by André Gide
“My poor friend!”
And then she suddenly left the room.
These words of Amélie seemed mysterious at that time, but they would become clear to me later. I am reporting them such as they appeared to me then, and that day I only understood that it was time for Gertrude to leave.
12 March
I dedicated a little time to Gertrude each day. It would be several hours or several minutes, depending on my daily occupations. The day after I had this conversation with Amélie, I was relatively free, and the good weather invited Gertrude and I to take a walk through the forest. We went up to the decline in the Jura which is dominated by the immense countryside. When the weather is clear, through the curtain of branches, one discovers a marvelous view of the white Alps sitting above a light cloud of mist. The sun was going down already on our left when we arrived at the spot where we normally sat down. A prairie of grass, which was mowed but at the same time still thick, descended at our feet. Farther down some cows were in pasture, and each one of them in this mountain herd carried a bell around its neck.
“They draw the countryside,” said Gertrude while listening to their ringing.
She asked me, as she did on every walk we took, to describe for her the spot where we had stopped.
“But,” I said to her, “you already know it. This is the edge where we see the Alps.”
“Do you see them well today?”
“Today you see them in all of their splendor.”
“You have told me that they are a little different every day.”
“To what should I compare them today? To the thirst of a fine summer day. Before this evening they will have succeeded in dissolving into the air.”
“I want you to tell me if there are lilies in the big prairie in front of us?”
“No, Gertrude, lilies do not grow at these elevations, or only several rare species.”
“Not those that are called the lilies of the fields?”
“There are no lilies in these fields.”
“Even in the fields around Neuchâtel?”
“There are no lilies of the fields.”
“Then why did God say to us, ‘Look at the lilies of the fields’?”
“There must have been some in his time for him to have said that, but the cultures of men have made them disappear.”
“I recall that you often said to me that the biggest needs of this earth are confidence and love. Do you not think that with a little more confidence, man would see them again? When I say these words to you, I assure you that I see them. Would you like me to describe them? They look like bells of flames, large azure bells, filled with the perfume of love and balancing on the evening breeze. Why do you say that there are none of them in front of us? I smell them! I see the prairie full of them.”
“They are not more beautiful than you see them, my Gertrude.”
“Say that they are not less beautiful.”
“They are as beautiful as you see them.”
“And I say to you in truth that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of them,” she said, citing the words of Christ. And listening to her melodious voice it seemed to me that I was hearing these words for the first time. “In all his glory,” she repeated pensively, then she remained silent for a time, and I continued,
“I have said to you before, Gertrude, those who have eyes do not know how to see.” And from the bottom of my heart I heard this prayer, “I thank you, O God, for revealing to the humble what you hide from the intelligent!”
“If you only knew,” she then cried in a playful exultation, “if you could only know how easily I imagine all this. Here! Do you want me to describe the countryside to you? Behind, above and around us are large pines, with the taste of resin, with granite trunks and long dark horizontal branches that complain when the wind bends them. At our feet, like an open book, inclined on the desk of the mountain, is the large green, diapered prairie which looks blue in the shadows and gold in the sunlight and whose distinct words are the flowers, the gentians, the pasque flowers, the buttercups, and the beautiful lilies of Solomon, that the cows come to spell with their bells and where the angels come to read, since you say that the eyes of man are closed. At the bottom of the book, I see a large river of smoking milk, misty, covering a mysterious abyss, without any other bank but over there, far from us, the beautiful blooming Alps. That is where Jacques must go. Tell me, is it true that he is leaving tomorrow?”
“He must leave tomorrow. Did he tell you?”
“He did not tell me, but I understood it. Will he be gone for a long time?”
“One month. Gertrude, I wanted to ask you, why did you not tell me that he came to the church to be with you?”
“He only came there two times. Oh! I do not want to hide anything from you! But I was afraid of causing you pain.”
“You do that by not telling me about it.”
Her hand reached for mine. “He was sad to leave.”
“Tell me, Gertrude, did he tell you that he loved you?”
“He did not say that, but I felt it without him telling me. He does not love me as much as you.”
“And you, Gertrude, are you suffering to see him leave?”
“I think that it is better if he leaves.”
“But tell me, are you suffering to see him leave?”
