by George Sand
"I recognize you, Magnus," she replied. Alas! here is therefore the fruit of your expiations and of your struggles!
- Don't mock me, woman, he replied with a look dark because I'm as close to hate as love and, if you push me away ... I don't know what anger can do to me Councilor ...
- Leave my arm, Magnus, said Lélia calmly
disdain. Sit on this rock and I'll talk to you. "
There was so much authority in his voice that the monk, accustomed to passive submission, obeyed as if by instinct and sat down to two steps from her; his heart was beating so hard that he could not speak.
He took in his two hands his bleeding and painful head and gathered all that was left of strength and memory to listen and understand.
"Magnus," said Lélia to him, "if when you were still young and capable of achieving a social existence, you would have had me
consulted on your future, I would not have advised you to be a priest. Your organization had to give you back Page 303
impossible these rigid duties that you only perform fact. You were a bad priest, but God
will forgive, because you have suffered a lot.
Now it's too late for you to come back to life ordinary; you have lost the strength to reach any virtue.
You must stick to abstinence. Although I have little faith in the effectiveness of your mortifications and the practices of your life monastic I think you should wait in retirement the end of your suffering; it will not be long: look at your hands, look at your gray hair. Much better for you, Magnus! Why am I not so close to the grave! GB
unhappy, we can do nothing for each other. You you got it wrong, you cut yourself off from life and you felt the need to live; and now you're scared of it and you think it would be you possible to calm your desires by enjoyment. Insane childish!
it is no longer time to think about it. You could have found happiness in freedom a few years ago; your reason could have enlighten, your soul harden against vain remorse. Goal today horror, disgust and dread would chase you all over. You couldn't know love, you would take it always for the crime and the habit of withering the name of sin legitimate joys would make you criminal and vicious in the eyes of your conscience, in the arms of the purest woman. Resigned-you, poor monk, lower your pride. You thought you were big enough for this terrible virtue of the cloister; you were mistaken, I tell myself.
But whatever? You are coming to the end of your troubles; applied-you not to lose the fruit. You weren't tall enough to may God forgive you despair; you are not Sténio. "
Magnus had listened in vain; his brain refused to any job, faculties. He was suffering, he understood that Lélia taunted him; the calm and proud face of this woman deeply humiliated him. He hated her at times and wanted run away from it; but he believed himself seized and fascinated by the eye of the devil.
Finally, his feeble reason succumbed to this last struggle. It is raised and, taking her arm again:
"It is now," he said to her, "that I see what you are!" I have often thought to recognize in you the demon; but you hid in such beautiful features that, in spite of myself, I took you for a women. Now my eyes open and I feel pretty strong Page 304
to fight and strike you down. Get back into the earth, Satan, I curse you in the name of Christ! "
Lélia, seeing the fury and the distraction in her eyes, struggled with force to get rid of this iron hand, which bruised his arm. But he pronounced formulas of exorcism and, being astonished that it did not disappear, it became completely mad and thought only of killing her, like formerly he had often had the idea.
"Yes, yes," he cried, "when you're dead, I won't fear no more! I will forget you and I can pray. "
He strangled him.
One hour before day, the inhabitants of the valley heard howls roaring near their homes
appalling, as if a man devoured by wolves
fled, dragging his entrails on the way. The terrors superstitious, who had made them abandon the cave, the prevented them from leaving. These men, brave in the face of danger real and compassionate for any helping misfortune, did not dare to face what they took for a mystery
diabolical.
It was the monk who fled from the sight of his crime and who screamed in terror, believing to be pursued by the specters of Lélia and of Sténio. We no longer see him in the country.
Lélia crawled on her knees and on her hands to the bed funeral where Sténio rested; she still had the strength to kiss him and say to him in a broken voice:
"Blessed be God who already brings us together! ..."
Then she turned her last look to the sky which whitened on the horizon.
"The morning will be beautiful," thought Lélia. Earth, rejoice, everything pass, everything dies… everything returns to God… ”
She fell. It was found dead at the feet of Sténio. The rosary of Magnus was so tightly wrapped around his neck that it was necessary to cut the silk cord to remove it.
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Lélia was buried in holy ground, but not in the enclosure reserved for the burial of religious. In the part of cemetery which bordered the ravine, a tomb was raised to him similar to that of the other bank, where Sténio was deposited.
One evening, Trenmor being cured of the consequences of his fall and having finished the funeral of his two friends, went down slowly on the shores of the lake. The moon, rising, threw a ray oblique on these two white tombs, which the lake separated. of the meteors rose as usual on the surface
misty water. Trenmor looked sadly at their pale radiance and their melancholy dance. He noticed two which, came from the two opposite banks, joined, continued each other and stayed together all night, either they came to play in the reeds, either they let themselves be slide on the calm waves, that is to say
trembling in the mist, like two lamps nearing completion.
Trenmor allowed himself to be dominated by a superstitious idea and soft. He spent the whole night watching these lovebirds with his eyes lights, which sought and followed each other like two souls love. Two or three times, they came near him and he named them two beloved names, shedding tears as a kid.
When day broke, all the meteors went out. The two mysterious flames stood for a while on the middle of the lake, as if they had been hard pressed to separate. Then they were both driven in the wrong direction on the contrary, as if they were each going to join the grave that she lived. When they were gone, Trenmor passed his hand on his forehead, as if to chase the dream away weakening from a night of pain and tenderness. He went up towards the tomb of Sténio and, one instant, it stopped uncertain:
"What will I do without you in life? he cried; to what will i be helpful? who will i be interested in? What will I use my wisdom and my strength, if I have no more friends to console and support? Wouldn't it be better to have a grave at the edge of this beautiful water, near these two graves silent? ... But no, the atonement is not over: Magnus may still be alive, maybe I can cure him.
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Besides, there are men everywhere who fight and who suffer, there are duties everywhere to fulfill, a force to employ, a destiny to achieve. "
He saluted from afar the marble which contained Lélia. He kissed that where Sténio slept; then he looked at the sun, that torch which was to light up his working days, this eternal beacon which showed him the land of exile, where you have to act and walk,
the vastness of the heavens still accessible to the hope of the man.
He picked up his white stick, and set off again.
Page 307
This work is the 163 rd published
in the À tous les vents collection
by the Electronic Library of Quebec.
The Electronic Library of Quebec
is the exclusive property of
Jean-Yves Dupuis.
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