Sebastien Roch (Dedalus European Classics)

by Octave Mirbeau

  The others nodded their heads in agreement. Then they started discussing what for them best represented the idea of Country.

  ‘For me, it’s the cavalry,’ professed Monsieur Champier.

  ‘For me, it’s the artillery,’ said someone else, ‘because without the artillery the cavalry are no use.’

  A third exclaimed:

  ‘And what about the infantry? The infantry, gentlemen! The French footsoldier.’

  For a few moments, that was the only word that could be heard: ‘French’, resounding like a bugle call on the flabby, cowardly lips of those awful people. I would be interested in my father’s opinion of it all. He must have plenty of admirable things to say about it. What a pity he’s not here. I leave Monsieur Champier to drone on to his group of fellow patriots, while I go further along the road where I encounter only faces filled with the joy of anticipation.

  It is a delightful morning, the air sweet and spring-like. A pale sun occasionally breaks through the silky white layer of clouds covering the sky. The distant hills go on for ever, delicate, pure, with shimmering scraps of cloud wafted along by gentle breezes. The pines along the horizon are peacock blue washed with liquid mother-of-pearl, as if bathed in muted rainbow colours. The hedgerows crisscross the fields with green, green sprinkled with pink, sometimes with the translucence of precious stones and sometimes like sea spray.

  The crowd swells, filled by the same wild instinct. It really is a crowd now and it strikes me as absolutely hideous. It seems to me that I never before grasped so clearly the unerring stupidity of this human herd, the powerlessness of these creatures, so immune to natural beauty. To make them crawl out of their holes, to put those broad, atavistic, brutish smiles on their faces, they have to be promised barbarous spectacles, degrading pleasures aimed only at the lowest and meanest amongst them.

  Marguerite is there too, accompanied by her maid. Like everyone else, she is unusually excited; that depresses me. She barely notices my greeting.

  ‘The advance guard arrived some time ago, you know,’ she informs me.

  She scrambles up a hillock to see further down the road. She normally rather embarrasses me with her persistently coquettish glances and overwhelms me with her silent gestures of affection; she usually tries to get close to me, to brush against me, but today she doesn’t look at me at all. I feel somewhat slighted, jealous even. I speak to her, and she replies briefly or not all. Suddenly, on tiptoe and clapping her hands, she cries:

  ‘Here they come!’

  Far away on the road there is indeed something shining and glittering in the pale morning sun. Whatever it is grows to fill the road and is advancing. Marguerite shouts again:

  ‘Here they come!’

  I have never seen her like this before, so impatient, her eyes aglow and her whole body trembling with excitement, except when such behaviour is directed at me. I start to feel angry with her, angry that I am not part of the joy she displays or the passion she exudes. I am annoyed with Madame Lecautel for letting her come out here. I feel it is not suitable.

  Ah, here they come!’

  They pass by, bolt upright on the harnessed haunches of their horses; they pass by, heavy, dazzling, magnificent, in a chaos of arms and a flash of metal. The ground shudders and groans. Beneath their sparkling helmets, their faces are sunburned, their jaw muscles taut; their chests are thrown out like armoured breastplates and the black, twisting, sinister plumes of their helmets brush their strong necks, recalling more barbaric times. I feel a shiver run through my veins.