“You know very well that it is you that I love, Pastor. Oh! Why are you pulling away your hand? I would not speak to you like this if you were not married. But one does not marry a blind person. So why can we not love each other? Tell me, Pastor, do you think that is evil?”
“In love there is never evil.”
“I only feel goodness in my heart. I do not want to make Jacques suffer. I do not want to make anyone suffer. I only want to bring happiness.”
“Jacques was thinking about asking for your hand.”
“Would you let me speak to him before he leaves? I would like to make him understand that he must renounce his love for me. Pastor, you understand, don’t you, that I cannot marry anyone? You will let me speak to him, won’t you?”
“This evening.”
“No, tomorrow, at the time of his departure.”
The sun was setting in an exalted splendor. The air was warm. We both stood up and while we continued talking, we took the dark path toward home.
Second Notebook
25 April
I had to wait some time to write this notebook.
The snow had finally melted, and as soon as the roads had become practicable again, I had to take care of a large number of obligations that I had been forced to put off during the long time that our village was isolated. Only yesterday did I find some moments of leisure.
Last night I reread all that I had written here.
Now that I dare to call by their real name the feelings of my heart that I had not admitted for so long, I will explain how I could have been so mistaken. Why certain words of Amélie, which I have reported, seemed mysterious to me. How, after the naïve declarations of Gertrude, I can still doubt that I loved her. That is because, although I could not agree to recognize love being permitted outside of marriage, in the feelings that tied me so passionately towards Gertrude, I did not recognize anything that was forbidden.
The naivety of her confessions, and even their frankness, reassured me. I said to myself, “This is a child.” True love does not come without confusion or shame. And, as for me, I was persuaded that I loved her like one loves a sick child. I cared for her like one cares for a sick person, and I made a moral obligation out of taking care of her. Yes, truly, the same evening when she spoke to me as I have reported, I felt my soul so light and joyous that I still was mistaking myself, and that continued
as I transcribed this work. And because I believed that such a love would be reprehensible and that I felt that anything reprehensible would affect the soul, since I did not feel my soul to be heavy, I did not believe it was love.
I reported these conversations not only as they took place, but also I transcribed them with a similar state of mind. To speak the truth, it was not until rereading them last night that I understood.
Soon after the departure of Jacques, our life took on its very calm course once again. I had let Gertrude speak to him, and he only came back for the final days of vacation, staying away from Gertrude or at least not speaking to her in front of me. Gertrude, as arranged, was living at the home of Mlle Louise, and I went to see her each day, but, fearing love, I made pains to speak about nothing that could make us emotional. I only spoke to her as a pastor, and for the most part that was in the presence of Louise. Above all I gave her religious instruction, preparing her for her First Communion which she would take at Easter.
On the day of Easter, I also took communion.
This calm went on for two weeks. To my surprise, Jacques, who had come to spend one week of vacation with us, did not accompany me to the Holy Table. And I have the great regret to have to say that Amélie, for the first time since we have been married, also abstained. It seemed that they had both given the word to each other and had resolved, by their defection from this solemn rendezvous, to throw a shadow over my joy. Once again, I was happy at this point that Gertrude could not see so that I alone could bear the weight of this shadow. I know Amélie too well and understood that her behavior was a sort of indirect reproach. She never disapproves of me openly, but she shows me her repudiation by a sort of isolation.
I was profoundly affected by a grievance of this order. I mean, as much as it hurts me to consider it, that the soul of Amélie could be turned away from her superior interests in such a way. And upon returning to the house, I prayed for her with all the sincerity of my heart.
As for the abstention of Jacques, that was due to other reasons, and a conversation that I had with him a short time afterwards made this clear.
3 May
The religious instruction of Gertrude has caused me to reread the Gospel with a new eye. It appears to me more and more that many of the notions that make up our Christian faith do not come from the words of Christ but rather from the commentaries of St. Paul.
This was the subject of the discussion that I just had with Jacques. He has a dry temperament, and his heart does not furnish enough food for his mind. He has become traditionalist and dogmatic. He reproaches me for choosing in the Christian doctrine “that which pleases me.” But I do not choose such and such words of Christ. It is simply that between Christ and St. Paul, I choose Christ. For fear of having to oppose either one of them, he refuses to disassociate one from the other and will not let himself feel a difference in inspiration from one or the other. He protests if I say to him that here I am listening to a man while there I am hearing God. The more he is logical, the more he persuades me of this: that he is not the least bit sensitive to the unique and divine accent of the slightest words of Christ.
