He, a philosophical and contemptuous atheist, whose only faith was in science, whom religious faith, even on the part of his friends, irritated as a proof of lack of understanding—had he not done everything he could in the past to bring to his wife that calm happiness which he enjoyed? If Mme. Raindal had not forgotten, she better than anyone else could testify to the patience and abnegation with which he had done so!...
It had been an unpleasant surprise. Mlle. Desjannières was so gay and merry, so childish, despite her twenty years; her father, a Marseilles barrister, who had chanced to seek his fortune in Egypt, was such a brilliant talker, such a good fellow, a singer of such catchy tunes! No one could have suspected the secret fervor at work in the mind of the girl. Well, M. Raindal had not minded because he was in love with his fiancée. He would take care of her, cure her of it! On the very day that had followed their wedding in Alexandria, and later in Paris where they had settled, he had begun the cure and pursued it methodically. Every day he had discussed it with his wife for hours, preached to her and reasoned with her. She had lent herself willingly to the régime and tried in her tenderness to surmount her fears. After three months, one morning, she threw herself on her knees before her husband, weeping and crying for mercy. She begged him to put a stop to the martyrdom, to let her return to the confessional. In presence of her affliction, M. Raindal had been compelled to agree.
She was moved by a superhuman force, an unconquerable fear, the dread of the punishments which follow sin. An old Provençal maid, a kind of Domestic Dante, had inoculated her when she was quite young with the germs of the sickness. In the evenings she had described to her, as if she had been there herself, the lurid sights, the burning horrors, the eternal pangs which torment the sinners in the lands of Hell, the pains of damnation, the torments of the senses, the howls, the moans, the diabolical contortions. And as the child grew up, her soul became gradually narrower at the flame of those tales, more sensitive, more fearful of sins. The slightest of them weighed upon her as an irremissible fault, a thorny burden that choked her heart. She must needs at once rush to a priest, unload before his indulgence that weight of anguish which was heavier than a load of lead. Often as she emerged from a sanctuary she was halted by a scruple, by the semblance of a neglect which brought her hastily back to implore once more the help of the priest as he left the sacred enclosure. And since her marriage, for the last thirty-two years, she had been living thus, forever urged toward churches by new torments of her conscience, hiding her terrors when at home, unable to dominate them when outside, dreading the sarcasm of her family and weeping over their damnation.
“Her happiness! Her peace of mind!” M. Raindal was grunting as he wrote.... “If only she had had the energy to trust me with them.”
Just then the doorbell rang hurriedly twice.
“Hark!” the master said. “Here comes your mother.... I am anxious to hear what she has to say....”
Mme. Raindal stood on the threshold. A long quilted silk cape, lined with minever and slightly worn about the shoulders, encased her form. All out of breath, she panted:
“Wait!”
Her hand went under the cape and lay over her heart to suppress its beating. She explained:
“I climbed the stairs too fast.”