  I am gripped by emotion despite myself. It is neither pride, nor admiration, nor a feeling of patriotism; it is a kind of vague, latent sense of heroism, and whatever there is in me of the bestial and savage is awoken by the sound of those clashing weapons; it is an instant return to the beast of combat, the cannon fodder from whom I descend. And I am just like the crowd I despise. The same soul that horrifies me is inside me, with all its brutishness, its love of violence and killing. They continue to pass. I watch Marguerite. She has not moved from her vantage point. Her face is grave, her body very upright, tense, as if waiting for a spasm of pain. Her nostrils breathe in the strong scent of all those males; and her gaze, now stripped of any shame, is a mixture of cruelty, savagery and submission, which strikes fear into my heart. She too has submitted to those square shoulders, strong chests, brown faces, that swaggering strength blazing in the sunshine; but she has submitted sexually. just now I felt rising in me obscure, barely suppressed instincts to destroy; she feels obscure instincts too, but they are infinitely more powerful and human, stirring inside her, swelling her slim, fragile body with a bubbling up of powerful, sacred life. One soldier looked at her and smiled, an obscenely brutish smile. But she didn’t notice. She has not seen and selected one particular man; she would like to surrender to every one of those men and be violated and crushed in a single embrace. I find her beautiful, more beautiful, almost divinely so, because I have just understood, through her, one of life’s laws and, for the first time, I see Woman in her role of suffering, sublime creator. Marriage, which forces the marvellous fecundity of a woman’s body to submit to the sterile fumblings of one man seems a monstrous thing to me, a crime against humanity. Suddenly, I feel pity and respect for those poor wretched women, despised and degraded, who haunt the highways and the forbidden quarters of the town, soliciting passers-by.

  The soldiers have gone now The crowd follows them. We go back to the town. Marguerite is quiet, a little tired, still grave. I soon start feeling differently. That image of love I grasped in a glimmer of reason or folly or whatever does not last. I return to lustful visions. It’s always like that now. Whenever I have a generous thought, some natural, detestable tendency in me forces me to spoil it.

  All day I feel disgusted and gloomy. I cheer up a bit at dinner. The colonel did not accept the mayor’s hospitality; he preferred to go to the army billet and eat with the officers. My father is furious. He watches me from his corner and I am sure he blames me for this disaster. When old Madame Cébron triumphantly brings in an enormous, golden, roast turkey, glistening with fat, my father cannot control his fury any longer.

  ‘Take that thing away at once!’ he yells.

  ‘But Monsieur…’

  ‘Take it away, I tell you!’

  I think if my father had not thought it below his dignity to talk to me, the bevalry would have had a bad time of it.

  25th January

  Two or three times a week I visit Madame Lecautel. These visits are a diversion for me and alleviate my solitude a little. But I do not really enjoy them any more. Madame Lecautel is not as intelligent as I used to think. She is full of bourgeois prejudices and meanness of spirit and understands nothing of the feelings gnawing away at me. I do not speak to her about any of it. We speak of meaningless, random things, the only things she can talk about anyway. When I attempt to give voice to the ideas that torment me, I can sense that it frightens her and I say no more. It is terrible never to have a superior kind of person to talk to, or, if not that rare being, a simple, straightforward soul, full of goodness and pity to whom you could reveal yourself just as you are, and who would respond to what you feel and think, correct your errors, encourage you and direct you. Normally our conversation centres on the maids whom Madame Lecautel changes every month. The main idea dominating her life is that, soon, ‘if things go on like this’ it will be impossible to get a maid at all. She embroiders on this with endless economic variations. Whilst Madame Lecautel tells me of her domestic problems, I can’t help thinking that she pays her maids twelve francs a month, hardly gives them any food, treats them in a harsh, almost military fashion, demands in return a degrading obsequiousness, as well as the unselfish virtues, delicacy and skill of accomplished housewives – and all for twelve francs a month. I do not discuss the matter; what would be the point? I agree with her: ‘What a trial it must be …’ Another of her great ideas is that I should be a soldier. She thinks nothing is finer than the
military. At heart, I think her desire to see me wearing a greatcoat is merely a selfish pretext to relive her own brilliant past, nostalgia for her little former vanities, past honours and her husband’s outstanding acts of valour. Ah, her husband. His portraits are everywhere in her house in normal or dress uniform, as a captain, as a colonel and as a general. They cover the walls, invade the dressing tables, besiege the furniture. He is a big, vulgarly fleshy fellow, his cap at an angle, or pulled on anyhow, his chest scored with medals, but looking rough and ready, his thick moustache blending into a pointed beard. I can almost hear him angrily cursing, his voice rasping and hoarse with absinthe. She thinks he is handsome, glorious and admirable. Once she said to me, obviously deeply moved, that in Algeria he had killed with his own hands, his very own hands, five Arabs, and ordered fifty others to be shot in one go; and she added:

  ‘He may have had his faults, but, my God, he was a hero.’

