by André Gide
“Yes, I understand,” said Olivier. “An hour sooner and he might have been saved.”
“An hour! How you go it! I am calculating the extremest point. It is possible. It is still possible.… It is no longer possible! My mind walks along that narrow ridge. That dividing line between existence and nonexistence is the one I keep trying to trace everywhere. The limit of resistance to—well, for instance, to what my father would call temptation. One holds out; the cord on which the devil pulls is stretched to breaking.… A tiny bit more, the cord snaps—one is damned. Do you understand now? A tiny bit less—non-existence. God would not have created the world. Nothing would have been. ‘The face of the world would have been changed,’ says Pascal. But it’s not enough for me to think—‘if Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter.’ I insist. I ask: shorter, by how much? For it might have been a tiny bit shorter, mightn’t it?… Gradation; gradation; and then a sudden leap.… Natura non fecit saltus. What absurd rubbish! As for me, I am like the Arab in the desert who is dying of thirst. I am at that precise point, you see, when a drop of water might still save him … or a tear.… ”
His voice trailed away; there had come into it a note of pathos which surprised Olivier and disturbed him. He went on more gently—almost tenderly:
“You remember: ‘I shed that very tear for thee …’ ”
Olivier remembered Pascal’s words; he was even a little put out that his friend had not quoted them exactly. He could not refrain from correcting: “ ‘I shed that very drop of blood for thee …’ ”
Armand’s emotion dropped at once. He shrugged his shoulders:
“What can we do? There are some who get through with more than enough and to spare.… Do you understand now what it is to feel that one is always ‘on the border line’? As for me, I shall always have one mark too little.”
He had begun to laugh again. Olivier thought that it was for fear of crying. He would have liked to speak in his turn, to tell Armand how much his words had moved him, and how he felt all the sickness of heart that lay beneath his exasperating irony. But the time for his rendezvous with Passavant was pressing him; he pulled out his watch.
“I must go now. Are you free this evening?”
“What for?”
“To come and meet me at the Taverne du Panthéon. The Argonauts are giving a dinner. You might look in afterwards. There’ll be a lot of fellows there—some of them more or less well known—and most of them rather drunk. Bernard Profitendieu has promised to come. It might be funny.”
“I’m not shaved,” said Armand a little crossly. “And then what should I do among a lot of celebrities? But, I say—why don’t you ask Sarah? She got back from England this very morning. I’m sure it would amuse her. Shall I invite her from you? Bernard could take her.”
“All right, old chap,” said Olivier.
1 Es-tu vase funèbre attendant quelques pleurs?
VIII : The Argonauts’ Dinner
It had been agreed then that Bernard and Edouard, after having dined together, should pick up Sarah a little before ten o’clock. She had delightedly accepted the proposal passed on to her by Armand. At about half past nine, she had gone up to her bedroom, accompanied by her mother. She had to pass through her parents’ room in order to reach hers; but another door, which was supposed to be kept shut, led from Sarah’s room to Armand’s, which in its turn opened, as we have seen, on to the backstairs.
Sarah, in her mother’s presence, made as though she were going to bed, and asked to be left to go to sleep; but as soon as she was alone, she went up to her dressing table to put an added touch of brilliancy to her lips and cheeks. The toilette table had been placed in front of the closed door, but it was not too heavy for Sarah to lift noiselessly. She opened the door.
Sarah was afraid of meeting her brother, whose sarcasms she dreaded. Armand, it is true, encouraged her most audacious exploits; it was as though he took pleasure in them—but only with a kind of temporary indulgence, for it was to judge them later on with all the greater severity; so that Sarah wondered whether his complaisance itself was not calculated to play the censor’s game.
