Lelia

by George Sand

  have another mind restraint that absorbs them! If in his fast hours of fortune, he finds some pleasure in satisfying vulgar luxury vanities, it’s a very short tribute pays for human weaknesses. Soon he will sacrifice mercilessly these childish pleasures of an instant in the consuming activity of his soul, to this hellish fever that does not allow him to live a whole day in the lives of other men. Vanity to him? he

  don't have time! he has something else to do! Did not he her heart to make her suffer, her head to upset, her blood to drink, flesh to torment, gold to lose, life to surrender in question, to rebuild, to undo, to twist, to tear by shreds, to risk as a whole, to be won piece by piece, put it in your purse, throw it on the table at any time?

  Ask the sailor if he can live on land, the bird if he can to be happy without his wings, in the heart of man if he can go from emotions?

  The player is therefore not criminal by himself; that's it social position which almost always makes it such; that's it family he ruins or dishonors. But suppose it, like Trenmor, isolated in the world, without affections, without relatives intimate enough to be considered, free, left to fend for himself, full or deceived in love and you complain about his mistake, you will regret for him that he is not born with a bloody and vain temper, rather than with a bilious and concentrated temperament.

  Where do you take the player to be in the same category than filibusters and brigands? Ask the

  governments why they get some of their wealth from such a shameful source? They alone are guilty of offering these horrible temptations to worry, these fatal resources to despair.

  But you still do not understand why I excuse this man; know that I met him one day in the midst of his most brilliant successes and that I turned away from him with contempt.

  I would still despise him if he had not expiated his fault; Goal we'll see if you don't forgive her when you will know everything.

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  If the love of the game is not in itself as shameful as most other addictions, it's the most dangerous of all, the harshest, the most irresistible, the one whose consequences are the most miserable. It is almost impossible for the player to do not dishonor yourself after a few years.

  Trenmor, after having endured this life for a long time of anxiety and convulsions, with chivalrous heroism which was the basis of his character, finally allowed himself to be corrupted.

  That is to say, his soul gradually wearing out in this fight perpetual he lost the stoic force with which he had known accept setbacks, endure the privations of a dreadful misery, patiently restart the building of his fortune, sometimes, with an obol, wait, hope, walk

  carefully and step by step, sacrifice a whole month to repair the one day losses. Such was his life for a long time. But finally, tired of to suffer, he began to seek out of his will, out of his virtue (because it must be said, the player has his virtue too) ways to regain lost values faster; he borrowed and from then on he was lost himself.

  At first we suffer cruelly from being in a indelicate situation, and then we get used to it, as with everything; we gets dizzy, we get bored. Trenmor did as the players do and the prodigal: he became harmful and dangerous to his friends. Hey accumulated on their heads the evils that he had long courageously assumed on his own. He was guilty, he risked his honor, then the existence and honor of his loved ones, as he had risked his possessions. The game has that horrible he doesn't give you those lessons on which there is no point in coming back. He's always there to call you! this however, which never runs out, is always before your eyes. Hey follows you, he invites you, he tells you: "Hope! " And sometimes he keeps its promises; it makes you bold, it restores your

  credit, it seems to further delay dishonor; but the dishonor is consumed from the day that honor is voluntarily put at risk.

  It was at this time that I knew Trenmor and that I scorned. My contempt hurt him and he stopped borrowing from his friends. But he should have been healed of his passion and that was perhaps beyond his strength.

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  He resorted to these deplorable means which support still some time lost existences. He gave himself up to usurers and managed, for a few more weeks, to fill the huge deficits brought about by such speculation. Goal finally the debts grew, fortune fell, the hydra a hundred heads became more and more threatening. One day Trenmor found himself reduced to having no more money to throw on the infernal carpet, plus a single penny to show in bond of millions he owed.

  He told me that a thought had come to him from heaven that day, but his evil angel smothered him in him. He thought of me, of me who was not his friend and who had no right to him refuse help, to me who had wounded him in the depths of my soul and for whom he felt more sympathy, in this moment of despair, than for any of his dangerous companions.

  But the bad shame spoke higher: he did not come.

  So, on this day of curse, the ease of committing an infamy came to find him. The opportunity held out his arms to him.

  threw his dirty caresses, embellished himself with his hideous charms and came to

  end of his lost soul. This man who never wanted play against a friend, who had scrupulously refused to enjoy a game of skill or combination, this man who, outside a public place, had never succumbed to temptation

  to strip his loved ones, this tall, fearless player, but scrupulous in his own way, who had accepted services, but who out of gratitude never wanted to put the demon by chance between him and those who had returned them to him, this man finally, who now felt too proud to

  go borrow a small sum, decided to commit

  a scam, a hundred franc scam towards a

  old millionaire fraudster and libertine, who had never returned him no good office and which did not count banknotes that he threw at his prostitutes. In reality, Sténio, it was a good lesser crime for Trenmor than anyone he had committed without missing written laws. He had made honest sufferers people by his unlimited borrowing and now he was stealing a imperceptible alms to the bad rich. Well! that alone lost more than anything else. Fraud was discovered, Trenmor suffered five years of forced labor. "

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  11

  "Indeed it is a terrible secret and I do not feel in my heart that a great recognition for the man who did not fear to entrust it to me. You thus estimate me well, Lélia, and it you so esteem too, so that this secret came from him to me in such a short time? Well! here is a sacred bond is established between the three of us; a bond of which I am frightened however, I do not

  do not hide it from you, but that I no longer have the right to unravel.