  Another time she said:

  Can you see the likeness between him and Marguerite?’

  At first, this seemed a wholly inappropriate and mistaken comparison. When I looked carefully at the portraits, however, and compared them and Marguerite’s strange, pretty, delicate face, I did eventually see a resemblance, distant it is true, moral rather than physical, but real. Both faces, the ruffian’s and the charming child’s, displayed a similar obstinacy; in the eyes there was a similarly wild, heroic look. One could sense that the father must have launched himself, head down, into battle and mayhem, and that the daughter would launch herself into love in the same way.

  What do I really feel for Marguerite? Is it love or hate? Or is she simply a nuisance? I don’t really know. It is something of all those things and not quite any of them. In any case, she worries me. I think it would be impossible to meet a more ignorant girl. She knows nothing and has no desire to learn. Madame Lecautel did not want to send her daughter to the boarding school at Saint-Denis on account of her fragile health and the nervous crises which blighted her childhood and threatened her well-being. She took charge of the girl’s education herself, an education that was of necessity intermittent and incomplete and which Marguerite had always resisted. In the face of her daughter’s impatience, anger and rebellion she eventually had to give up even that rather vague teaching as she feared the recurrence of those crises. It does not seem to have been a problem or a disappointment for either. Madame Lecautel no longer notices her daughter’s educational lacunae and now she has got into the habit of treating her as if she were ill, even though she is perfectly well. Sometimes Marguerite behaves like a child or a baby, full of meaningless chatter; sometimes she is worse than a fallen woman; at such times, her eyes gleam and glint with wild, savage, terrible depths. Sometimes she becomes suddenly effusive and affectionate; sometimes she maintains a gloomy silence and cannot be persuaded out of it. Sometimes she laughs and cries for no apparent reason. In my view she is made for love, and for love alone. Love possesses her in a way that perhaps it has never possessed any other poor human creature. It is love’s power that circulates under her skin, burning like a fever, that fills and dilates her gaze, fills her lips with blood, winds about her hair, bows her neck; her whole body exudes it, like an overpowering perfume that is dangerous to breathe. It directs every one of her movements and her attitudes. Marguerite is its suffering, tortured slave. She does not kiss me as she used to before, but I can sense that her lips are ready for the same kisses. She no longer covers me with ardent, precipitous caresses, obviously avid for male flesh, as she did as a child; but her body seeks mine. When she comes towards me, she abandons herself completely; she makes unconscious gestures, arching her back, tensing her belly, gestures which undress her and reveal her in her ecstatic nudity. As soon as I arrive, she becomes animated. Her eyes light up, a bright spot of red appears above each cheekbone, her eyelids acquire dark shadows; she is driven by a need for physical motion. She moves all the time, turns, leaps, happy but tense, a look of pain on her face. And her eyes remain obstinately fixed on me, so bold, so voracious that they make me blush and I cannot bear their dark brilliance. Madame Lecautel does not notice a thing. I suppose she interprets it all as the fantasies of a spoilt child, of no importance. She merely says to her in the same calm voice that she used when Marguerite was little:

  ‘Come along now, my dear, don’t get all worked up. Calm down.’

  Often I am tempted to warn her but I dare not and, in any case, my own feelings are strange and complicated.

  When I am not with her, I feel my heart swollen with a drunkenness that must be love, a physical confusion that grips my whole being, a confusion that is as strong and pleasurable as if life itself were erupting within me. There is not one atom of my body, not an infinitesimal part of my soul, which is not swamped by this and refreshed. At the same time, my thoughts are purified and my mind enlarged. Effortlessly, lightly, my unshackled thoughts take wing, I attain intellectual heights I have never known before. I feel that I embody sacred and idealised forms, that all humanity yet to come stirs in Marguerite and me, and that it would take only the shock of our lips meeting, the contact of our two bodies for it to spurt forth from us, proud creation, triumphant life. In those moments of exaltation I go and walk in the countryside. My distress disappears, everything seems more beautiful, supernaturally, splendidly beautiful. I speak to my brothers the trees; I sing psalms of nuptial joy to the flowers, my charmed sisters. I regain my innocence. Regenerative, powerful waves of strength and hope circulate in my veins.

