These conversations revealed the most direct and exact judgment, and the deepest and truest knowledge of the miseries, or, as he said, the moral necessities of the human race, for a very striking trait of my father's character was the calm and disinterested manner with which he could discuss the inherent weaknesses of our species. According to his idea, we were obliged to admit that certain facts, certain low and selfish instincts, from which even noble minds could not escape, were the consequences of our moral organisation. He thought it as idle to hide or deny this defect as it would be to blame men for being attainted by it.
Thus, if any one ever asked of him a favour, he would generally consider that he would in return only receive ingratitude; nevertheless, he would render the service with the most perfect benevolence.
To sum up all, the moral sense of the conversations I had with him, and which on his part consisted of short, concise, and decided phrases, affirmed that the pivot on which everything turned was gold, since the noblest characters when pressed by need would descend to the lowest degradation, even to infamy,—it was necessary to remain rich so as to be sure of remaining honest; that there was an object in every sacrifice; that every man was corruptible, but that the time or the price of each man varied according to the nature of the individual; that all friendship had its negative pole, and that, therefore, it would be folly to count on a sentiment which would assuredly fail you in your need; and, to conclude, I should, according to these direful maxims, count myself as fortunate in the fact that I had neither brother nor sister, and was thus free from the guilt of venial fratricide, man being so constituted that he scarcely ever sees anything in fraternity but a diminished inheritance; "for," said my father, "there are very few, even of the purest souls, who can deny having thought, at least once in a lifetime, in calculating the fortune that they were to divide, 'If I were the only one!'"
I can not express how these axioms, in one sense strictly true perhaps, but of an affirmation so exaggerated and so disheartening, filled me with dismay, when I heard them coldly stated as a proposition by my dying father.
My tutor, who was a man of good sense, but of mediocre intellect, had never in his life started any philosophical discussion in my presence. Upon such subjects my mind had thus far remained unawakened and inert, but, being prepared by education and by a precocious habit of reflection due to my solitary life, and the experience I had gained by travel, was ready to receive the germs of any idea, good or bad, which the ardour of my imagination would inevitably cause to expand.
It was thus that these discouraging and bitter sentiments took deep root and became the sole source of all my thoughts. Later in life I was enabled to modify them, to graft on them, so to speak, other ideas, but the later buds partook of all the bitterness of the original sap.
After one of these melancholy seances with my father, which generally lasted about two hours, he would allow himself to be dressed, or rather to be wrapped in warm and very light clothing (for his old wounds had become open and heavy clothing caused him to suffer cruelly); then, seated in a bath-chair, he would have himself rolled up and down in the sunny paths of the park.
Through a strange caprice, my father, who had hitherto taken the greatest pleasure in keeping this park in luxurious beauty, prohibited, so soon as he believed himself to be seriously ill, every one from making the most necessary and ordinary improvements.
Nothing can be imagined more desolate than the aspect of these wide driveways, which were now taken possession of by grass and weeds; of these arbours and bowers of elm-trees, which, formerly clipped so symmetrically, were now abandoned and left to grow in every wild way; of these great flower beds, where all the dead summer flowers, that should have been pulled up by the roots at the beginning of autumn (for it was now that season), were still displaying their tall blackened stems.
Nothing, I repeat, could have been more dismal than this spectacle of neglect and ruin around a house which was still inhabited. My father had even forbidden any one to make the most ordinary repairs to the house itself. If a shutter was unhinged or a chimney blown down by a storm, it was allowed to remain just as the wind had left it. After his airing, which my father generally took in silence, his head bowed on his breast, while beside him walked either I, my aunt, or Hélène, he would be taken into his study. I can see the room still, lighted by its three great windows which opened on the park, its numerous old family portraits, its pictures and priceless curiosities. A great black bookcase filled one entire side of the room; from the ceiling swung a great chandelier of rock-crystal. But what gave the place its look of utter desolation was the same sort of neglect which devastated the park.