This is not a Story Part 2

--I can still see her big dark eyes, soft and twinkling, and the moving sound of her voice resounding in my ears and shaking my heart. Charming creature!

Unique creature! You are no more! You have been no more for nearly twenty years; and my heart still tightens at the thought of you.

--You loved her?

--No. Oh La Chaux! Oh Gardeil! You were each a marvel; you, for a woman's tenderness; you, for a man's ingrat.i.tude. Mademoiselle de La Chaux was an honest woman. She left her parents to throw herself into the arms of Gardeil.

Gardeil had nothing, Mademoiselle de La Chaux enjoyed considerable wealth, and this wealth was entirely sacrificed for Gardeil's needs and whims. She regretted neither the dissipation of her fortune nor her blackened reputation. Her lover took the place of everything for her.

--So Gardeil was a charmer, amiable?

--Not at all. A small gruff man, taciturn and caustic; angular face, swarthy complexion; a wholly puny, thin figure; ugly, if a man can be ugly with a face so full of intelligence.

--And that was what made this charming woman fall head over heals?

--That surprises you?

--Still.

--You?

--Me.

--So you have forgotten your adventure with la Deschamps and the profound despair into which you fell when this creature closed her doors to you.

--Drop it; continue.

--I had said to you, 'So she is very beautiful?' And you answered sadly, 'No.--She has a good personality?--She is foolish.--So it is her talents that sway you?--She has but one.--And this rare, sublime, marvelous talent?--Is to make me happier in her arms than I have ever been with any other woman.' But Mademoiselle de La Chaux, the good, sensible Mademoiselle de La Chaux, secretly counted on, by instinct, unbeknownst to him, the good fortune that you once knew, and which made you say of la Deschamps: 'If this unfortunate girl, if this despicable woman insists on kicking me out, I will grab a gun and blow my brains out in her foyer.' You said that, correct?

--I said it; and even now I do not know why I did not do it.

--Admit it, then.

--I will admit to anything if it pleases you.

--My friend, the wisest amongst us is much happier not having encountered any woman, beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, that would drive him mad enough for the Pet.i.tes-Maisons. We men complain a great deal, we criticize them occasionally. We watch the years go by like so many moments, carried off by the evil that shadows us; and we only think to cower at the strength of certain natural attractions, especially those of us with sensitive souls or ardent imaginations. The spark that alights by chance on a powder keg does not produce so terrible an effect. The finger ready to light the fatal spark over you or me is perhaps raised.

M. d'Herouville, wanting to speed up his project, greatly overworked his colleagues. Gardeil's health suffered for it. To lighten his load Mademoiselle de La Chaux learned Hebrew, and while her lover rested she spent a portion of the night translating and transcribing bits of Hebrew. It came time to tackle the Greek authors; Mademoiselle de La Chaux rushed to perfect her then superficial knowledge of this language: while Gardeil slept she was busy translating and copying pa.s.sages of Xenophon and Thucydides. She added Italian and English to her knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. Her English was so good that she could translate Hume's first essays on metaphysics into French, a work whose difficult subject matter added infinitely to the difficulty of the idiom. When study exhausted her resources she amused herself by writing music. When she feared her lover might be overcome with ennui she sang. I am not exaggerating anything, as can be attested to by M. Le Camus, doctor of medicine, who consoled her when she was troubled and cared for her when she was in need, who remained by her side in the attic that her poverty had relegated her to, and who closed her eyes when she died. But I am forgetting one of her first misfortunes: the persecution that she had to suffer at the hands of a family outraged by the scandalous and public relations.h.i.+p. Both truth and lies were employed to dispose of her liberty in a humiliating manner. Priests and her parents pursued her from quarter to quarter, from house to house, for many years reducing her to a solitary and hidden life.

She spent her days working for Gardeil. We visited her at night, and in the presence of her lover all her grief, all her worries vanished.

--My word! Young, timorous, tenderhearted in the face of so many difficulties. What a happy being.

--Happy? Yes, she only ceased to be so when Gardeil was revoltingly ungrateful.

--But it is not possible for ingrat.i.tude to be the reward for so many exceptional qualities, so many signs of affection, so many sacrifices of every kind!

--You are mistaken, Gardeil was ungrateful. One day, Mademoiselle de La Chaux found herself alone in the world, without honor, without support. I a.s.sure you, I stayed with her for some time. Doctor Le Camus stayed with her always.

