Lelia

by George Sand

  You did not tell yourself that friendship is the only providence Page 275

  that men should invoke and that, if there were friends, they would play the role of God to one another.

  But no ! it is the same with other things. Our soul has the feeling, it does not have the power. She conceives the affections and the virtues, as she dreams these scales that go up from the earth to the stars. imagination endlessly climbing the sky, the man remains numb in his silt. The brain gives birth, actions abort. The heart promise, the hand refuses.

  O contempt and pity on all these paralytics, who believe themselves support, help each other, and who go away jumbled up stumbling and falling on their crippled knees, unable to lift a reed to help themselves! Poor penguins, who talk about the strength of their arms; poor lame who always believe ready to run; poor liars, who repeat, without shame and without fear, the same oaths always betrayed, the same offers always powerless!

  But what is this mysterious incomprehensible impulse, sublime perhaps, in these mud souls? what does this need of effusion, affection, who devours us? Towards

  what shade of tenderness and kindness these aspirations of the suffering heart, those cries of weakness, which calls for help? In vain, the fatal lessons of experience has taught us that this quicksand should give in under our feet, our careless feet risk it always. What is this power or rather this fever obstinate which pushes us towards disappointment and pain?

  Why is this thirst for love not quenched? Why does this dream of trust and dedication never fade entirely? Why, to a friendly word, to a look compassionate, is our gullibility still to be taken?

  Why are tears nice? Why

  do we feel the need to rescue the one who perishes and to thank the one who saves us? Why do we feel the involuntary and necessary friend of the man we see suffer ? Why do we drop on the shoulder of the one who invites us and calls us? Why this word: I will comfort you, whether it comes from the mouth of a woman or the eye of a dog, a friend's letter or a pulpit Page 276

  priest, why this word prostitute, dirty in all the streams, does it still have an irresistible power? Why this flash of confidence and joy that it springs from our exhausted soul, last convulsion of a dying man who would like to take life again, last effort of a castaway, who, believing to hold on to a salvation board, kiss the corpse of one of his companions and spoils with it?

  Man's weakness and misery, he wanted in vain to erect yourself in greatness; it is in vain that he made your suggestions and from your fears high feelings, precious virtues! Lie and vanity, he only realizes you

  of them !

  Lélia, Trenmor, oh my friends, be cursed for the good that you didn't do to me! because you fooled me madly hope you disgusted me with real life you have me used to relying on joys that you didn't have me data, you opened the doors of happiness to me and you closed them in front of me. Without you, I would have accepted the poor life and the sober pleasures of reality, I would have lived alone, without boredom, without worry. You told me that in the exchange and association of souls there were sublime joys; I believed it, and here I am alone and sorry, enlightened without back on the void of your promises, because you left the badly done and my ruin consumed; you would come too late today!…

  And you, unknown power that I naively adored once, mysterious master of our puny destinies, which I recognize again, but before whom I no longer bow down, if my duty is to bend the knee and bless you with this bitter life, show your presence and at least hope that I am heard from you! ... But what do I have to hope for or fear? that Am I to excite your anger or deserve your love? What have I done right or wrong here below? I obeyed the organization that was given to me, I exhausted the real things, I yearned to impossible things, I accomplished my task of man. Yes I hastened the term of a few days, what does it matter to you? If I have extinguish the torch of my intelligence by the abuse of pleasures, what does it matter to the universe that Sténio leaves in the memory of men a few hundred worms more or less? Yes

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  you are a master vindictive and angry, life will not be me refuge and I will not escape, whatever I do, from the atonements

  from the other life; if you are fair and good, you will welcome me in your breast and you will cure me of the evils that I suffered. If you are not no… oh then! I myself am my God and my master, and I can break the temple and the idol…

  Father, come closer to me, he added. Accordez-a grace for me: it is to go and pray for me before the Christ of your chapel.

  - I would not dare to leave you in the state of mind where you are, replied Magnus. Come with me.

