She was crying...
Already forgetting all my rage, I was about to say a few nice words with which I, naturally, would have insisted that I was in the wrong – when I noticed that Christine’s tears were falling onto the engraved image (over which she had worked with a dedication that had caused me to suffer) of the beautiful Gabriel.
Immediately, I felt a flood of bitterness course through me. I let a few drops fall:
“Then again,” I said, “if I was as handsome as that one...”
I had thought it would embarrass her; what an error! She raised her eyes, shining brilliantly with an undeniable sense of sympathy, and, without any obvious embarrassment, said:
“O, yes! Yes... if only you were as beautiful as he!”
I should have burst out laughing, if I had not been so in love with her and if I could have forgotten, for a second, that I was the premier victim of this ridiculous situation.
Something unheard of passed between us, that began to open up strange horizons to my view: Christine immediately seemed to be attempting to take the role of premier victim for herself...
“Oh, my friend! My dear, good friend!” she moaned, “I am very unhappy!”
“Well, what about me,” I cried, “do you think that I am walking through the Elysian Fields?” [12]
“You have far less to complain about than I have!” she exclaimed with that spontaneous logic, candid and irrefutable, found in more or less all women... “Yes, far less to complain about than I have, since it is my fault that you feel unhappy! And if there was no-one else but you...”
“Ah, yes!” I said, becoming increasingly dumbfounded, “there is still the young doctor! So why don’t you marry him?”
I felt a fatal joy in tearing myself apart, and her as well, as much as it was in my power to do so, a power that I hoped to push to the limit, now we had ventured upon this irreversible march towards the abyss.
“It’s because I just don’t love him!” she admitted with a long sigh, while her tears continued to fall freely upon the image of the face that I abhorred...
“If you don’t love him, then why did you promise to marry him – can you explain that to me, Christine!”
“To be completely honest with you,” she replied, “I have been all that Jacques has lived for since his early childhood. What little you know of him at the moment should allow you to appreciate my words, without smiling, when I tell you that he is on the way to becoming one of the foremost scientists of this century. Well, Jacques mocks anything to do with fame or personal glory, or with making a fortune, and anything else that connects him to mankind in general! He only lives for me! This genius, to whom one cannot listen for ten minutes without being dazzled by him, has only one other ambition: to take me in his arms and make me the mother of his children...and you want me, with a single word, to blow out that flame and to turn that fireplace, around which humanity might warm itself in the future, to ash?... No, never!... I belong to him!... He knows!... That is what gives him strength!... If he had wanted it, I would have been with him long ago!... But he has his own ideas and his own pride... He wants to bring me a dowry: something that has never before been written on a list of wedding presents: The golden chain with which men, having become creators of life, will hold in their hands the means to vanquish divinity! ”
“That’s a very fine chain indeed,” I replied without batting an eyelid, “but it will be slow to forge, especially if you don’t really care for the chain-maker...”
“Benedict Masson! When I told you, and you alone in the world, that I don’t love him, it meant that I don’t love him as much as a great mind like his deserves to be loved... you have abused my sentiments for you, and you are betraying my trust!...”
But these warning shots that she fired at me, from left and right, which were intended to soothe me, went straight to my head and, forgetting all the usual rules of engagement, I allowed the brute to speak:
“You have feelings for him! You have feelings for me! But in the meantime, it’s that other man that you kiss!...” At first, she didn’t understand... but she must have felt something dreadful pass through her, for she looked up at me with the face of a drowning girl. Ah, the poor child was pitiful behind the veil of her weeping... but it was too late to save her from the torture I was inflicting: my finger was still pointing towards the image of Gabriel, which was soaked in her tears...
When she finally understood, all of the sorrow that she had poured liberally out of her heart to a friend, at once, seemed to freeze... She stood up with a shiver and plunged herself into the darkness of the library where, at first, I dared not follow her...
How many minutes passed? That, I could not say.
In her isolation, I was certain she was thinking of him... and she soon presented me with the proof of this.
She called me to her. Her voice was far from hostile. Was this natural? Was she making an effort because there was something she wanted from me? I did not try to resolve the problem... her nerves were on edge, so were mine... she should have left me in my corner... she should have understood that there are certain hours, weighed-down by an unsupportable voluptuousness, during which it is dangerous to call poets to one’s side in such a honey-like voice.
As a final precaution, which touched the highest point of virtue, I sat at the other end of the divan; and because of this I claim the benefit of extenuating circumstances in the fatal scene that has deprived me of Christine forever.
“My friend,” she spoke to me with a sigh that palpitated with all her love (but not for me, of course!) and all her fear, “my friend, why would you be jealous of an image?”