  Despite all your oratory precautions, Lélia, I could not keep me from being run over. When I remembered that hour before the time I was reading this I had seen this man press your hand, your hand that I never dared to touch

  and that I have not yet seen you offer to anyone but him, I have felt like a chill of ice falling on my heart.

  You, make an alliance with this withered man! You angelic, worshiped you on your knees, you the sister of the white stars, I you assumed for a moment the sister of a ...! I will not write this word. - And now you are more than his sister!

  A sister would only have done her duty by forgiving her. You you are made voluntarily his friend, his consolation, his angel; you went to him, you said, "Come to me, you who are cursed, I will give you back the sky you lost! Come to I, who am spotless and who will hide your defilements with my hand here. "Well! You are tall, Lélia, more still great than I thought. Your action hurts me, I don't know why, but I admire it, but I love you. What i can not bear, it is only this man, whom I hate and whom I sorry, dared to touch the hand you offered him; it is that he was proud to accept your friendship, your friendship holy that the greatest men of the earth would implore humbly, if they knew what it was worth. Trenmor has it received, Trenmor owns it and Trenmor does not speak to you on forehead in the dust; Trenmor stands by your side and crosses with you the astonished crowd, he who dragged the Page 31

  ball, side by side with a thief
or a parricide ... him to forge! Ah! I hate him! but I don't despise him anymore, don't not scold.

  As for you, Lélia, I pity you and I also pity to be your disciple and your slave. You know far too much life to be happy; I still hope that misfortune has embittered you, that you exaggerate evil; I further reject this damning conclusion of your letter:

  that the best among men are the most vain and that heroism is a pipe dream!

  You believe it, poor Lélia! poor woman! Tu es unhappy, I love you! "

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  "Trenmor had only one way to earn my friendship: it was to accept it; and he did. He was not afraid to trust my promises, he did not believe that this generosity would be above my strength. Instead of being humble and fearful in front of me, he is calm, he rests on my delicacy, he is not on the defensive and don't assume that I can humiliate him and make him feel the weight of my protection. Really, this man has a noble and great soul and no friendship has flattered me more than hers.

  You no longer despise his character, but you despise his condition, right? Young proud! because it's you who are! dare you rise above this

  man struck by lightning? Because he was reckless, because he got lost through the pitfalls, you blame him his fall, you turn away from him, while, bloody and broken, you see it coming out of the abyss! Ah! you are from world, you! You share his inexorable prejudices, his selfish revenge! When the sinner is still standing, you still tolerate it; but as soon as he's down, you step on the feet, you pick up the stones and the mud of the Page 32

  way, to do as the crowd does, so that by seeing your cruelty the other executioners believe in your justice. You would be afraid to show him a little pity, because we could misinterpret it and believe that you are the brother or the friend of the victim. And if you were to assume that you are capable of

  same packages, if we said of you: "See this man who reaches out to the proscribed, is he not his companion misery and infamy ”? Oh ! rather than saying that, stone the proscribed; put our heel on his face, let's finish it! Let’s bring our share of insult among the crowd that cursed. When the hideous cart carries the condemned the scaffold, the people rush around to overwhelm with outrages what remains of a man who is going to die. Do like the people, Sténio! How about you, in this city where you are stranger like us, if we saw you touch his hand?

  You might think you were in the penal colony with him!

  Rather than expose yourself to that, young man, run away from him damn ! The damned friendship is dangerous. The ineffable pleasure to do good to an unhappy man is bought too dearly by the curses of the crowd. Is this your calculation? is it yours feeling, Sténio?

  Haven't you cried every time you read in

  the history of England the trait of this young girl who, seeing march to death king charles i er , split the press curious indifferent, and not knowing what expression of interest to give her, poor and simple child that she was, offered him a rose in her hand; a pure and suave rose like her, a rose that her lover perhaps had given her and which was the only, the last testimony of affection and pity that received a king marching to death? Are you not touched also, in the sublime story of the Aosta leper, action natural and simple of the narrator who reaches out to him? Poor leper, who had not touched the hand of his fellow for so many years and who had so much trouble refusing this friendly hand and who nevertheless refused it for fear of infecting it of his evil!…

  Why then would Trenmor have repelled mine? The

  is unhappiness contagious like leprosy? Well, is ! that the vulgar disapproval envelops us both Page 33

  and may Trenmor himself be ungrateful! I will have God for me and my heart, is it not much more than the esteem of the vulgar and the recognition of a man! Oh ! give a glass of water to one who is thirsty, carry a little of the cross of Christ, hide the redness of a forehead covered with shame, throw a blade of grass to a poor ant that the torrent does not disdain to swallow, these are slim benefits! And yet the opinion we prohibit or challenge them! Shame on us ! we do not have a good movement that should not be compressed or hidden. We teaches the children of men to be vain and ruthless, and this is called honor! Curse on all of us!

