Was it a talisman against death, this call of his earliest years, which usurped with signs of strength the temptation to make an end of things, the desire for annihilation? His youth helped him, and he recovered gradually some energy, lifting his feet one after the other as if he pulled them out of clinging soil that held them fast. He dragged himself, rather than walked, for a few yards further. He was afraid now, and hardened himself against the danger that he felt present at his side, coming with him step by step in the solitude, like an enemy watching for him to falter. He knew that there were board shelters at intervals through the pass to protect travellers from tempests or the cold. To find one of these was the limit of his ambition. And then suddenly he perceived at the base of Monte Leone a feeble ray that hardly glowed in the too clear night. Quite small and crowded against the enormous mass of the mountain, it was the hospice at last, its door always wide open; there was even a lamp to designate it. The moment he saw the light he was saved. He never took his eyes from its encouraging beacon. Soon the building took on its real proportions, high and large, built of great blocks of freestone. At last he climbed the steps and went in. Some dogs, from the bottom of a distant kennel, sounded his arrival, but in the hall, where the moonlight filtered in, he came across no one. Would they leave him in distress at their very door? He would have lain down there on the stones in his weariness had not the instructions of the man from Piedmont recurred to his memory:
“At night you go in and find a room on the first floor without saying anything to anybody.”
He climbed the staircase, tried a first door, which was closed, then a second, which opened to him. He found himself in a plain but comfortable chamber, furnished with a bed with clean sheets and a generous supply of blankets, a dressing-table, a commode, two or three chairs and a carpet. At the sight of this outfit he smiled with pleasure. They had even carried foresight as far as to place on the commode, in such a way as to attract the traveller’s attention, a flask of rum, a glass and a bowl of sugar. The liquor warmed his blood. At twenty-five danger is easily forgotten.
“I’m quite at home here, like a burglar,” he said pleasantly, quite disposed to take life at its new value. But the reflection made him start. Like a thief, indeed. Had he not been convicted of theft? The recollection of this shame spoiled his pleasure, and he got into bed hastily. The thick blankets communicated a comforting warmth to him, and his fatigue was so great that he went to sleep at once, without stopping to think that it was the first night he had passed away from Edith, and outside of Italy, since he had left his father’s house.
The next day he awakened too late for making the descent to Brieg. The monks, learning of his voyage on foot, kept him for a day, and regaled him with the best they had. He declined to take the stage-coach, though his pride prevented him from revealing his reasons. He was making a journey of rest, distraction, almost of forgetfulness, he said. In his Thebaid, lost at an altitude of two thousand yards, he exhibited the gaiety of a child, interrupted from time to time, though rather rarely, by sudden fits of sadness. He ate like an ogre, took walks round the approaches of the hospice to stretch his stiffened legs, petted the long-coated, shaggy dogs in their kennels, admired the effects of the sunlight on the glaciers and the variety of the little snow crystals, expressed more than once his desire to stay a longer time in the mountains, and went to bed early. No one would have guessed that he had just left the most beloved of mistresses, and was going back to France to give himself up as a prisoner. In the midst of the greatest sorrows there are unexpected oases like these, to keep our feeble nature from dwelling upon the idea of sorrow, even if there were not that brute instinct of self-preservation to keep us up despite ourselves.
Tuesday, at four in the morning, after having breakfasted on a little bread and cheese, which the father whose duty it was to look out for travellers had insisted upon his taking away from the table the evening before, he set out from the hospice. He saved half the food, and took it with him in case he should need it on his journey; for he was not sure that he should have more than the price of his ticket after the additional meal that he must take in the village of Simplon. No one was up yet in the hospice. He left as he had come, in secret. The door was wide open, as it had been on the night of his arrival. Outside he stepped into complete darkness, instead of the moonlight for whose friendly company he had hoped. He could feel snow even before he had descended the steps.
He must make haste, for the descent would be less easy if it snowed. In the road he turned to take a farewell look at the dark building in the shadow. He stepped fearlessly forth now toward the future, and with more strength. The peace of the mountain, the quiet of the monks, had soothed his heart without his being conscious of it. He was going forth deliberately to recapture that place in his home which the accident of his great passion had lost for him. The stroke of luck to which he owed his safety had at the same time restored him to himself. He was going back to normal life as boldly and romantically as one usually leaves it, and he savoured his sacrifice with an almost amorous warmth of appreciation.
The snow must have been falling for several hours, for it was already deep in the path. He went on in constant fear of losing his way along the precipices. The path led through two or three tunnels cut out of the rock a little beyond the summit of the pass. The obscurity of these tunnels was so intense that he was blinded as in the depths of some cavern. He held his cane forward in his right hand, his left arm, with the satchel, stretched out, and went along tapping. He plunged at each step into the puddles of water that dripped through the rocks, and could feel the rush of the outer air at the other end long before he got his sight again.
Such obstacles as these along the road only hardened his courage. Young people must have tests; they seek out love more from the eager desire of living than from voluptuous fancy. Maurice did not suffer from his losses, though he had lost everything, and was leaving his happiness behind him, reduced to the status of a beggar. He struggled bravely against the cold and snow, the night and fear, but the combat kept him warm.
Day spread round him gradually, but he profited little by it, for the white mist of falling snow-flakes flowed round him like the sea around an island. This route he travelled, so picturesque on clear days, with its view of the Bernese Alps, the Aletsch glacier, the magnificent and varied spurs of the Rhone valley, seemed to him like a road cut through hills of cotton-wool. Sometimes a pine tree, laden with hoar-frost, would loom up at the path’s edge, ten steps away from him, having passed which he would search for some other landmark and go on. Tediously and monotonously he came at last to Brieg. It was the end of the heroic period of his journey.