Then I met men, I met other women, without ever attaining the wish of my heart. They came and went. But, at each soul that I lost, I found my own a little more and I remember most gratefully those who were the most cruel. This man was ill and unconscious of his actions; that woman was wicked; that man too frivolous; and another was a liar....
A liar! Even to-day, among those withered attachments which it pleases me to evoke, this last arrests my thoughts. For it was he—O singular contrast!—who, by his lying and duplicity, finished the work begun by the frank confidence of the child.
He was a liar.—Lying came to him so easily and naturally that he himself did not discriminate between what he had done and what he had said, between what he had actually experienced and the life which he pretended to have lived. His was a strange nature, which, in its eagerness to seem, forgot to be, a nature which, no longer distinguishing its frontiers from another's, lost in the end its own domain! A strange example of a strayed consciousness which, knowing no dividing line, attributed the acts of others to itself, spoke from their hearts and led their existences! He walked through life as one walks through a gallery whose walls are panelled with mirrors. He could not take a step without thinking that he was taking a thousand; and his vanity enhanced his least actions to such a degree that he actually believed himself the lover of a woman if he merely kissed her hand. It was thus that he boasted of making innumerable conquests at every hour of the day; and, to hear him talk, always tired and exhausted with love, he was a wreck at twenty, as the price of his inordinate exploits. Enamoured of his appearance, he saw nothing beyond the blankness of his little soul, or rather he made it the origin and the end of everything. Poor empty head! Wretched puppet, whose spring was the vanity which every passer-by could set in motion at will!
At a time when I myself did not know it, he had cleverly discovered what he must appear to be in order to arouse my enthusiasm, thus offering me the illusion of that faith which I aspire to awaken in you, my Roseline. Certainly, I owe him much! If an exact copy of a masterpiece can stir us as deeply as the original, the perfect impersonation of a fine intellect and a noble character can influence us very happily. How grateful I am to him for the trouble which he took to give me a representation of virtues which he did not possess! They were painted on his soul in such relief, a relief which no reality gives, as I was afterwards to learn! The artificial lilies that decorate the chapel of the church hard by have an assurance that is absent from those which will soon fade over there, on the table. The false boasts an unvarying brilliance, an imposing emphasis which we never find in the true. And, no doubt, the qualities of which he vouchsafed me the sight would never have had such value in my eyes, if his fatuousness had not displayed them to my youthful admiration as one shows an object behind a magnifying-glass.
And what does it matter to me now that they were false, those gifts with which that soul seemed laden, if for a moment I pictured them as real! After the error was dispelled, the image which I once thought true remained in me. It had determined my tastes, fixed my opinions, set my mind at rest. Subsequently, I was to try and refashion the perfection of which I had beheld the mirage and, with still greater ardour, I was to pursue in others and conquer at last the reality of the once-known happiness which I thought that I had found in him.
We are none the poorer when a sad truth takes the place of a beautiful dream. Knowledge has already filled the void which the lost illusion leaves behind it....
6
Let us seek then, Rose, let us seek even after we have found! Whether we be denied or heard, let us go on seeking! When we have lovingly performed the little things necessary that a flower may peradventure blossom, if it does not give us what we hoped for, does that prevent us from loving another exactly like it and from tending it with all the greater skill and care?
Our ignorance must be renewed in the presence of each life that touches ours. May the quest suffice to keep our faith eternally young, that wonderful, childlike faith which alone encourages, finds and sets free.