  - What are you afraid of? said to him coldly Sténio; have I not swear to Trenmor that he would find me here? Is not that only tomorrow that the term expires and that I will be free to leave you if Trenmor hasn't returned? What a thought do you roll in your bewildered gaze? "

  "I was mistaken," thought the gullible monk; his designs are not bad. Trenmor will come back tomorrow and, tonight, I will pray. "

  The monk knelt on the marble where the moon sowed the reflection of the amethysts and pale rubies of the stained glass. At the end an hour later, he returned to the edge of the lake. Sténio was not there any more.

  The monk had a feeling of fear. He leaned over the lake; the moon was down, we couldn't make out at the bottom of the abyss that a dreary vapor spread over the reeds like a shroud. A deep silence reigned everywhere. The smell of irises ascended weakly on the warm, nonchalant breeze. The air was so sweet, the night so blue and peaceful, that sinister thoughts of the monk involuntarily disappeared. A nightingale began to sing in a voice so sweet that dreamy Magnus stopped at listen. Was it possible that a horrible tragedy had taken place just now in such a quiet place, on such a beautiful night summer? This dark idea faded away by itself. Magnus went on slowly and silently the way to his cell. He crossed the

  cemetery, shrouded in darkness, led by instinct and habit through trees and tombs. A few

  times, however, he collided with the marble of a cenotaph and found wrapped and as if seized by the hanging branches Page 278

  old yew trees. But no plaintive voice, no warm hand still did not stop him. He stretched out on the rods of his diaper and hours of the night rang in silence.

  But he tried in vain to fall asleep. Hardly had he closed his eyes he saw standing before him I don't know what uncertain and threatening images. Soon an image more distinct, more terrible came to assault and awaken him. Stenio with its blasphemies, its impious doubts, Sténio, that it had left alone by the lake, he seemed to see him wandering around his diaper and hear him repeat his insulting questions and cruel to torment the soul of the poor priest. Magnus se lifted and, leaning on his layer, the face resting on his knees trembling, he wondered, as for the first times, on the designs of Sténio. Why did the poet removed the witness from his anxieties? After tearing in tattered all the beliefs taught by the Church after having ransacked with a bloody and unforgiving finger all shameful wounds of his heart, why. Had he returned the priest? To pray ? Oh no ! Sténio could no longer pray. East-what he expected Trenmor? But the sage was to return only the next day. Was it Lélia that he expected? At this thought, the priest leaps onto his bed: for a moment he wished the death of Sténio.

  But soon this impious desire gave way to more worries generous. He feared that, weary of fighting against a God inexorable, Sténio would not have accomplished a sinister project. It is

  frightenedly recalled some frightful words of the young man on the nothingness who absolved suicide, on eternity who did not defend it, on divine anger which could not to prevent, on the merciful indulgence which was to to permit. Magnus had not forgotten that the present life was for Sténio a punishment, which defied all the penalties to come whose Church threatened him.

  The dismayed priest walked hurriedly through his cell. he had only one way to clarify the fate of Sténio, it was to ensure his return to the convent; but we should have penetrated in the rooms reserved for seculars and the rule of Cam
aldules formally opposed it. Two or three times he wondered if to save the life of a man and the soul of a Page 279

  Christian, it was not allowed to violate the laws of discipline ordinary. But the monastic spirit, which in the weak brains, shrinks intelligence and dries up sensitivity, made it more fearful to contemplate the prior of the prior than the remorse of his conscience. He preferred to incur the reproaches from God that the punishments of his order and resolved to wait for the day.

  He passed through his memory all the years of his youth; it compared its pains to the pains of Sténio; he boasted in his resignation; he tried to despise anger of the unfortunate man he had just left. He stammered a few haughty and disdainful words; he murmured between his teeth, shaken by fasting. and insomnia, a few syllables confused, as if he wanted to congratulate himself on a victory decisive on his passions; then he hastily recited a few mutilated verses which consoled his pride, without softening the bitterness of his heart.

