I left her and only returned with all the household for the last solemn prayers. Kneeling in a corner of the room I was part of the time lost in my own thoughts, and part, impelled by an involuntary curiosity, watching all these people gathered together, studying the terror of some and the inattention of others, and that strange effect of habit which brings indifference into all prescribed formalities and makes us regard even the most august and awe-inspiring ceremonies as matters of routine and pure form. I heard these people mechanically repeating the words of the prayers for the dying as though they themselves were never to be actors some day in a similar scene, as if they themselves were not some day to die too. And yet I was far from scorning such practices, for is there a single one of them which man in his ignorance can dare to call useless? They were bringing Ellenore some peace of mind and helping her to cross that dread threshold towards which we are all moving without being able to foresee what our feelings will then be. What surprises me is not that man needs a religion, but rather that he should ever think himself strong enough or sufficiently secure from trouble to dare reject any one of them. I think he ought, in his weakness, to call upon them all. In the dense night that surrounds us is there any gleam of light we can afford to reject? In the torrent bearing us all away is there a single branch we dare refuse to cling to?
Ellenore seemed tired after going through such a lugubrious ceremony. She sank into a quite peaceful sleep and awoke in a less troubled state. I was alone in her room, and we exchanged a few words at long intervals. The doctor whose forecasts had been most reliable had warned me that she had not twenty-four hours to live, and I looked first at a clock marking the hours and then at Ellenore’s face, on which I could see no fresh change. Each passing minute revived my hopes, and I was beginning to cast doubt upon the prophecies of a perfidious art. But suddenly Ellenore leaped up in bed; I caught her in my arms. Her whole body was shaking convulsively, her eyes were searching for me, but in them was a look of vague fear, as if she were begging mercy of something threatening her but invisible to me. She sat up, then fell back, clearly trying to escape; it was as if she were wrestling with some invisible physical power which, tired of waiting for her last moment, had seized and held her in order to dispatch her on her deathbed. She finally yielded to the determined attacks of hostile nature; her body became limp. She seemed to recover some consciousness and pressed my hand. She tried to weep, but the tears would not come; she tried to speak, but her voice had gone. In resignation she dropped her head upon the arm supporting it, and her breathing became slower. A few moments later she was gone.
For a long time I remained motionless beside the dead Ellenore. The certainty of her death had not yet penetrated my soul, and my eyes stared stupidly at this inanimate body. One of her women came in and then went to spread the awful news throughout the house. The noise going on round me roused me from the lethargy into which I had sunk. I rose to my feet, and then it was that I felt the rending grief and full horror of the final farewell. All this bustling activity of daily life, all these preoccupations and comings and goings which no longer concerned her, dispelled the illusion which I was prolonging, that illusion which allowed me to believe I was still living with Ellenore. I felt the last link snap and the awful reality come between her and me for ever. How irksome this liberty now was, that I had missed so grievously! How my heart now cried out for that dependence which I had often hated! Only recently all my actions had one single object; each one of them, I was convinced, would dispel some sorrow or give some pleasure. But then I complained that it should be so and felt resentful that a benevolent eye should watch over all my movements and that another’s happiness should depend upon them. There was nobody to watch over my movements now, they interested nobody; there was none to dispute my comings and goings, no voice to call me back as I was going out. I was free, truly, for I was no longer loved. I was a stranger to the whole world.
All Ellenore’s papers were brought to me as she had ordered. In every line I found fresh proofs of her love, new sacrifices she had made for my sake and all unknown to me. At length I found the letter I had promised to burn. At first I did not know what it was; it was unaddressed and open so a few words caught my eye in spite of myself. Try as I would not to look I could not resist the temptation to read it all. I have not the strength to copy it all out. Ellenore had written it after one of those violent scenes which had preceded her illness. ‘Adolphe,’ she wrote, ‘why are you always against me? What crimes have I committed? Loving you and being unable to exist without you. What misguided pity makes you afraid to break a tie you find irksome and yet go on torturing the unhappy soul you remain with because of that pity? Why do you deny me the paltry satisfaction of believing you to be at any rate generous? Why do you show yourself to be so hysterical and weak? You are haunted by the vision of my grief and yet the sight of this grief cannot stop you! What is your demand? That I should leave you? Don’t you see that I have not the strength? Ah, it is you, who do not love me, you who must find the strength in a heart that is weary of me and that so much love cannot touch. You will never give me that strength, but will make me languish in tears and die at your feet.’