Armand’s room was empty. Sarah sat down on a little low chair and, as she was waiting, meditated. She cultivated a facile contempt for all the domestic virtues as a kind of preventive protest. The constraint of family life had intensified her energies and exasperated her instinct for revolt. During her stay in England, she had worked herself up into a white heat of courage. Like Miss Aberdeen, the English girl boarder, she was resolved to conquer her liberty, to grant herself every license, to dare all. She felt ready to affront scorn and blame on every side, capable of every defiance. In the advances she had made to Olivier, she had already triumphed over natural modesty and many an instinctive reluctance. The example of her two sisters had taught her her lesson; she looked upon Rachel’s pious resignation as the delusion of a dupe, and saw in Laura’s marriage nothing but a lugubrious barter with slavery as its upshot. The education she had received, that which she had given herself, that which she had taken, inclined her very little to what she called “conjugal piety.” She did not see in what particular the man she might marry could be her superior. Hadn’t she passed her examinations like a man? Hadn’t she her opinions and ideas on any and every subject? On the equality of the sexes in particular; and it even seemed to her that in the conduct of life, and consequently of business, and even, if need were, of politics, women often gave proof of more sense than many men.…
Steps on the staircase. She listened and then opened the door gently.
Bernard and Sarah had never met. There was no light in the passage. They could hardly distinguish each other in the dark.
“Mademoiselle Sarah Vedel?” whispered Bernard. She took his arm without more ado.
“Edouard is waiting for us at the corner of the street in a taxi. He didn’t want to get down for fear of meeting your parents. It didn’t matter for me; you know I am staying in the house.”
Bernard had been careful to leave the door into the street ajar, so as not to attract the porter’s attention. A few minutes later, the taxi deposited them all three in front of the Taverne du Panthéon. As Edouard was paying the taxi, they heard a clock strike ten.
Dinner was finished. The table had been cleared, but it was still covered with coffee-cups, bottles and glasses. Everyone was smoking and the atmosphere was stifling. Madame des Brousses, the wife of the editor of the Argonauts, called for fresh air in a strident voice, which rang out shrilly above the hum of general talk. Someone opened a window. But Justinien, who wanted to put in a speech, had it shut almost immediately “for acoustics’ sake.” He rose to his feet and struck on his glass with a spoon, but failed to attract anyone’s attention. The editor of the Argonauts, whom people called the Président des Brousses, interposed, and having at last succeeded in obtaining a modicum of silence, Justinien’s voice gushed forth in a copious stream of dullness. A flood of metaphors covered the triteness of his ideas. He spoke with an emphasis which took the place of wit, and managed to ladle out to everyone in turn a handsome helping of grandiloquent flummery. At the first pause, and just as Edouard, Bernard and Sarah were making their entry, there was a loud burst of polite applause. Some of the company prolonged it, no doubt a little ironically, and as if hoping to put an end to the speech; but in vain—Justinien started off afresh; nothing could daunt his eloquence. At that moment it was the Comte de Passavant whom he was bestrewing with the flowers of his rhetoric. He spoke of The Horizontal Bar as of another Iliad. Passavant’s health was drunk. Edouard had no glass, neither had Bernard nor Sarah, so that they were dispensed from joining in the toast.
Justinien’s speech ended with a few heartfelt wishes for the prosperity of the new review and a few elegant compliments to its future editor—“the young and gifted Molinier—the darling of the Muses, whose pure and lofty brow would not long have to wait for its crown of laurels.”
Oliver was standing near the door, so as to welcome his
friends as soon as they should arrive. Justinien’s blatant compliments obviously embarrassed him, but he was obliged to respond to the little ovation which followed them.
The three new arrivals had dined too soberly to feel in tune with the rest of the assembly. In this sort of gathering, late comers understand ill—or only too well—the others’ excitement. They judge, when they have no business to judge, and exercise, even though involuntarily, a criticism which is without indulgence; this was the case at any rate with Edouard and Bernard. As for Sarah, in this milieu, everything was new to her; her one idea was to learn what she could, her one anxiety to be up to the mark.
Bernard knew no one. Olivier, who had taken him by the arm, wanted to introduce him to Passavant and des Brousses. He refused. Passavant, however, forced the situation by coming up to him and holding out a hand, which he could not in decency refuse:
“I have heard you spoken of so often that I feel as if I knew you already.”
