After several tragic weeks in which, from instinct, he made a
desperate fight, on the 1st of January, 1892, he felt he was
hopelessly vanquished, and in a moment of supreme clearness of
intellect, like Gerard de Nerval, he attempted suicide. Less fortunate
than the author of Sylvia, he was unsuccessful. But his mind,
henceforth "indifferent to all unhappiness," had entered into eternal
darkness.
He was taken back to Paris and placed in Dr. Meuriot's sanatorium,
where, after eighteen months of mechanical existence, the "meteor"
quietly passed away.
UNE VIE
OR, THE HISTORY OF A HEART
[CHAPTER I]
THE HOME BY THE SEA
The weather was most distressing. It had rained all night. The roaring
of the overflowing gutters filled the deserted streets, in which the
houses, like sponges, absorbed the humidity, which penetrating to the
interior, made the walls sweat from cellar to garret. Jeanne had left
the convent the day before, free for all time, ready to seize all the
joys of life, of which she had dreamed so long. She was afraid her
father would not set out for the new home in bad weather, and for the
hundredth time since daybreak she examined the horizon. Then she
noticed that she had omitted to put her calendar in her travelling
bag. She took from the wall the little card which bore in golden
figures the date of the current year, 1819. Then she marked with a
pencil the first four columns, drawing a line through the name of each
saint up to the 2d of May, the day that she left the convent. A voice
outside the door called "Jeannette." Jeanne replied, "Come in, papa."
And her father entered. Baron Simon-Jacques Le Perthuis des Vauds was
a gentleman of the last century, eccentric and good. An enthusiastic
disciple of Jean Jacques Rousseau, he had the tenderness of a lover
for nature, in the fields, in the woods and in the animals. Of
aristocratic birth, he hated instinctively the year 1793, but being a
philosopher by temperament and liberal by education, he execrated
tyranny with an inoffensive and declamatory hatred. His great strength
and his great weakness was his kind-heartedness, which had not arms
enough to caress, to give, to embrace; the benevolence of a god, that
gave freely, without questioning; in a word, a kindness of inertia
that became almost a vice. A man of theory, he thought out a plan of
education for his daughter, to the end that she might become happy,
good, upright and gentle. She had lived at home until the age of
twelve, when, despite the tears of her mother, she was placed in the
Convent of the Sacred Heart. He had kept her severely secluded,
cloistered, in ignorance of the secrets of life. He wished the Sisters
to restore her to him pure at seventeen years of age, so that he might
imbue her mind with a sort of rational poetry, and by means of the
fields, in the midst of the fruitful earth, unfold her soul, enlighten
her ignorance through the aspect of love in nature, through the simple
tenderness of the animals, through the placid laws of existence. She
was leaving the convent radiant, full of the joy of life, ready for
all the happiness, all the charming incidents which her mind had
pictured in her idle hours and in the long, quiet nights. She was like
a portrait by Veronese with her fair, glossy hair, which seemed to
cast a radiance on her skin, a skin with the faintest tinge of pink,
softened by a light velvety down which could be perceived when the sun
kissed her cheek. Her eyes were an opaque blue, like those of Dutch
porcelain figures. She had a tiny mole on her left nostril and another
on the right of her chin. She was tall, well developed, with willowy
figure. Her clear voice sounded at times a little too sharp, but her
frank, sincere laugh spread joy around her. Often, with a familiar
gesture, she would raise her hands to her temples as if to arrange her
hair.
She ran to her father and embraced him warmly. "Well, are we going to
start?" she said. He smiled, shook his head and said, pointing toward
the window, "How can we travel in such weather?" But she implored in a
cajoling and tender manner, "Oh, papa, do let us start. It will clear
up in the afternoon." "But your mother will never consent to it."
"Yes, I promise you that she will, I will arrange that." "If you
succeed in persuading your mother, I am perfectly willing." In a few
moments she returned from her mother's room, shouting in a voice that
could be heard all through the house, "Papa, papa, mamma is willing.
Have the horses harnessed." The rain was not abating; one might almost
have said that it was raining harder when the carriage drove up to the
door. Jeanne was ready to step in when the baroness came downstairs,
supported on one side by her husband and on the other by a tall
housemaid, strong and strapping as a boy. She was a Norman woman of
the country of Caux, who looked at least twenty, although she was but
eighteen at the most. She was treated by the family as a second
daughter, for she was Jeanne's foster sister. Her name was Rosalie,
and her chief duty lay in guiding the steps of her mistress, who had
grown enormous in the last few years and also had an affection of the
heart, which kept her complaining continually. The baroness, gasping
from over-exertion, finally reached the doorstep of the old residence,
looked at the court where the water was streaming and remarked: "It
really is not wise." Her husband, always pleasant, replied: "It was
you who desired it, Madame Adelaide." He always preceded her pompous
name of Adelaide with the title madame with an air of half respectful
mockery. Madame mounted with difficulty into the carriage, causing all
the springs to bend. The baron sat beside her, while Jeanne and
Rosalie were seated opposite, with their backs to the horses.
Ludivine, the cook, brought a heap of wraps to put over their knees
and two baskets, which were placed under the seats; then she climbed
on the box beside Father Simon, wrapping herself in a great rug which
covered her completely. The porter and his wife came to bid them
good-by as they closed the carriage door, taking the last orders about
the trunks, which were to follow in a wagon. So they started. Father
Simon, the coachman, with head bowed and back bent in the pouring
rain, was completely covered by his box coat with its triple cape. The
howling storm beat upon the carriage windows and inundated the
highway.
They drove rapidly to the wharf and continued alongside the line of
tall-masted vessels until they reached the boulevard of Mont Riboudet.
Then they crossed the meadows, where from time to time a drowned
willow, its branches drooping limply, could be faintly distinguished
through the mist of rain. No one spoke. Their minds themselves seemed
to be saturated with moisture like the earth.