THÉRÈSE

Thérèse
By
FRANCOIS MAURIAC
New York
Boni & Liveright
1928

THÉRÈSE BY FRANÇOIS MAURIAC
TRANSLATED BY ERIC SUTTON

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

LORD have pity, O have pity on those who know not what they do. O Creator of the world, can there be any in whom the image of humanity is destroyed, even in the eyes of Him, who alone knows why they exist, HOW THEY HAVE MADE THEMSELVES WHAT THEY ARE, and how they could have made themselves otherwise.

Charles Baudelaire.

I shall be told, Thérèse, that you do not exist, but I know you do, for I have been watching you for years, and I have often stopped you and unmasked you as you passed me by.

When I was young, I remember seeing your little white thin-lipped face, as you stood in a stifling Assize Court, at the mercy of lawyers not half so pitiless as the fine ladies who had come to see your agony.

Later on, I found you in the drawing-room of a country house, looking drawn and pale, bored by the attentions of your aged parents and your simple-minded husband. “But what can be the matter with her?” said they: “she has everything she can possibly want.”

Since then, I have so often admired you as you passed that strong hand of yours so wearily across your firm broad brow. I have so often seen you prowling, like a wild animal, back and forwards behind the living bars of the family in which you are imprisoned, watching me with your evil melancholy eyes.

Many will be surprised that I have been able to conceive a creature yet more odious than all my other heroines. Why, they ask, do I never write about good kind people in whose hearts there is no secret? Alas! where there is no secret there is no story; and I know the secrets of those hearts that are tainted with the clay that covers them.

I could have wished, Thérèse, that sorrow should bring you to God; and I have long wanted you to be worthy of the name of Saint Locusta. But many, though they believe in the downfall and redemption of our poor tormented souls, would have cried “Sacrilege.”

I can only hope that on that street where I bid you farewell you are not alone.