“The same with me,” said Bernard in such a tone that Passavant’s amenity froze. He at once turned to Edouard.
Though often abroad travelling, and keeping, even when he was in Paris, a great deal to himself, Edouard was nevertheless acquainted with several of the guests and feeling perfectly at his ease. Little liked, but at the same time esteemed, by his confrères, he did not object to being thought proud, when, in reality, he was only distant. He was more willing to listen than to speak.
“From what your nephew said, I was hoping you would come to-night,” began Passavant in a gentle voice that was almost a whisper. “I was delighted because …”
Edouard’s ironical look cut short the rest of his sentence. Skilful in the arts of pleasing and accustomed to please, Passavant, in order to shine, had need to feel himself confronted by a flattering mirror. He collected himself, however, for he was not the man to lose his self-possession for long or to let himself be easily snubbed. He raised his head, and his eyes were charged with insolence. If Edouard would not follow his lead with a good grace, he would find means to worst him.
“I was wanting to ask you …” he went on, as if he were continuing his first remark, “whether you had any news of your other nephew, Vincent? It was he who was my special friend.”
“No,” said Edouard dryly.
This “no” upset Passavant once more; he did not know whether to take it as a provocative contradiction, or as a simple answer to his question. His disturbance lasted only a second; it was Edouard who unintentionally restored him to his balance by adding almost at once:
“I have merely heard from his father that he was travelling with the Prince of Monaco.”
“Yes, I asked a lady, who is a friend of mine, to introduce him to the Prince. I was glad to hit upon this diversion to distract him a little from his unlucky affair with that Madame Douviers.… You know her, so Olivier told me. He was in danger of wrecking his whole life over it.”
Passavant handled disdain, contempt, condescension with marvellous skill; but he was satisfied with having won this bout and with keeping Edouard at sword’s length. Edouard indeed was racking his brains for some cutting answer. He was singularly lacking in presence of mind. That was no doubt the reason he cared so little for society—he had none of the qualities which are necessary to shine in it. His eyebrows however began to look frowningly. Passavant was quick to notice; when anything disagreeable was coming to him, he sniffed it in the air, and veered about. Without even stopping to take breath, and with a sudden change of tone:
“But who is that delightful girl who is with you?” he asked smiling.
“It is Mademoiselle Sarah Vedel, the sister of the very lady you were mentioning—my friend Madame Douviers.”
In default of any better repartee, he sharpened the words “my friend” like an arrow—but an arrow which fell short, and Passavant, letting it lie, went on:
“It would be very kind of you to introduce me.”
He had said these last words and the sentence which preceded them loud enough for Sarah to hear, and as she turned towards them, Edouard was unable to escape:
“Sarah, the Comte de Passavant desires the honour of your acquaintance,” said he with a forced smile.
Passavant had sent for three fresh glasses, which he filled with kummel. They all four drank Olivier’s health. The bottle was almost empty, and as Sarah was astonished to see the crystals remaining at the bottom, Passavant tried to dislodge them with a straw. A strange kind of clown, with a befloured face, a black beady eye, and hair plastered down on his head like a skullcap, came up.
“You won’t do it,” he said, munching out each one of his syllables with an effort which was obviously assumed. “Pass me the bottle. I’ll smash it.”
He seized it, broke it with a blow against the window ledge, and presenting the bottom of the bottle to Sarah:
“With a few of these little sharp-edged polyhedra, the charming young lady will easily induce a perforation of her gizzard.”
“Who is that pierrot?” she asked Passavant, who had made her sit down and was sitting beside her.
“It’s Alfred Jarry, the author of Ubu Roi. The Argonauts have dubbed him a genius because the public have just damned his play. All the same, it’s the most interesting thing that’s been put on the stage for a long time.”
“I like Ubu Roi very much,” said Sarah, “and I’m delighted to see Jarry. I had heard he was always drunk.”