  Whenever the chapel clock struck the hours, Magnus started; he accused the march of time; he looked at the sky; he counted stubborn stars; then when the sound vanished, when everything went silent, when he found himself alone with God and his thoughts, he started again mechanically his monotonous and plaintive prayer.

  Finally the day appeared, like a white line on the horizon and Magnus returned to the edge of the lake. The wind had not yet raised its veils of mist and the monk only distinguished the objects close to his sight. It sat down on the stone where Sténio had sat the day before. The day grew slowly at will, its concern was growing. As the light increased, there thought he could see characters drawn on the sand at his feet. he stooped down and read:

  "Magnus, tell Trenmor that I kept my word. he will find me here ... "

  After this inscription, the trace of a foot, a slight landslide of sand then nothing more, than the rapid slope, where the the dust of the inclined ground no longer retained its imprint, and the lake, with her water lilies and a few black teals in the smoke white.

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  Troubled by more intense terror, Magnus tried to descend in the ravine. He went to look for a spade in the cemetery and, cautiously opening a staircase in the sand as that he thrust his uncertain foot into it, he succeeded, after a thousand dangers, by the tranquil water. On a carpet of watercress tender green and velvety slept, pale and peaceful, the young man with blue eyes. His gaze was fixed on the sky, which he still reflected the azure in its motionless crystal, like water whose source is dried up, but whose basin is still full and

  clear. The feet of Sténio were buried in the sand of the shore; his head rested among the cold chalice flowers that a weak wind bent over it. The long flying insects on the reeds had come in hundreds to land around him. Some were drinking a remnant of perfume impregnated with his wet hair; others waved their blue gauze robes on her face, as if to curiously admire its beauty or to touch it with the fresh wind of their wings. It was so beautiful spectacle that this nature, tender and flirtatious around a corpse, that Magnus, unable to believe the testimony of his reason, called Sténio of a strident voice and seizes his hand frozen, as if he had hoped to awaken it. But, seeing that the child had been drowned for several hours, a fear superstitious took possession of his timorous soul; he thought he was guilty of this crime and, ready to fall near Sténio, it let out deaf and inarticulate cries.

  Shepherds of the valley, who passed on the other bank of the lake, saw this sorry monk making vain efforts to withdraw water the body of his friend. They went down by a slope softer and, with branches and ropes, they carried away the dead man and the man living on the other's escarpment edge.

  The shepherds did not know the secret of the death of Sténio; they religiously carried on their shoulders the monk and the poet; they questioned each other with an eager look and worried, sometimes interrupting the silence of their march to try some shy guess; but not one of them they never suspected the truth.

  The fainting of Magnus seemed to these intelligences rough and rude a show of pity, rather than an object of Page 281

  sympathy. They wondered how a priest, doomed by his duty to console the living and to bless the dead, was losing heart like a woman, instead of praying over the one that God had just reminded him of. They did not understand how the Camaldule, which had followed since its entry into so much funeral convent, which had collected the last sighs of so many dying, behaved so loosely in presence of a corpse, however similar to all those he had seen.

  The awakening of nature was soon followed by the awakening of life active. The interrupted work started again with the day born. When the inhabitants of the plain saw from afar the shepherds who advanced, they hastened around them.

  But, at the sight of the intertwined branches where Magnus rested and Sténio, the question which they were going to make expired on their lips; their naive curiosity gave way to a dreary sadness and dumb. Because death goes unnoticed only in the middle of cities populous and noisy. In the silence of the fields, in the middle of the austere country life, it is always hailed like the voice of God. Only those who spend their days to forget to live who turn away from death like of an unwelcome show. Those who kneel evening and morning to give thanks never pass indifferent before a coffin.

  Reached a hundred paces from the edge of the lake where they had found Sténio, the shepherds halted and deposited their pious burden on the wet grass. The rising sun colored the horizon in a tone of purple and orange. We saw floating on the slope of the hills an abundant and hot vapor; descended from the sky, the fertile dew rose there, as the holy ardor of a grateful soul returns to God who kindled her with his love. Each mountain narcissus

  was a diamond. The cloud tops were crowned with a golden tiara. Everything was joy, love and beauty around the rustic catafalque.

