I placed my ear against that delicate chest and felt its caressing warmth.
"No..."
I looked at my mother, who was trembling with anxiety on the other side of the cradle.
The ordinary symptoms of bronchitis were absent. The child was quiet; at long intervals he coughed lightly; he took the breast as often as usual; his slumber was deep and regular. Even I, deceived by appearances, doubted. "My attempt has been useless. It seems that he must not die. How tenacious his hold on life is!" And I felt the old rancor against him born in me again—become more acute. His calm and healthy appearance exasperated me. I had suffered all that anguish uselessly then. I had exposed myself to all that peril for nothing! With my anger was mingled a sort of superstitious stupor, caused by the extraordinary tenacity of that life. "I shall not have the courage to begin over again. And then? It is I who will be his victim, and I shall not be able to escape him."
The perverse little phantom, the bilious and sly child, full of intelligence and evil instincts, reappeared to me; again he fixed his hard, gray eyes on me with a provocative air. And the terrible scenes in the darkness of the deserted rooms, the scenes created long ago by my hostile imagination, presented themselves again, stood out again in relief, acquired motion, all the characters of reality.
The day was cloudy, and it threatened to snow. Juliana's alcove again seemed like a refuge. The intruder could not be taken from his room, could not come and persecute me in the depths of that retreat. I abandoned myself altogether to my sorrow, without seeking to hide it. While looking at the poor invalid I thought: "She will not get well; she will not recover." The strange words of the previous evening recurred to my memory, troubled me. Without any doubt, the intruder was an executioner for her as well as for me; without any doubt, he imposed himself exclusively on her thoughts, and it was from this that she was dying by degrees. So heavy a weight on so feeble a heart!
With the incoherence of images seen in a dream, once more I saw in mind divers fragments of my previous life. I recollected another illness, a convalescence long past. I lingered, recomposing these fragments, reconstructing that period, so charming and so painful, during which I had sown the germ of my misfortune. The diffuse whiteness of the light recalled to my memory that mild afternoon which we had passed, Juliana and I, reading that book of poetry, bending together over the same page, following the same line with our eyes. And, on the margin, I saw again her taper index-finger, the mark of her nail.
Accueillez la voix qui persiste
Dans son naïf épithalame.
Allez, rien n'est meilleur à l'âme
Que de faire une âme moins triste.
I had seized her wrist; I slowly bent my head until my lips touched the hollow of her hand; I murmured: "You ... could you forget?" And she closed my mouth, pronouncing her great word: "Silence."
I lived that fragment of life over again under the form of a real and profound sensation. And I continued, continued to relive my past. I came to the morning when she had risen for the first time—that terrible morning; I heard her laughing and broken voice; I saw again the gesture of the offering; I saw her again in the arm-chair after the unexpected shock; I saw again what had followed. Why could not my soul free itself from these visions? It was useless to lament; utterly useless. "It was too late."