“I should think he must be to-night. I saw him drink two glasses of neat absinthe at dinner. He doesn’t seem any the worse for it. Won’t you have a cigarette? One has to smoke oneself so as not to be smothered by the other people’s smoke.”
He bent towards her to give her a light. She crunched a few of the crystals.
“Why! it’s nothing but sugar candy,” said she, a little disappointed. “I hoped it was going to be something strong.”
All the time she was talking to Passavant, she kept smiling at Bernard, who had stayed beside her. Her dancing eyes shone with an extraordinary brightness. Bernard, who had not been able to see her before because of the dark, was struck by her likeness to Laura. The same forehead, the same lips.… In her features, it is true, there breathed a less angelic grace, and her looks stirred he knew not what troubled depths in his heart. Feeling a little uncomfortable, he turned to Olivier:
“Introduce me to your friend Bercail.”
He had already met Bercail in the Luxembourg, but he had never spoken to him. Bercail was feeling rather out of it in this milieu into which Olivier had introduced him, and which he was too timid not to find distasteful, and every time Olivier presented him as one of the chief contributors to the Vanguard, he blushed. The fact is, that the allegorical poem of which he had spoken to Olivier at the beginning of our story, was to appear on the first page of the new review, immediately after the manifesto.
“In the place I had kept for you,” said Olivier to Bernard. “I’m sure you’ll like it. It’s by far the best thing in the number. And so original!”
Olivier took more pleasure in praising his friends than in hearing himself praised. At Bernard’s approach, Bercail rose; he was holding his cup of coffee in his hand so awkwardly, that in his agitation he spilled half of it down his waistcoat. At that moment, Jarry’s mechanical voice was heard close at hand:
“Little Bercail will be poisoned. I’ve put poison in his cup.”
Bercail’s timidity amused Jarry, and he liked putting him out of countenance. But Bercail was not afraid of Jarry. He shrugged his shoulders and finished his coffee calmly.
“Who is that?” asked Bernard.
“What! Don’t you know the author of Ubu Roi?”
“Not possible! That Jarry? I took him for a servant.”
“Oh, all the same,” said Olivier, a little vexed, for he took a pride in his great men. “Look at him more carefully. Don’t you think he’s extraordinary?”
“He does all he can to appear so,” said Bernard, who only esteemed what was natural, and who
nevertheless was full of consideration for Ubu.
Everything about Jarry, who was got up to look like the traditional circus clown, smacked of affectation—his way of talking in particular; several of the Argonauts did their utmost to imitate it, snapping out their syllables, inventing odd words, and oddly mangling others; but it was only Jarry who could succeed in producing that toneless voice of his—a voice without warmth or intonation, or accent or emphasis.
“When one knows him, he is charming, really,” went on Olivier.
“I prefer not to know him. He looks ferocious.”
“Oh, that’s just the way he has. Passavant thinks that in reality he is the kindest of creatures. But he has drunk a terrible lot to-night; and not a drop of water, you may be sure—nor even of wine; nothing but absinthe and spirits. Passavant’s afraid he may do something eccentric.”
In spite of himself, Passavant’s name kept recurring to his lips, and all the more obstinately that he wanted to avoid it.
Exasperated at feeling so little able to control himself, and as if he were trying to escape from his own pursuit, he changed his ground:
“You should talk to Dhurmer a little. I’m afraid he bears me a deadly grudge for having stepped into his shoes at the Vanguard; but it really wasn’t my fault; I simply had to accept. You might try and make him see it and calm him down a bit. Pass … I’m told he’s fearfully worked up against me.”
He had tripped, but this time he had not fallen.
“I hope he has taken his copy with him. I don’t like what he writes,” said Bercail; then turning to Bernard: “But, you, Monsieur Profitendieu, I thought that you …”
“Oh, please don’t call me Monsieur … I know I’ve got a ridiculous mouthful of a name … I mean to take a pseudonym, if I write.”
“Why haven’t you contributed anything?”