I search through the Gospel, I searched in vain through the commandments and other writings… Many of these are from St. Paul. And what bothers Jacques is precisely that he cannot find this in the words of Christ. Souls like his believe themselves to be lost when they no longer feel they have guardians, ramps, and railings to support them. The more they are intolerant of liberty in others, the more they resign themselves and wish to obtain by constraint all that people are ready to accord them through love.
“But, my father,” he says to me, “I also wish for the happiness of souls.”
“No, my friend, what you want is their submission.”
“It is through submission that happiness is found.”
I let him have the last word because I don’t like to quibble. But I know very well that it undermines happiness by trying to obtain simply the effects of happiness, and if it is true to think that the loving soul rejoices in voluntary submission, nothing will separate one more from happiness than submission without love.
However, Jacques uses sound reasoning, and if it bothers me to see so much doctrinal rigidity in such a young mind, I certainly admire the quality of his arguments and the consistency of his logic. It often appears to me that I am younger than he is, younger today than I was yesterday, and I repeat these words,
“If you will not be like little children, you will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Is it betraying Christ, is it diminishing or profaning the Gospel to see in it only a method to arrive at a happy life? The state of joy, which pushes away doubts and the hardening of our hearts, is an obligatory state for a Christian. Each being is more or less capable of joy. Each being must reach out for joy. The mere smile of Gertrude teaches me more about this than all the lessons that I have taught her.
And these words of Christ are drawn up brightly before me. “If you were blind, you would not know sin.” Sin is what obscures the soul and what opposes joy. The perfect happiness of Gertrude, which resonates throughout her being, comes because she does not know sin. There is only light and love in her.
I placed into her vigilant hands the four Gospels, the Psalms, the Apocalypse, and the three Epistles of John so she can read things like, “God is the light and in him there is no darkness.” In his Gospel she can hear the Savior say, “I am the light of the world. He who is with me will not walk in darkness.”
I refused to give her the Epistles of Paul, for if, as a blind person, she does not know about sin, what would it serve to bother her by having her read, “Sin has gained new strength by the commandments,” (Romans,VII, 13) and all the dialectic that follows, as admirable as it might be?
8 May
Doctor Martins came yesterday from La Chaux-de-Fonds. He examined Gertrude for a long time with his ophthalmology instruments. He said he spoke to Gertrude about a certain Doctor Roux, a specialist from Lausanne, and he would report to him his observations. They both believe that Gertrude might be operable. But we agreed not to say anything to her about it until there was more certainty. Martins would come and inform me of the results of his consultation. What would it serve to ignite hope in Gertrude that might be quickly extinguished? And in addition, is she not happy as she is?
10 May
At Easter, Jacques and Gertrude saw each other again in my presence, at least Jacques saw Gertrude again and spoke to her, but only of insignificant things. He was less emotional than I would have been able to believe, and I once again persuaded myself that his love would not have been so easily diminished if he had really been ardent. This was despite what Gertrude might have told him about how his love was hopeless before he departed last year. I noticed that he was addressing Gertrude in a formal rather than in a familiar manner, and this was certainly preferable. I had not asked him to do this, but he seemed to understand the need to do so himself. There is incontestably a lot of good in him.
I suspect, however, that this submission of Jacques did not come without debate and struggle. The worst is that the constraint that he must have imposed upon his heart seems to suit him well at present. He would like to see it imposed upon everyone. I felt this in the discussion I recently had with him that I spoke about above. Was it not La Rochefoucauld who said that the mind is often the dupe of the heart? It goes without saying that I did not dare to make any remarks like this to Jacques immediately, knowing his personality and taking him for one of those who accept discussion and disagreement obstinately. But that same evening in order to respond to him, having rediscovered some words of St. Paul (I can only battle him with his own weapons), I carefully left a note in his bedroom where he could read,
“Those who do not eat should not judge those who do, for God welcomes the latter.” (Romans, XIV, 2.)
“But if, for lack of food, your brother is saddened, you are not walking in love.” It is because of a lack of love that we attack Evil. Father! Take from my heart all that is not love.