"The cup of ... happiness ..." stammered Marie Louise in her dreams.
The cup of happiness! What irony this evening! Was it not too unjust that she should be thus punished for no reason; in the fullness of her youth be overwhelmed with so many burdens and have so little help! In her despair she detested Albert, who had deserted her in such cowardly manner. No doubt he was no worse than others, weak as they were, a slave to his desires and cruelly selfish. Now she knew him! How he had deceived her!
"What have I done to him? What have I done to him?" she kept repeating to herself as she wept.
She thought of the note-books which Philippe Lagier had brought her, which might furnish an answer to her question. What hypocritical answer? When the maid came to stay with the children, she went back and lit her lamp. Quite overcome with suffering and bitterness, her nerves trembling, she began the reading which kept her awake late into the night.
III
ALBERT'S DIARY
The note-books belonging to Albert Derize which Philippe Lagier had given to Elizabeth, contained the story of his life from the month of January 1902 until April 1905, that is to say from the sixth year of his marriage until the time of the separation. In accordance with her habit of regularity, she opened the earliest book at the first page. It was truly a singular diary; it was difficult to recognize oneself therein. In the beginning she saw only notes concerning history, observations of real life, plans of articles, lecture notes hastily written down in a few lines, short accounts of visits to some historic spot, all that preparatory work indispensable to an active writer whose brain demands fresh copy every day. She was at once disheartened, being unused to seek explanations. Again this return to a dead past seemed so useless to her. She was about to give up reading, when a little cross marked in blue pencil caught her eye. The date, underlined with a stroke of the pen, attracted her attention; May 25th, 1903. It was the anniversary of their wedding. Four lines recalled it to her memory—she interpreted them with amazement:
"To shudder, to weep over life, to pray—
That is only the coward's way,
The strong soul stays where his duty lies
And meets it bravely, suffers and dies."
No comment accompanied this disturbing quotation, so strange to mark an anniversary. What did it really mean? Of what sorrow, what deep suffering was it the expression? And why was it marked with that blue cross? Elizabeth felt a thrill through her whole body, like a hare who in the safety of her form, hears the hounds approaching. She hesitated to commence a journey which she knew would be dangerous. Since her opinion concerning the treachery of her husband was alterable, what was the use of this painful return to the past? She turned over a leaf; another blue cross marked a new passage in inverted commas:
"O pictures and visions of my youth, O love glances, divine moments, how quickly you have vanished! To-day I am thinking of you as of my beloved dead."
She looked at the quotation marks to reassure herself. Albert used these note-books as an aid to his memory when transcribing his thoughts and impressions into his books. What importance then should be attached to pessimistic literature without foundation in fact? For in reality, May, 1903, signified to her only peaceful days, unvarying, colorless days, such as she loved to live. She read on and saw the blue crosses becoming more numerous, here and there replaced by broken lines in the margin, the entire length of the page. Philippe Lagier had no doubt marked the paragraphs which he meant to use in the trial with reference to the conjugal drama for which he was seeking a very far-fetched cause. She understood this and knew that he was impressed with the two quotations which had wounded her. She had then but to follow the marks which traced the way for her.