  A group of young girls crossed the valley to lead to the lakeside heifers with striped sides and to entrust echoes these rough ballads, simpler than prudent, including sometimes the refrain reached the ears of the monks in Page 282

  pray. These brown mountain children stopped without terror at the funeral show; but, under their broad man's breasts, simple nature had let the heart live woman's right and compassionate. They will soften, without cry, over the destiny of these two unfortunates and charged themselves to explain it to the shepherds. "This one," they said, pointing to the monk is the brother of the drowned man. They will have wanted fish for lake trout; the more daring of the two will have risked too much before; he cried for help, but the other was afraid and strength will have failed him. You have to pick herbs for the cure. We will put red sage leaves on her

  tongue and tanese on the temples. We will burn resin around it and we'll fan it out with leaves fern. "

  While the tallest of these girls searched in the wet grass the spices they intended to rescue Magnus, some matrons recited the prayer in a low voice for the dead and the youngest mountain women knelt around Sténio, half collected and half curious. They touched his clothes with a mixture of fear and admiration. "He was a rich man," said the old women; it is very unfortunate for him to be dead. " A little girl passed its fingers in the blond hair of Sténio and them

  wiped in his apron with care that held the middle between reverence and the serious pleasure of playing with an object unusual.

  At the sound of their confused voices, the priest awoke and stared around him. The matrons came

  kiss her emaciated hand and devoutly asked her blessing. He shivered when they felt their lips stick to his fingers.

  "Leave, leave," he said, pushing them away, "I am a sinner; God has withdrawn from me. Pray for me, it's me who am in danger of perishing. "

  He got up and looked at the corpse. Assured while he was doing not a dream, he started with a mute and inner convulsion and sat back on the ground, overwhelmed by the weight of his terror.

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  The shepherds, seeing that he was not thinking of giving them orders, offered to carry the corpse to the convent. This proposition awakened all the monk's
anxieties.

  "No, no," he said, "it cannot be. Only help me to drag me to the door of the monastery. "

  When Magnus was kneeling before the prior:

  "Bless me, father," said he, "for I come to you.

  defiled by a great crime; I caused the damnation of a soul.

  Sténio, the traveler, the friend of the sage Trenmor, the young Sténio, this child of the century that you allowed me to maintain often to try to bring it back to the truth, it hurts advised, I lacked the strength and anointing to convert it; my prayers have not been fervent enough; my intercession was not pleasing to the Lord, I failed ... O my father!

  will i be forgiven? Will i not be cursed for my weakness and my helplessness?

  - My son, said the prior, the purposes of God are impenetrable and his mercy is immense. What do you know of the future ? The sinner can become a great saint. He has us left, but God has not abandoned him, God will save him. The grace can reach it everywhere and remove it from the deepest abysses.

  - God didn't want to, said Magnus, whose fixed eye was strapped to the earth wildly, God let him fall into Lake…

  - What do you say ? cried the priest, rising. Your reason is troubled? Is the sinner dead?

  - Dead, replied Magnus, drowned, lost, damned ...

  - And how did this misfortune happen? said the prior. In have you witnessed Have you not tried to prevent it.

  - I should have foreseen it; I should have prevented it; I have lacked persistence; I was afraid. For an hour, he spoke in a loud and lamentable voice. He accused the fate, the men and God. He invoked another justice than that in which we confide. He trampled on our most important beliefs holy. He called nothingness. He mocked our prayers, our sacrifices Page 284

  and our expectations. Hearing him blaspheme thus, oh my father, forgive me! instead of being ignited by a saint indignation, I cried. Standing a few steps from him, I half heard his fatal words. Sometimes the wind seized by the way, and carried them to the sky which alone was powerful enough to absolve them. When the wind died down, this dismal voice, this dreadful curse came back to strike my ear and freeze my blood. I was coward, I was shot, I was trying to build a bulwark between the poisoned features of his word and my trembling soul. It was in vain. The