by Eugène Sue
Suddenly she exclaimed:
“I implore you, do not leave me to my thoughts; let me hear your voice. Tell me all you wish, but speak to me; in the name of Heaven, speak to me!”
“What shall I say?” I replied, submissively.
“What matters!” she cried, clasping her hands in supplication; “what matters! only speak to me, drive from me the thoughts which possess me, have pity, or, rather, be pitiless, — accuse me, overwhelm me, tell me I am a thankless, selfish woman, base enough not to have the courage to be grateful,” she continued, with increasing excitement, as if a secret long suppressed was now escaping her. “Do not soften your reproaches, for you cannot tell how deeply your resignation wounds me, you cannot tell how I long to find you less generous. For what can be said of a woman who meets a true, discreet friend, and for six months permits him to surround her with the most delicate, most assiduous, and respectful attentions, sees him devote himself to the least whims of her poor, suffering child, and who, one day, in all thanklessness, and for the idlest and most puerile of motives, coldly dismisses this friend? And this is not all. When this woman, in a terrible dilemma, again has need of him, — for she knows he alone can save her child’s life, — she forthwith recalls him, well aware that she can demand everything from the selfdenial of this brave heart; and he, sacrificing all, instantly returns to draw this child from the very jaws of death!”
“Hold, I pray you! Let us not recall these sad memories, let us only think of our present happiness,” said I.
But Catherine appeared not to hear me, and continued with an ever increasing excitement which alarmed me:
“This friend, so good, so noble, has he ever attempted by a single word to speak of his admirable conduct? He has been the protecting genius of this woman and her child when both were suffering; and when he has saved them, — for to save the child is to save the mother, — he goes, proudly, silent, and reserved, happy doubtless in the good he has done, but seeming to fear the thanklessness or disdain the gratitude he has inspired.”
Catherine’s voice was growing more and more broken and gasping. I was almost frenzied by her words, but they seemed to me drawn from her by feverish excitation, and contrasted so forcibly with her habitual reserve that I feared her reason, until now so strong and clear, had yielded to the tardy reaction of the terrible experiences which had shaken her for the past six weeks.
“Catherine, Catherine!” I exclaimed. “You are too passionately devoted to your child for me ever to have doubted of your gratitude, — my dearest, most precious reward.”
Catherine heard my reply, for she alluded to my words as she continued in a still more passionate accent:
“Oh, yes, yes; tell me, then, that the intoxicating, invincible sentiment that invades me at this moment is gratitude; tell me that nothing is more sacred, more holy and legitimate, than what I feel. A woman has certainly the right to devote her life to him who has restored her child to her, more especially when he, as generous as he is considerate, has never attempted to say one word of his hopes; therefore, is it not for her — for her — to come to him, and ask with joy, with pride, How can I ever reward so much love?”
“By returning it!” I exclaimed.
“By confessing that I have always returned it,” said Catherine, in a subdued voice.
And her hands languorously fell into mine.
THE GROVE, 16th May, 18 — .
Woe! Woe!
Since yesterday I have not seen her. Doctor Ralph arrived last night. He found her in great danger. He attributed this devouring fever, this terrible delirium, to reaction from the anguish which the unfortunate woman had repressed during her child’s illness.
He does not know all.
Ah, her remorse must be terrible! How she must suffer, and I am not there, by her side, — and I cannot be there.
Ah, yes, I love her, I love her with all my strength. This intoxicating memory, which yesterday made me almost frenzied with love, to-day I curse it!
The sight of Irene hurt me. This morning the child came towards me, and I repulsed her. She is fateful to her mother, as, perhaps, she will be fateful to myself.
Doctor Ralph has just left me; there is no change for the better.
I observed a strange difference in him. This morning, on his arrival, he gave me his hand as usual cordially; the austere expression of his face generally assumed a look of benevolence on meeting me. This evening I gave him my hand, he did not grasp it. His glance seemed to me severe, interrogative. After having briefly informed me of the state of Catherine’s health, he coldly left the room.
Can Catherine have betrayed herself in the wanderings of fever?
This thought is dreadful. Happily, there is near her no one but Irene’s nurse and Doctor Ralph.
But what matter! what matter! This nurse is only a servant, and this doctor is but a stranger! And is she, so proud, because heretofore she had a right to be so, condemned henceforth to blush before these people!
If she has spoken, she is not aware of it, perhaps may never know it, but they know it, they, perhaps, have her secret and mine.
If with a word one could annihilate two persons at once, I believe I would utter that word.
THE GROVE, 17th May, 18 — .
What is to be done, what will become of us, if Catherine so rapidly gets worse? Doctor Ralph will no longer take the sole responsibility, he will call in some consulting physicians, and then —
I cannot continue to write, my sobs stifle me.
This morning something very strange happened.
When the doctor announced to me that Catherine was worse, I came back here in the chalet; I wished to write down what I felt, for I cannot and will not confide to any one my joys and sorrows; so, when my heart overflows with grief or happiness, it is a great relief to me silently to confide to this journal.