‘Tell me,’ she wrote in another place, ‘is there any land where I would not follow you? Any retreat where I would not stay hidden so as to be near you without being a burden? No, no, you want no such thing. Any suggestion I make in fear and trembling (for you have struck terror into me), you impatiently reject. The best I can get from you is silence. So much hardness does not go with your character. You are good, and your actions are noble and kind, but what deeds could efface the memory of your words? Those biting words echo round me; I hear them in the night, they pursue me, torture me, and poison everything you do. Must I die then, Adolphe? Very well, you shall be satisfied. She will die, this poor creature you have protected but are now hurting again and again. She will die, this wearisome Ellenore whom you cannot bear to have anywhere near you, whom you regard as an obstacle, because of whom you cannot find a single spot on this earth that does not bore you. And you will walk on alone in the midst of this crowd you are so anxious to join. You will get to know what these people really are for whose indifference you are so grateful now, and perhaps some day, when you are wounded by their stony hearts, you will miss the heart that was yours, that lived on your affection and would have braved a thousand perils in your defence, and upon which you no longer deign to bestow a single rewarding glance.’
Letter to the Publisher
SIR,
I return the manuscript you so kindly entrusted to me. I thank you for this kindness even though it has revived sad memories that time had dimmed. I knew most of the characters in this story, which is all too true. I often saw the strange and unhappy Adolphe, who is both the author and the hero; I tried to warn Ellenore – that charming woman worthy of a happier fate and a more faithful heart – against that mischievous person, no less unhappy than she, who dominated her by a kind of spell and broke her heart by his weakness. Alas, the last time I saw her I thought I had given her some strength and armed her reason against her heart. After far too long an absence I returned to the place where I had left her, to find nothing but a grave.
Sir, you should publish this anecdote. It can hurt nobody now, and in my view it might be very helpful. Ellenore’s tragedy proves that even the most intense emotion cannot struggle against the accepted order of things. Society is too powerful, it has too many metamorphoses, mixes too much bitterness with any love it has not sanctioned; it favours the tendency to inconstancy, the bored impatience which are sicknesses of the soul that sometimes suddenly develop in the very midst of love. People unaffected themselves are remarkably eager to interfere in the name of morality and to hurt others by their zeal for virtue. It is as though the sight of affection were too much for them because they are incapable of it themselves, and when they can seize on an excuse they delight in attacking and destroying it. Woe betide the woman who puts her trust in a sentiment which e
verything conspires to poison, and against which society, once it is not obliged to respect it as legitimate, arms itself with all that is evil in the heart of man in order to discourage all that is good.
The example of Adolphe will be no less instructive if you add that after spurning the woman who loved him he was no less restless, upset, and unhappy; that he made no use of the liberty regained at the cost of so much grief and so many tears, and that by behaving in a thoroughly blameworthy manner he at the same time made himself worthy of pity.
If you want proofs of all this, Sir, read these letters which will acquaint you with Adolphe’s later life. You will see him in many varied circumstances, but always the victim of the mingled selfishness and emotionalism which worked together in him for his own undoing and that of others; foreseeing the evil consequences of an act and yet doing it, and shrinking back in despair after having done it; punished for his qualities even more than for his defects because his qualities had their origin in his emotions and not in his principles; showing himself in turn the most affectionate and the most cruel of men, but as he always ended with cruelty after beginning with affection, he left no trace behind except of his misdeeds.
Reply
SIR,
Yes, I will certainly publish the manuscript you return (not that I share your view as to the service it might render; nobody in the world ever learns except at his own expense, and women who read it will all imagine they have met somebody better than Adolphe or that they themselves are better than Ellenore), but I shall publish it as a true story of the misery of the human heart. If it has any instructive lesson, that lesson is for men, for it shows that intellect, which they are so proud of, can neither find happiness nor bestow it; that character, steadfastness, fidelity, and kindness are the gifts we should pray for, and by kindness I do not mean that short-lived pity which cannot overcome impatience nor prevent it from reopening wounds which a moment of compunction had appeared to heal. The great question in life is the sorrow we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics cannot justify a man who has broken the heart that loved him. And besides, I hate the vanity of a mind which thinks it excuses what it explains, I hate the conceit which is concerned only with itself while narrating the evil it has done, which tries to arouse pity by self-description and which, soaring indestructible among the ruins, analyses itself when it should be repenting. I hate that weakness which is always blaming others for its own impotence and which cannot see that the trouble is not in its surroundings but in itself. I might have guessed that Adolphe has since been punished for his character by his very character, that he has kept to no fixed path, adopted no useful career, that he has used up his gifts with no sense of direction beyond mere caprice, no other motive power than nervous reaction. All that, I repeat, I might have guessed even if you had not acquainted me with fresh details about his fate which I am not sure yet whether to make use of. Circumstances are quite unimportant, character is everything; in vain we break with outside things or people; we cannot break with ourselves. We change our circumstances, but we take with us into each new situation the torment we had hoped to leave behind, and as we cannot make ourselves any better by a change of scene, we simply find that we have added remorse to regrets and misdeeds to sufferings.
* Alexander Walker’s translation, 1816. See Introduction, § 5. Original spelling and punctuation.
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