--Men!

--Who are you talking about?

--Gardeil.

--You see the villain and you do not see the good man right beside him. That painful and hopeless day she rushed to my quarters. It was morning. She was pale as death. Though she had only discovered her predicament the day before she looked like one who had been suffering for a long time. She was not crying, but one could see that she had cried a lot. She threw herself into an armchair, she did not speak, she could not speak, she held out her arms to me as she cried out. 'What is it?' I asked her. 'Has he died?...' 'It is worse: he no longer loves me; he is leaving me...'

--Go on then.

--I do not know if I can. I see her, I listen to her, and my eyes fill with tears. 'He no longer loves you?...' 'No.' 'He is abandoning you!' 'Oh yes!

After all that I have done!... Monsieur, my mind is troubled; have pity on me; do not leave me... above all else do not leave me...' While uttering these words she had hold of my arm. She was squeezing it tightly, as if near her lay someone who threatened to tear her away and carry her off... 'Have no fear, mademoiselle.' 'I fear only myself.' 'What do you need?' 'First, save me from myself... He no longer loves me! I tire him! I annoy him! I bore him! He hates me! He is abandoning me! He is leaving me! He is leaving me!' This echoed line was followed by a profound silence, and following this silence, convulsive bursts of laughter a thousand times more terrifying than the fits of despair or the groans of agony. Next came tears, cries, inarticulate words, gazes turned towards the sky, trembling lips, a torrent of pain that one must let run its course, which I did. I only began to address her reasoning when I saw that her soul was broken and stunned. So I resumed: 'He hates you, he is leaving you? And who told you that?' 'He did.' 'Come, mademoiselle, a little hope and courage. This is no monster...' 'You do not know him; you will know him. This is a monster like no other, like none there ever was.' 'I cannot believe that.' 'You will see for yourself.' 'Does he love another?' 'No.' 'You have not caused him any suspicion, any dissatisfaction?' 'None, none.' 'What is it then?' 'My uselessness. I have nothing left. I am no longer good at anything. His ambition. He has always been ambitious. The loss of my health, of my beauty, I have suffered so much and am so tired; boredom, weariness.' 'We cease to be lovers, but remain friends.' 'I have become an unbearable object; my presence weighs on him, the sight of me troubles and offends him. If you only knew what he said to me!

Yes, monsieur, he told me that if he was condemned to spend twenty-four hours with me he would throw himself from the window.' 'But this aversion is not the work of a moment.' 'What do I know? He is by nature so scornful! so uncaring! so cold! It is difficult to see into the depths of his heart! and it is so awful to read his death sentence! He p.r.o.nounced it to me, and with such harshness!' 'I cannot imagine anything like that.' 'I have a favor to ask of you, and that is why I came here: will you grant it to me?' 'Anything you ask.' 'Listen. He respects you; you know what he owes me. Perhaps he will not be embarra.s.sed to show his true self to you. No, I do not think he would have his guard up. I am only a woman, and you are a man. A kind, honest and just man inspires respect. You will inspire respect in him. Give me your hands, do not say no; accompany me over to his house. I want to speak to him with you there. Who knows what effect my pain and your presence will have on him. You will accompany me?' 'Willingly.' 'Let us go...'

--I am worried that her pain and presence will leave things exactly as they are. Contempt! Contempt is a terrible thing in a relations.h.i.+p, and for a woman!...

--I sent her to seek out a litter, as she was hardly in a state to walk. We arrive at Gardeil's, at this huge new house, the only one on the right side of Hyacinthe street when coming from Saint-Michel square. The porters stop; they open the doors. I wait. She does not get out. I lean over and I see a woman seized with a universal trembling. Her teeth were chattering as if from feverish chills, her knees were hitting together. 'A moment, monsieur; I am sorry; I cannot... what can I do here? I will have torn you from your affairs for nothing; I am so sorry; I ask your forgiveness...' But I held out my hand to her. She took it, she tried to get up; she could not. 'One more moment, monsieur,' she told me, 'I am such a bother; I am a burden to you.' At last she pulled herself together; and as she rose from her seat she added softly: 'We need to go in; we have to see him. Who knows? Perhaps I will die there...' Across the courtyard; at the door of the apartment; in Gardeil's office. He was at his desk in his dressing gown and bonnet. He waved h.e.l.lo to me and continued the work he had started. Then he came over to me and said: 'You must admit, monsieur, that women are an inconvenience. I apologize a thousand times for the extravagances of mademoiselle.' Then he addressed himself to the poor creature, who was more dead than alive. 'Mademoiselle,'

he said to her, 'what more do you want from me? It seems to me that after explaining myself to you in so clear and precise a manner everything should be settled between us. I told you that I no longer loved you, I told you that person to person. Apparently your plan is for me to repeat it to you in front of this gentleman. Well, mademoiselle, I do not love you anymore.