“Let’s put a stop to all this lying,” I said brusquely, “I love you and I hate you in the manner of a damned soul, who is the polar opposite of God, for whom the torment will never cease – not until the day when beauty and ugliness are brought together in destruction. As far as we are concerned, that day has not yet come! Your soft voice, which calls to me, makes me sick with fury, as if it were a trap... but, weaker than Hercules under the feet of Omphale when she quivered with a real tenderness, I have heard it and dared to hope... this evening, I wanted to believe!... Now you’ll have to drive me away with harsh words, or have pity on a damned soul!...Oh, I understand... you can be sure of that! You have promised yourself in lawful marriage to a man you don’t love... and you will bring him a virgin body... it’s sublime!... but, since you have ‘sentiments’ for me (a naïve-sounding word, ever-popular and charming, as sweet as the roses scattered under the rack where the princes of the Aztecs writhed), you have to stop lying to me! Christine! Christine! It is not a profile made of silver that I have seen you embrace!...That beautiful image has a name: it is called Gabriel!”
The effect was astonishing. Christine’s shadow rose up in the frame of the window next to which she was sitting... and she leaned over towards me, so close that I could feel her breath coming in little gasps on my forehead, which was soaked in sweat...
“How do you know... how do you know?” Then I told her everything... I wanted nothing to conceal my shameful espionage... moreover, I described, somewhat crudely, some of the scenes that I had witnessed...
She barely allowed me time to breathe: “and then... and after that?” she pressed me... Then I told her how I had thought the mysterious stranger to be dead, until he appeared again as a convalescent... and finally, how I had watched the horror of the operation, and his devotion to her, and her anguish...
“I hope,” I finished in a tone of saddest irony, “that he is out of danger now!”
She did not reply to these final words...
She had sunk down next to me... and it was she who, this time, laid her hands on mine (and how fiercely they burned, those two)... My beloved seemed horribly crushed... With great effort, at long last, she said:
“And what did you think when you saw my father that night?”
“Your father was violent,” I answered, “and I truly believed that he had done away with Gabr
iel... Nevertheless, this savage act must have had an excuse... and so must a pretty girl, who keeps up all the appearances of virtue, for hiding the handsome Gabriel in her closet...”
“Enough! Enough,” she hissed, “and if you don’t want me to hate you, not only will you cease all this scandalous mockery, but you will swear to me that you will forget all that you have seen! You will neither ask me what Gabriel is doing in our house, nor about the meaning of the scenes that you have witnessed... Apart from you, there are others who have seen our guest... our housekeeper, for example, and I know that you’ve been talking to Mademoiselle Barescat... The latest news is that he’s a foreigner, exiled and sentenced to death by a party he has betrayed... That’s how the stories go... We have no information to provide to anyone, except the police... if they were to come asking questions... but I will not hide from you that we have an immense hope that they will not cross our threshold until as late as possible... If they do come, we shall ask them to keep our secret... until the day... until the day comes, that may not be far away, my friend, when I will be able to tell you everything! Can I count on you, my friend?”
“But what do you mean... what do you mean? After all, isn’t this man to be pitied? – he was treated very roughly by your father... but even then, I wouldn’t mind being sequestered in his place!”
“You’re making me suffer again, Benedict! I could shut you up with a single word, but this is not my secret... and I have sworn to Jacques...” (she paused, and I never found out exactly what she had sworn to Jacques). “Let’s put an end to this talk of Gabriel! I can swear to you, my dear and gentle friend, that my affection for this beautiful foreigner has never exceeded the limits of friendly abandonment. Yes, I rested my head on his shoulder. Yes, my lips pressed against his cheek. Yes, I embraced his beautiful body! Alas, I can’t love him either... he has nothing but his handsome face! His head is empty, do you understand?”
“Imbeciles are usually happy,” I replied with a diabolical laugh, “good grief, Christine, it seems to me that, in order to be happy, you need the profile of a Pythian Apollo and the mind of a Jacques Cotentin..!”
“And the burning heart of a Benedict Masson!” she added under her breath.
“All of this in the same man!” I set off in an increasingly hostile tone, “a plague upon that, my love, neither of us is anywhere nearer to Paradise...”
“Benedict, Benedict, calm yourself! You have never spoken to me like this before... you’re frightening me!”
“I envy the man with the empty head,” I cried and burst into tears like a ten-year-old child...
She was making another mistake, a grave mistake, in moving close to me with a gesture that was only, that could not be anything other than, one of pity; but which achieved the effect of arousing in me a frantic, unbridled romanticism – the kind of frenzy of the word that hides, under its fairground rags and tawdry parades, the very humble and very simple sorrow of a poor being who has never felt the kiss of a woman on his lips...
She pursed her lips and kissed me with the same tender and chaste abandon as she had shown when she rested on the shoulder of the beautiful, empty-headed creature! At school, we were told the story of a woman; a queen by birth, beauty and intelligence who had bestowed her kiss upon a sleeping poet, who was extremely ugly... and I now served as a modern Alain Chartier [13] for Christine, but even hiding behind this luxury of vocables, I dissimulated as far as possible my terrible shyness...
