Madeleine rested a cold hand on my arm. A sudden exaltation came over me. That woman whom I had so passionately loved under the hot sunglow of an afternoon was now at my side. We were alone in that pine grove, alone under that moonlight! I threw an arm about her shoulders, drew her toward me, and pressed my lips to her lips in a kiss she did not avoid.
This was less than two years ago! It is Hell to remember it now!
VIII
Madeleine was a vivacious creature. Her graceful, subtle, intelligent beauty was not coarsened by the ruddy vitality of her features and the warmth of passion evident in the Southern blood that raced through her blue veins. I must not linger on these impressions, however; they are of interest only to me. I am not writing a diary of my inner life! I am not writing my memoirs! This is a testament, in which I bequeath to the generations after me a Secret which it behooves all men and women, my brothers and sisters, to know. It were better, perhaps, to abbreviate my story, suppress everything not pertinent to that Secret. But I must convince the sceptical. The voice of Truth must be felt in every word I say. I must show myself to be really the man I pretend to be: Charles André Narcy, captain of cavalry, Distinguished Service Cross, detailed to Staff Headquarters, born in Lyons, April 27th, 1876, died at Toulon, December 21, 1908 (or January 22, 1909). That I am this person I can prove only by this story. What desperation! Only by this story! I must convince you by the detailed fullness of my account. And in this sense, everything, everything, has a bearing on the Secret.
Now I must say that Madeleine was a beautiful, vivacious creature, plump with the healthy vigor of her Provençal race. And as I took her in my arms for the first time, I noted what a firm, solid, heavy person she was.
Later, when once I took her in my arms again and playfully lifted her from her feet, she seemed to me much lighter, much lighter!
Madeleine de X.... What horror! If only I could give her name! Then you would know! And she would confirm my story! However ... honor impels me at this point to evade a little, to falsify a number of dates, and places, and details. You must get the meaning of what I say; but what does it matter if I write “June” instead of “October,” or “Tamaris” instead of “Hyères,” “taxicab” instead of “Peuchot.” I must be careful, all the more because from moment to moment the flame of my memory is weakening, trembling, threatening to go out, reviving again only after minutes of anguish! The flame of my memory, and the flame of my intelligence, also! If I am not on my guard, some word, blighting to a lady’s honor, may escape me!
She was the only daughter of a rich man! He was a hard, sour, ill-tempered fellow. During winter seasons he lived in a decrepit castle lost in the chalk dunes between Toulon and Aubagne. There he kept aloof from the world, receiving no visitors and making no calls himself. One of those domestic tragedies, as laughable in the eyes of society as they are torturing to the hearts they tear, had separated him from his wife some twelve or fifteen years before. The old folks in Toulon, Nice, Marseilles, used to refer amusedly to the story, which they considered a most savory scandal. I never had an appetite for such things. I am unable to tell exactly why that man and that woman separated! I was never a friend of either of them. I saw him occasionally, in the old days, at our officers’ balls. His wife I used to meet from time to time at various resorts along the Riviera. She had a luxurious villa at La Turbie and another at Beaulieu. Part of the year she lived on her own properties; another part in Paris; usually she spent two or three months with Madeleine in Toulon, for there her daughter married and settled permanently.