Extinguished in my heart is this feeling of love for you and, I will add if it makes you feel better, for any women.' 'But tell me why you no longer love me.' 'No idea. All I know is that I started without knowing why, that I stopped without knowing why, and that I feel it is impossible for this pa.s.sion to return. It was a childish pursuit of which I believe myself to be and congratulate myself for being completely cured.' 'What are my faults?'

'You have none.' 'You have no secret complaint with my behavior?' 'Not the least. You have been the most loyal, decent, kind woman a man could desire.'

'Have I overlooked anything it is within my power to do?' 'Nothing.' 'Have I not sacrificed my parents for you?' 'It is true.' 'My fortune.' 'I am sorry for that.' 'My health?' 'That may be.' 'My honor, my reputation, my sleep?'

'Whatever pleases you.' 'And you find me odious!' 'That is difficult to say, difficult to hear, but since it is so, it has to be admitted.' 'He finds me odious!... I know it, and do not respect myself any more for it!... Odious!

Oh, G.o.d!...' At these words a mortal pallor spread across her face; her lips lost their color; drops of cold sweat forming on her cheeks mixed with tears descendeding from her eyes; they were closed; her head fell on the back of her armchair; her teeth clenched; all her limbs were quivering; the quivering was followed by a fainting spell that seemed due to the apprehension that she had worked up at the door to the house. The duration of this state frightened me. I took her mantelet from her, I loosened the strings of her dress and petticoat and splashed a bit of cold water on her face. Her eyes opened halfway; one could hear a m.u.f.fled murmuring in her throat. She was trying to say: I am odious to you. She only articulated the last syllables of the phrase, then issued a piercing cry. Her eyelids lowered, and the fainting spell began again. Gardeil, seated coldly on his armchair, his elbow resting on the table and head rested on his hand, watched her without emotion and left it to me to care for her. I told him repeatedly: 'But, monsieur, she is dying... we have to call for someone.' He answered me by smiling and shrugging his shoulders: 'Women lead a hard life. They do not die over such a little thing as this. This will pa.s.s. You do not know them very well. Their bodies do whatever they want them to do.' 'She is dying, I tell you.' Her body was as if without strength or life. It slipped away from the top of the armchair, and she would have fallen to the ground to the left or right had I not been holding her. Meanwhile Gardeil rose up brusquely, and, pacing his apartment, said with an impatient and moody tone: 'I could do without this dismal scene.

I do hope this will be the last. Who the devil does she bear a grudge against? I loved her; I will smash my head into a brick wall if that is the least bit false. I do not love her anymore, she knows that now, or she will never know it. Everything has been said...' 'No, monsieur, everything has not been said. What? You believe that a good man has only to strip a woman of everything she has and leave her?' 'What do you want me to do? I am begging as much as she is.' 'What do I want you to do? To a.s.sociate your misery with the one that you have reduced her to.' 'You enjoyed saying that. She would be no better for it, and I would be much worse.' 'You would act like this to a friend that has sacrificed everything for you?' 'A friend! A friend! I do not have much faith in friends, and this experience has taught me to have no pa.s.sion for them. I am frustrated that I did not realize this sooner.' 'And it is right that this unfortunate woman should be the victim of your heart's errors.' 'And what is to say that one month, a day later, I would not have been just as cruelly the error of hers.' 'What is to say? Everything that she has done for you, and the state that you see her in.' 'What she did for me?... By G.o.d! He is fully acquitted by the loss of my time.' 'Oh, monsieur Gardeil, what a comparison between your time and all the priceless things that you have taken from her!' 'I have done nothing, I am nothing, I am thirty years old, it is time to think of myself, now or never, and to treat all this nonsense like it is worth.'