When I heard of Catherine’s renewed danger, my sufferings were so great that I wished to write, that is, to pour out my anguish.
This was impossible. I could only trace with a trembling hand the few lines at the head of this page, but was soon interrupted by my tears.
Then I went out into the park.
There, for the first time, I regretted — oh, bitterly regretted — that I possessed neither religious faith nor hope.
I might have prayed for Catherine.
There is certainly nothing more heartrending than to recognise the utter futility of addressing prayers to Heaven for a beloved being whom you fear to lose. In prayer you have some minutes of hope, you are fulfilling a duty, your sorrow at least has a language, which you believe is not quite barren.
But not to be able to say to any human or superhuman power, “Save her!” It is terrible.
I so painfully felt this helplessness, that in despair I fell on my knees, without having consciousness to whom my prayer was addressed. But firmly convinced, in that momentary hallucination, that my voice would be heard, I cried aloud: “Save her! Save her!” Then, in spite of myself, I experienced a glimmer of hope, I felt the consciousness of a duty fulfilled.
Later I blushed for what I called my weakness, my puerility.
Since my mind could not grasp, could not believe, the assertions which constitute the various human religions, what God was I imploring?
What power had succeeded in tearing from me this prayer, this last cry, this the last utterance of despair?
The crisis which the doctor feared did not take place.
Catherine is no better, but she is not worse, and yet her delirium continues.
Doctor Ralph’s coldness towards me is still excessive.
Since her mother’s illness, Irene has given frequent proofs of tenderness and feeling, which, though childlike, are serious and resolute like her character.
This morning she said to me: “My mother suffers very much, does she not?”
“Very much, my poor Irene.”
“When a child is suffering, her mother comes to suffer in her stead, so that the lit
tle one may not suffer any more, is it not so?” she inquired, gravely.
Astonished at this reasoning, I looked at her attentively without replying. She continued:
“I wish to suffer in my mother’s place, take me to the doctor.”
This childish trait, which, under other circumstances, would have made me smile, gave me a heart pang, and I kissed Irene to conceal my tears.
THE GROVE, 17th May, 18 — .
There is hope; the delirium ceases; an alarming prostration has followed. Doctor Ralph dreaded the heat of her fevered blood. Now he fears excessive languor, heart failure.
Her consciousness has returned. Her first utterance was her child’s name.
The nurse told me that the doctor had not yet allowed Irene to go near her mother.
Twenty times have I been on the point of asking Madame Paul if Catherine had inquired after me, but I dared not.
THE GROVE, 18th May, 18 — . To-day, for the first time, Doctor Ralph permitted the nurse to take Irene to her mother.
I waited with anxious and irritable impatience for the moment when I would see Irene, hoping from her to have some particulars about her mother, perhaps a word, a remembrance, from Catherine.
Once returned to consciousness, I know not what course Madame de Fersen will take towards me.
During the paroxysm of remorseful despair which follows a first fault, a woman often hates the man to whom she has succumbed; she overwhelms him with reproaches as violent as her regrets, as vehement as her sorrow; it is on him alone the sole responsibility weighs for their guilt; she is not his accomplice, but his victim.
If her soul has remained pure, notwithstanding that for a moment she was involuntarily led astray, she takes the sincere resolution never again to see the man who has seduced her, and to have to weep over one sole betrayal, one sole defeat.
To this resolution she at first remains faithful.
See seeks, not to excuse, but to redeem her error, by the rigorous fulfilment of her duties; but the remembrance of her fault is there, ever there.
The more noble the heart, the more austere the conscience, so will the remorse be the more implacable. Then, alas! she suffers terribly, the poor creature, for she stands alone, and is compelled in secret to devour her tears, while to the world she still wears a smile.
Sometimes, again, she becomes frightened at her isolation, at that wordless concentration of her grief, and she resigns herself to ask for comfort and strength of the man who is the cause of her fall. She then implores him, for the sake of her remorse, to forget a moment of madness, and to be for her no more than the truest of friends, the confidant of the sorrows he has brought upon her. But, alas! almost always the unhappy woman has still more tears to shed.
Man, with the coarser instincts of his sex, does not realise the sublime struggle which woman endures between love and duty. The incessant torture, the menacing terrors aroused in her by the remembrance of outraged religion and family honour, these dreadful tortures are treated by man as ridiculous whims, as childish scruples, or the absurd influence of the confessional.
If the struggle is prolonged, if the unhappy woman passes her life in efforts to conceal a sorrow caused by her dishonour, and valiantly resists the commission of a second fault, the man is irritated, and revolts against these pruderies which wound his self-love and his eager and brutal passion to the quick; for one last time he reviles her virtue, her sorrows, and her courage by saying to this miserable woman that her return to high principles is somewhat tardy. Frenzied by a base desire for revenge, he at once rushes with his cynical nature to make a notorious display of some other intrigue.
He has been loved, he is still beloved! A virtuous and beautiful woman has jeopardised, for his sake, her happiness, her future, and that of her children! while he basely recoils from the least sacrifice.