  When I am with her, I feel frozen. I see her and my enthusiasm evaporates; I set eyes on her and my heart instantly both swells and shuts: it is empty, empty of everything it held that was so strong, generous, warm. Often even her mere presence – her delicious presence – irritates me. I can’t bear her prowling about me, coming near me. Being near her is a torture; just the brush of her skirts against my legs makes my skin crawl. I avoid the touch of her hand, her breath, her gaze burning with passion. Twice, on the sly, she grasped my hand and squeezed it; I felt like hitting her. When she is near me, I feel for her a mixture of pity and revulsion. When I see the two of them side by side, the daughter, so pretty, so full of ardent youth, so desirable, and the mother, already old, her skin wrinkled, her body bent, her hair turning white, it is the mother, for some criminally perverse reason, some inexplicable madness of the senses, who attracts my desire and my lust. Her hands, whose joints are already knotted, her thickening waistline, her drooping haunches tempt me; I feel intoxicated, hatefully intoxibeted at the sight of that poor, ruined, crumpling flesh, creased with venerable, maternal folds.

  One day when her daughter was not there, I said to Madame Lecautel in a sly, cowardly way, hoping perhaps to realise these ignoble fantasies:

  ‘I must not come to see you so often any more. It causes me much pain. I mustn’t do it any more.’

  ‘Why, my dear child?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘Because,’ said I, feigning embarrassment and shame, ‘because people are gossiping, are saying that I … that you … well …’

  I stopped as if I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  ‘Saying what?’ persisted Madame Lecautel, intrigued.

  Still cowardly and sly, I dared to glance at her with a cruel, ambiguous expression and say:

  ‘They say you are my mistress.’

  ‘Be quiet! Oh, how monstrous!’

  I will never forget the look she gave me, a look of revulsion and outraged modesty. Yes, it was the look of an honest woman in which, nevertheless, I glimpsed flattered sorrow, perhaps regret, certainly the furtive glimmer of lust. It broke my heart and, afterwards, I adored her for that look as if she were a saint. Yes, I loved her for that glance, in which I thought I saw for the first time, in all its poignant melancholy, the infinite and immortal pity that resides in the heart of woman.

  25th January

  This morning I found my father’s newspaper in the kitchen. I glanced through it and read the following:

&nbs
p; ‘We are pleased to announce that the Reverend Father de Kern will give the Lenten address this year in the church of the Holy Trinity. The Reverend Father de Kern is one of the Society of Jesus’ most eloquent preachers. We remind readers of his admirable and truly inspired sermons in Marseilles last year. To the wise and sharp dialectic found in the sermons of the Reverend Father Felix, the Reverend Father de Kern adds his particular gift for words which makes each of his sermons an almost classic piece of sacred literature. The eloquent preacher is tall and aristocratic in appearance. His face exudes lofty piety. A large congregation is expected.’

  How ironic.

  When the first moment of surprise had passed, I examined my own reactions. I felt no hatred towards Father de Kern; I do not hate his memory. Of course he did do me harm and the consequences of that harm are deeply rooted in me. But could I or should I have escaped that evil? Did I not already have the fatal germ of it inside me? A curious thing troubles me. Of all the priests I have known, I think he is the one I hate the least. I would love to hear him speak again. I can still hear the sound of his soft, penetrating voice.

  After all, he may have been sincere when he said all those fine things to me, as we sat in the window seat, which I can still see under the night sky and which I sometimes recall with great nostalgia. Perhaps he has repented, who knows? Perhaps those inspired flights of eloquence are born of his repentance. My thoughts did not rest long on Father de Kern. They soon focussed entirely on the impassive face of the Rector, on those pale eyes, that ironical mouth, haughty and benevolent, but expressive of a benevolence that never pardons and eventually destroys. Did he know what he was doing when he expelled me? He must have known. I am going to write to Bolorec and tell him to go to the church of Holy Trinity and hear Father de Kern and tell me what he is like now and what subjects he chose for his sermons.