Meanwhile the poor woman was coming to a little bit. At these last words she regained enough energy: 'what did he say about the loss of his time? I learned four languages to ease his workload, I read a thousand volumes, I wrote, translated, copied day and night, I exhausted myself, wore out my eyes, boiled my blood, I came down with an awful illness from which I may never recover. He does not dare tell you the cause of his displeasure, but you will see.' At that instant she pulled out her handkerchief, withdrew one of her arms from her dress, bared one of her shoulders, and, showing me an erysipelatus mark, 'The reason for his transformation, there it is,' she said to me, 'there it is, there is the effect of those sleepless nights. It came one morning with these rolls of parchment. M. d'Herouville, he told me, is very anxious to know what is in these, this work has to be done by tomorrow, and it was...' At that moment we heard someone's steps coming towards the door.

It was a servant announcing M. d'Herouville's arrival. Gardeil's face went pale. I invited Mademoiselle de La Chaux to withdraw and tidy herself up...

'No,' she said. 'No. I am staying. I want this disgrace uncovered. I will wait for M. d'Herouville. I will speak to him.' 'And what good will that do?'

'None,' she answered me, 'you are right.' 'Tomorrow you will regret it. Leave him his evil deeds; it is a revenge worthy of you.' 'But is it worthy of him?

Do you not see that this man here is not... Let's go, monsieur, let us leave now, for I can neither answer for what I would do, nor for what I would say...'

In the blink of an eye Mademoiselle de La Chaux had repaired the disorder this scene had made of her clothes and raced from of Gardeil's office. I followed and heard the door slam shut behind her. I later learned that someone had given notice to the porter.

I conducted myself to her quarters, where I found Doctor Le Camus waiting for us. The pa.s.sion that he felt for this young woman differed little from hers for Gardeil. I recounted our visit to him, and while I spoke the signs of his anger, pain, indignation...

--It was not too difficult to see from his face that your failure did not displease him all that much.

--It is true.

--There is man for you. He is no better than that.

--This rupture was followed by a violent sickness, during which time the good, honest, tender and kind doctor gave her such a treatment he would not have reserved for the n.o.blest woman in France. He came three, four times a day. In spite of the peril he slept in her room on a canvas-strap bed. It is fortunate that this was only a disease of the heart.

--In returning to us she drifts away from her memories of others. And then she has a pretext to be troubled without indiscretion or constraint.

--That thought, otherwise just, does not apply to Mademoiselle de La Chaux.

During her recovery we sorted out her schedule. She had more than enough spirit, imagination, taste and knowledge to be admitted into the Academie des Inscriptions. She had listened to us wax metaphysical for so long that the most abstract matters had become familiar to her. Her first literary endeavor was the translation of Hume's Essays on Human Understanding. I proofread it, and to tell you the truth she had left me with very little to rectify. This translation was printed in Holland and was well received by the public.

My Letter on the Blind and the Dumb appeared at almost the same time. She raised some very perceptive objections which gave rise to an addition dedicated to her[6]. I have done worse things than make this addition.

Mademoiselle de La Chaux's happiness had been somewhat restored. The doctor cooked for us occasionally and these dinners were not too sorrowful. Since Gardeil's estrangement, Le Camus' pa.s.sion had made marvelous strides. One day, at the table during dessert, as he was expressing it with all the honesty, sensitivity and navete of a child, she said to him, with a sincerity that pleased me greatly but which will perhaps displease others: 'Doctor, it would be impossible to heighten the respect I have for you. Your kindnesses fulfill me, and I would be as gloomy as the monster of Hyacinthe Street were I not steeped in the fiercest grat.i.tude. You tell me of your pa.s.sion with such grace and sensitivity that I would be, I think, angry if you were to stop. Just the idea of losing your company or of being deprived of your friends.h.i.+p is enough to make me miserable. You are a good man, if there ever was one. Your goodness and sweetness of character is incomparable.

I do not believe that a heart can fall into better hands. I appeal to my own from morning till night in your favor, but appeal in vain to that which does not desire it. I am not making any more progress. Meanwhile you will suffer, and so I feel a vicious pain. I do not know anyone more worthy of the happiness that you seek, and I do not know what I would not do to make you happy. Anything is possible, without exception. I mean, doctor, I would... yes, I would go so far as to sleep... so far as to include that. Do you want to sleep with me? You only have to say so. That is all I can do for you. But you want to be loved, and I do not know a way.'