  Well ! if I told you that far from considering my behaving like an act of mercy, I feel for this man, who made five years in prison, a kind of respect enthusiastic! If I told you that as it is, broken, withered, lost, I find him higher in moral life than any from U.S ? Do you know how he endured his misfortune?

  You would have killed yourself; certainly with your pride you would not have accepted the punishment of infamy. Well ! he submitted, he found that the punishment was just, that he had deserved it, not so much for the fraudulent act in which it had driven despair only for the harm he had done with impunity during the course of several years. And, since it had deserved this punishment, he wanted to undergo it. He suffered it. He has lived five years, strong and patient, among his abject companions. he slept on the stone next to the parricide, he stretched his back in silence with the whip of the keeper, he endured the gaze of curious; he lived five years in this mire, among these beasts

  fierce and poisonous; he suffered the contempt of the last villains and the domination of the most cowardly spies. He was convict, this man who had been so rich, so voluptuous at times, this man of elegant manners and poetic feelings, the one who had been an artist and a dandy! Whoever flew on waves of beautiful Venice, surrounded by women, perfumes and chants, in his fast gondola! whoever won awards at New-Market and tired of his crazy and adventurous races the most beautiful horses of Arabia! the one who had slept under the sky of Greece, like Byron, this man who had exhausted life of luxury and excitement in all its aspects it has been getting soak, rejuvenate and regenerate in the prison! And this sewer Page 34

  infectious, where still find a way to pervert the father who has sold his daughters and the son who raped and poisoned his mother, the prison, from which we come out disfigured and crawling like animals, Trenmor came out standing, calm, purified, pale like you see it, but still beautiful as the creature of God, as the reflection that the Divinity projects on the forehead of the man who thinks!… ”

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  The lake was calm that evening, calm like the last autumn days, when the winter wind does not yet dare disturb the silent waves and that the pink gladioli of the shore hardly sleep, lulled by soft undulations. Pale vapors imperceptibly ate the angular contours of the mountain and, dropping on the waters, seemed move back the horizon, which they ended up doing entirely disappear. Then the surface of the lake seemed to become as large than that of the sea. No laughing or bizarre object appeared more in the valley: there was no more possible distraction, more

  of sensation imposed by the external images. Daydreaming became solemn and deep, vague like the misty lake, immense like the boundless sky. There was no longer in the nature than heaven and man, soul and doubt.

  Trenmor, standing at the helm of the boat, was drawing in the blue night air its big size wrapped in a dark coat. He raised his broad forehead and his vast thought towards this sky so long irritated with him.

  "Sténio, said it to the young poet, could you not row less quickly and let us listen more to the harmonious noise and fresh water raised by oars? Able, poet, in measure! This is as beautiful, as important as the cadence of the most beautiful verses. Good now ! Do you hear the sound complaining of water breaking and moving away? Do you hear these Page 35

  frail drops which fall one by one while dying behind us, like the small, tinny notes of a fading fading away?

  I spent many hours like this, added Trenmor, sitting at the shore of peaceful seas under the beautiful Mediterranean sky.

  This is how I listened with delight to the swirl of canoes in down our ramparts. At night, in this awful silence of sleeplessness after work noise and curses

  of pain, the faint and mysterious noise of waves beating the foot of my prison still managed to calm me down. And, later, when I felt as strong as my destiny, when my firm soul was no longer forced to ask f
or help from outside influences, this sweet noise of the water came to lull my daydreams and plunged me into a delicious ecstasy. "

  At this moment an ashen gull crossed the lake and, lost in the steam, touched Trenmor's damp hair.

  "Another friend," said the convict, "still a sweet memory!"

  When I rested on the shore, motionless like the flagstones from the port, sometimes these traveling birds, taking me for a cold statue, approached me and contemplated me without terror: they were the only beings who had neither aversion nor contempt to testify to me. These did not understand my misery. They didn't blame me for it; and, when I was doing a movement, they took their flight. They did not see that I had a chain on my foot, that I could not chase after them; they did not know that I was a galley slave; they were running away how they would have done before a man!

  - Poet! said the young man to the convict, tell me where your soul brazen took the strength to endure the first days of a similar existence?

  - I won't tell you; Sténio, because I do not know it any more: in those days I didn't feel, I didn't live, I didn't understood nothing. But when I understood how much it was horrible, I felt the strength to bear it. What i had confusedly dreaded was a life of rest and monotony.

  When I saw that there was work there,

  days of fire and nights of ice, beatings, insults, roars, the immense sea before the eyes, the stone Page 36

  motionless of the coffin underfoot, appalling tales to hear and hideous suffering to see I understood that I could live, because I could fight and suffer.

  - Because your great soul needs, said Lélia, sensations violent and burning tonics. But tell us, Trenmor, how you made yourself calm; because after all, you said it all the hour, calm came to find you even within this lair; and besides all the sensations are dulled by force