For some, I am a great poet; for others, a deceiver; but as far as I am concerned I am no more than a beggar. Beneath all my tears, inflated with rhetoric, a woman who loved me could easily read the two words: “Kiss me!” Misery of my life, I am not able to pronounce them!
But Christine has heard them all the same... there she is, the goddess, leaning over me; her breath sets fire to my arteries, as the red heart of her mouth comes, half-open, to meet mine...was I going to die of joy, would I expire in a flash, consumed in this sacred flame? Why haven’t I closed my eyes? Alain Chartier was sleeping! Yes, but Margaret had her eyes wide open over his sublime ugliness, which she honoured with a royal kiss!
Why have you closed your eyes, Christine?... is it because the night is still too light?... is it out of modesty... I want to know, Christine...
So, open your eyes and kiss your poet... very well, go on, have courage!
Be satisfied, Benedict, she opened her eyes at your stupid order... then she breathed out a sigh of disgust.
The poor girl had done all that she could! And you… you have acted like a miserable wretch... even if you did not actually strangle her, you did enough! She recoiled from your caress as if from a punch, and now you have fled far away, to the edge of your sinister little pond with water the colour of lead!
That’s the first time that you have brutalised a woman... you can have but one excuse: that you have never loved another like this one...
XVI
Benedict Masson’s Villa In The Countryside
Here end the memoirs of Benedict Masson.
Thanks to them, we have gained entry to this great moral misery; this inner tragedy, shaped by ugliness. It was necessary to read them. They lit the torch, by the light of which we have been allowed to examine this pariah: the ugly man. They will aid us in clarifying certain dark corners of the external tragedy of which he became the fearsome hero.
First, we shall see what is going on in his little villa in the countryside. What we already know about it is less than reassuring.
Corbillères-les-Eaux is an hour, by express train, away from Paris. We disembark at a small station that opens out directly onto the central square of the village, home to about eight-hundred people. Twenty years ago, only one train stopped here every day: and it was this single stop that created this agglomeration of village folk in the middle of this vast, boggy plain – whose treacherous, foggy, oppressive aspect in no way resembles the convivial atmosphere of the Isle de France.
Marshes and swamps, ponds overgrown with aquatic weeds, guarded by desolate willows and savage copses, frame an immense domain of water which, although abundant with fish and fowl, is rarely frequented by Parisian hunters and fishermen who prefer the pleasures of pretty scenery and the gaiety of the guinguette. [14]
After leaving the station, in order to reach Benedict Masson’s house, we will first follow the main thoroughfare; when we leave it, we will take the narrow paths, damp and muddy even in warm spells and, after making our way for half an hour between ill-defined banks, glimpsed through a wall of reeds, hidden among the floating hearts of water lilies, we will enter a sort of circus ring enclosed by a small, dark hillock and a wood which are reflected in the black waters of a pond.
The villa lies between the pond and the wood.
It would have been charming enough, like an ageing coquette, with its bricks and its slate roof, if it had not been left utterly dilapidated, or if its herb garden had been properly tended, or its vegetable patch cultivated... but ever since it had come to belong to Benedict Masson (the younger), he had neglected it, and had refused to carry out any repairs – he did not want workmen anywhere near his home nor, for that matter, a housekeeper...
He had inherited this small property from his father, a fervent hunter and fisherman, who had built this ramshackle house in countryside that was, for him, a land of dreams where he spent his vacations – installing himself there whenever he had twenty-four hours of freedom.
Benedict Masson (the elder), his father, had done well for himself with a small, popular binding business and had left his son a tidy fortune, which allowed him to afford the luxury of travelling the world as an artist, following romantic fancy wherever it led him. This gained him a reputation for being a fantastical person where, really, he was only a poet.
Benedict returned from his travels almost bankrupt, and we have come to know his way of life after that.
He had kept the house at Corbillères because the solitude and desolation of the place pleased him. Several
times, the large landowners in the surrounding area, who owned the hunting and fishing rights on all the estates in the marshes, had tried to buy him out and install a gamekeeper, but he had refused all their offers.
Whenever he left the Isle de Saint-Louis, it was here that he came to take refuge, living the life of a savage with delight, working absent-mindedly on some kind of high art binding, meticulous work, which demanded a near infinity of time, and on mosaic cover designs on which appeared images of female figures which, of late, always ended up resembling Christine – just as singularly as, for her part, the ones made by Christine tirelessly reproduced the image of Gabriel.
Then, all of a sudden, he would be seized by disgust at his work and throw it away in a rage (or even destroy it) in the little workshop that he had created to his own satisfaction and beyond any commercial consideration...and he would go out, dressed as a buccaneer, dreaming for whole days and nights of the prairie life that he had read about as a child in the novels of Gustave Aimard, [15] cooking a few scraps of meat on a spit suspended over two stones, spending the nights in a hammock made from an old landing net that he had found among the things left by his father, and which he attached to a tree...
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