He embraced Palmer effusively, swore to him that he loved Thérèse, and that, if he ever succeeded in winning her love, he would remember every hour of his life the hour that had just passed and the story he had just heard. Then, having promised not to betray his knowledge of Mademoiselle Jacques's history, he went home and wrote:
"THÉRÈSE:
"Do not believe a word of all I have been saying to you these last two months. Do not believe either what I said to you when you were afraid that I would fall in love with you. I am not amorous, it is not that; I love you madly. It is absurd, it is insane, it is wretched; but I, who thought that I never should or could say or write to a woman the words I love you! find them too cold and constrained to-day to express my feeling for you. I can live no longer with this secret which is choking me, and which you will not guess. I have tried a hundred times to leave you, to go to the end of the world, to forget you. In an hour I am at your door, and very often, at night, consumed with jealousy and almost frantic with rage against myself, I pray God to deliver me from my torment by summoning this unknown lover in whom I do not believe, and whom you invented to disgust me with the thought of you. Show me that man in your arms, or love me, Thérèse! Failing these alternatives, I can conceive but one other, and that is to kill myself and have done with it. This is cowardly, stupid, the commonplace threat worn threadbare by all despairing lovers; but is it my fault if there is a despair which makes all those who undergo it utter the same shriek, and am I mad because I happen to be a man like other men?
"Of what avail has been all that I have invented to protect myself from it, and to render my poor personality as harmless as it wished to be free?
"Have you anything to reproach me for in my dealings with you, Thérèse? Am I a conceited ass, a rake, I who prided myself upon making myself stupid so as to give you confidence in my friendship? But why do you wish that I should die without having loved, you who alone can teach me what love is, and who know it well? You have a treasure in your heart, and you smile as you sit beside a poor devil who is dying of hunger and thirst. You toss him a small coin from time to time; that means friendship in your eyes; it is not even pity, for you must know that the drop of water increases the thirst.
"And why do you not love me? You may have loved some one who was a worse man than I. I am not worth much, to be sure, but I love you, and is not that everything?
"You will not believe it; you will say again that I am mistaken, as you said before! No, you cannot say so, unless you lie to God and to yourself. You see that my torment gets the better of me, and that I am making an absurd declaration, I who dread nothing on earth so much as being laughed at by you!
"Thérèse, do not think me corrupt. You know very well that the bottom of my heart has never been sullied, and that from the abysses into which I have cast myself I have always, in spite of myself, raised my voice to Heaven. You know that with you I am as chaste as an infant, and you have not feared to take my head in your hands sometimes, as if you were about to kiss me on the forehead. And you would say: 'Bad head! you deserve to be broken.'—And yet, instead of crushing it like the head of a snake, you would try to make the pure and burning breath of your mind penetrate it. Ah! well, you have succeeded only too well; and, now that you have kindled the fire on the altar, you turn away and say to me: 'Place it in somebody's else care! Marry; love some sweet, devoted, lovely girl; have children, be ambitious for them, live a virtuous life, have a happy home—have everything, except me!'
"But, Thérèse, it is you whom I love passionately, not myself. Since I have known you, you have been striving to make me believe in happiness and to cultivate my taste for it. It is not your fault if I have not become as selfish as a spoiled child. But I am worthy of a better fate. I do not ask if your love would mean happiness to me. I simply know that it would be life, and that, good or bad, it is that life, or death, that I must have."
[IV]
Thérèse was deeply distressed by this letter. She was, as it were, struck by lightning. Her love bore so little resemblance to Laurent's, that she fancied that she did not love him with love, especially when she reread the expressions used by him. There was no delirium in Thérèse's heart, or, if there were, it had entered there, drop by drop, so slowly that she did not notice it, and believed that she was as thoroughly mistress of herself as on the first day. The word passion offended her.
"Passions! I?" she said to herself. "In Heaven's name, does he think that I don't know what passion is, and that I want any more of that poisoned draught? What have I done to him, I who have given him so much affection and thought, that he should propose to me, by way of thanks, despair, madness, and death?—After all," she thought, "it is not his fault, poor creature! He doesn't know what he wants, nor what he asks for. He seeks love like the philosopher's stone, in which one strives all the more earnestly to believe because he cannot grasp it. He thinks that I have it, and that I amuse myself by refusing to give it to him! There is always a touch of frenzy in whatever he thinks. How can I appease him, and turn him aside from a fancy that is rapidly making him unhappy?
"It is my fault; he has some right to say so. While trying to wean him from debauchery, I familiarized him too much with a virtuous attachment; but he is a man, and he deems our affection incomplete. Why did he deceive me? why did he make me believe that he was tranquil when he was with me? What shall I do to repair the idiocy of my inexperience? I have not been enough of a woman in the matter of presumption. I did not know that a woman, however lukewarm and weary of life she may be, can still disturb a man's brain. I ought to have believed that I was fascinating and dangerous, as he once told me, and to have guessed that he afterward contradicted himself on that point only to quiet my fears. So it is a misfortune, then,—for it certainly cannot be a sin,—not to have the instinct of coquetry?"
Thereupon, Thérèse, searching her memory, remembered that she had instinctively been reserved and distrustful to defend herself from the desires of other men who were not attractive to her; with Laurent she felt no such instinct, because she esteemed him in his friendship for her, because she could not believe that he would seek to deceive her, and also, it must be admitted, because she cared more for him than for any other. Alone in her studio, she paced the floor, oppressed by a painful sense of discomfort, sometimes glancing at the fatal letter which she had placed on a table as if she knew not what to do with it and could neither decide to read it again nor to destroy it, and sometimes looking at her unfinished work on the easel. She was working with enthusiasm and pleasure when they brought her that letter, that is to say, that doubt, that anxiety, that amazement, and that dread. It was like a mirage which caused all the spectres of her former miseries to reappear upon her unclouded, peaceful horizon. Every word written on that paper was like a hymn of death which she had heard in the past, a prophecy of fresh misfortunes to come.
She tried to recover her serenity by resuming her painting. That was her great remedy for all the petty ills of external life; but it was powerless that day; the terror which that passion aroused in her assailed her in the purest and most private sanctuary of her present life.
"Two pleasures disturbed or destroyed," she said to herself, throwing away her brush and taking up the letter: "work and friendship."
She passed the rest of the day without making up her mind to anything. But one point was perfectly clear in her mind, the determination to say no; but she proposed that it should be no in reality, and was not bent upon announcing her decision in hot haste, with the timorous abruptness of the woman who is afraid of succumbing unless she makes haste to barricade the door. How to say that no from which there should be no appeal, which should leave no hope behind, yet should not be like a red-hot iron on the sweet memory of friendship, was a hard and bitter problem for her to solve. That memory was her own love; when one has the body of a dearly loved one to bury, one cannot decide, without bitter sorrow, to place a white cloth over the face and bestow the body in the common grave. You would fain embalm it in a grave of its own, which you could look upon from time to time, praying for the soul of him whose dust it contains.