the weight of her languishing body. As he remained silent, waiting for her to speak, she asked him with a timidity which had come over her all unforeseen:
“Am I no longer beautiful, Jean? Tell me.” ”

“ Paule was hurt by the tone of his voice and turned away. Pouring out all the pent-up bitterness of her heart, she cried: “Do you think I cannot see behind the outward smile and the lie on the lips? These people hate us and would like to treat us with contempt. They run after you—you only—just to flatter their own vanity, and they want to have nothing to do with mother and me; we are only two poor women. But Alice is intended for Count de Marthenay, not for you!” ”

“ Alice, her heart at peace, looked at her respectfully and admiringly.
“Go on talking to me,” she begged as Madame Guibert was silent.
The latter looked at her long and tenderly, then again stroking her cheek, she said:
“My child, you must promise me something.”
“Oh, Madame, I will promise you anything you like.”
“Try not to think about Marcel. You have no more right to. Accept your new life, as it is, without any regrets. God expects you to be brave enough to give up all your old dreams. You were wrong to make your husband change his career. Work is the true nobility of life. ”

“ There was a touch of the imaginary invalid in her charming smile, as she added:
“It is the burden of these long summer days. Don’t you think they are very depressing?”
Marcel was astonished.
“I have never given it a thought,” he said. “I love the sun as the bringer of life. And I love long days, for they seem to lengthen our time on earth.”
Paule was silent and absent-minded, her eyes turned toward the house. She recognised a visitor who was ringing at the big gate.
“It is Monsieur de Marthenay,” she said.
Alice’s clear eyes clouded over and the color vanished from her cheeks. ”

“ The obstacles which separated them were only the barriers of vanity and selfishness, not difficult to overcome. She loved, but still she said nothing. He recognised that their paths were not the same. He drew himself up to his full height in disdainful pity. He was able, however, to master his pride sufficiently to say gently to her:
“No, Alice, don’t promise me anything. I give you back the word that you gave Paule for me. You haven’t the strength to love.” ”

“ When I came back from Algiers I found you so brave—and so beautiful. Oh, don’t say no! During the crossing of the Sahara, I remember, Marcel often told me, when we were talking about Savoy, that you were your mother’s comfort. Whenever I was looking for something to stir up my energy, some picture to cheer me and arouse my courage, I thought of you. I know I have always loved you, since the time we were children, when I laughed at your long black hair. My happiness lies in your hands, Paule. ”

“ Iphigenia was addressing to the chaste goddess her touching prayer for the boon of death in her exile on the savage coasts of Tauris. The singer, in the youthful glory of her body draped in harmonious folds of white, in the majesty of her attitude, in the purity of her face, recalled, though with the added grace of living flesh, those ancient marbles whose motionless charm appeals so strongly to all souls that love beauty and whose empire grows the greater by their defiance of the flight of ages. ”

“ Madame Guibert sat down again, resigned. Her eyes wandered about the little country drawing-room, through whose windows, with their double white curtains freshly washed and ironed, the light of a summer evening broke softly, filtering through the foliage of the tall trees outside. The modest furniture was all in keeping; no touch of luxury marred the effect. Its seasoned age bore cheerful testimony to past generations and vanished tastes. There were two engravings, a hundred years old, representing charming episodes from Paul et Virginie. ”

“ Our finest French epic, the “Chanson de Roland,” exalts courage under defeat.
Energy fits us to bear failure, pain, and effort. This fine quality needs discipline. Its character depends on the use that is made of it. To cultivate it for itself would be to imitate those people who make sport the aim of their existence. Sport maintains or increases our strength and our health, of which we have need in order to realise our life; but to take them for the actual realisation of life would only be grotesque. Nature develops itself blindly and lavishly. ”