How comes it that this man is be worthless, and yet so worshipped? Because woman loves man more for the qualities she attributes to him, and with which her sensitive nature adorns him, than for those he really possesses.
If, on the contrary, by a rare exception, a man realises all that is saintly and beautiful in this remorse, if he endeavours to comfort the sorrow of which he is the origin, the woman’s gentleness and resignation may prove for her another pitfall.
Catherine, — will she be pursued by incessant remorse?
Like those women who, from an insatiable yearning for sympathy, or, with the chastity of sorrow, conceal their woes, and make only a display of their joys, will Catherine leave me in ignorance of the anguish she suffers?
Knowing her as I do, I believe, after I have seen Irene, and gathered from her the substance of her conversation with her mother, I shall be able to divine Catherine’s sentiments towards me. —
Hence I look forward with eager impatience to the child’s visit.
Heaven be praised! I see her running, holding in her hand a bouquet of roses.
My heart did not deceive me; Catherine sends it to me.
She forgives me my happiness.
CHAPTER XXV.
A WOMAN IN POLITICS.
HERE COME TO an end the fragments of the journal I formerly wrote at the Grove.
During the four months which followed Catherine’s confession of her love, and which we passed in this total isolation, my life was so engrossed by the delights of our ever growing love that I had neither time nor inclination to make a record of emotions so entrancing.
Catherine confessed to me that she had felt greatly attracted to me ever since our departure from Khios.
I asked her why she had treated me so harshly on one occasion, when she had requested me not to see her little girl any more. She answered that her despair at feeling herself at the mercy of the affection I inspired, added to her jealousy and grief when she saw me smitten by so giddy a woman as Madame de V —— , had alone decided her to put an end to the mysterious intimacy of which Irene was the bond, however painful to her was this determination.
Later on, when she learned of the termination of my supposed intrigue with Madame de V —— , and finding that absence, instead of diminishing, only increased the power I had gained over her, she endeavoured to renew our former relations. Moreover, Irene commenced to be seriously affected by my absence. “Love is so inexplicable in its contrasts and its sensitiveness,” said Catherine to me, “that this very reason, added to your seeming coldness and disdain, made me hesitate frankly to come to you, fearing that this step might have appeared to you simply dictated by my anxiety for my child’s health.
“The condition of that poor child became so much worse that I resolved to conquer my timidity and tell you all at that ball at the Tuileries, but your greeting was so freezing, your departure so abrupt, that it became impossible for me. The next day I wrote to you; you did not answer. It was not, alas! until Irene’s life was despaired of that I dared once more to write to you at Havre! God only knows with what admirable generosity you responded.”
After the first bitterness of her remorse, Catherine’s love for me became calm, dignified, almost serene.
One felt that, having exercised all her might to resist an unconquerable passion, this woman was prepared to endure with courageous resignation the consequences of her weakness.
The four months we spent at the Grove were for me, for her, the ideal of happiness.
But wherefore speak of happiness? This is now but Dead Sea ashes!
What matter, alas! Let me continue the sad task I have imposed upon myself.
When I was able to snatch some moments from the love which engrossed me, I wrote to M. de Sérigny to thank him for his good intentions towards me, which I had learned from the article in the official newspaper, and informed him that I would be absent for some months yet, that I was unable to disclose to him my place of abode, but begged him, in case any one inquired of him for me, to answer in such a way as might lead people to infer that I was in a foreign country.
In the month of September Catherine heard that he
r husband would return towards the close of the year, and informed me that she intended returning to Paris.
Catherine’s intention surprised and grieved me.
We had considerably discussed whether or not I should resume the duties I had taken upon me with M. de Sérigny.
Catherine had persistently urged me to do so.
I vainly represented to her that those hours devoted to uncongenial work would be stolen from our love, and that I should find very tedious an occupation which I had sought simply as a distraction to my grief. In vain I told her that all the correspondence with which I was entrusted treated of the most futile subjects, and in no way interested me.
To this she replied that at no distant period questions of the greatest importance would necessarily be discussed in high political spheres, and that I would then regret having abandoned that position. She felt so proud, so happy, of the distinction drawn upon me by the king’s recognition of my merits, she said, she so gloried in my success, that I ended by promising to do as she wished.
It was therefore decided between us that I should resume my position with M. de Sérigny.
To avoid returning to Paris at the same time as Madame de Fersen, and in order that people might suppose I had been travelling for some time, I left the Grove for London, and came back to Paris, where I found Catherine on my arrival, after fourteen days’ sojourn in London.
M. de Sérigny had ably fulfilled my wishes, and in society it was generally supposed that an important foreign mission had been the cause of my absence from home.
The minister seemed quite pleased at having me once more sharing his labours; for the king, he told me, had frequently inquired as to the period of my return, expressing his regret that the briefing of despatches was no longer made by me.
To the eyes of the world, I did not at first visit Madame de Fersen more assiduously than before our sojourn at the Grove; but little by little my visits became more frequent without being so noticeably.