I....
I was a little ashamed to link my Self to myself in this way, to give my Self its value. The old attitude of humility, of attaching no importance to Self—was that going to begin again? Now I felt more profoundly alone than in the harmonious exaltation I had experienced while walking. In a mixture of alarm and idleness I tried not to remain motionless, but to plant my elbows on the ground and lie flat on the grass with my head between my hands, so as to divert myself with living noise.... I could not.
Then I stretched out on my back, my eyes fixed on the sky, my body relaxed; and the full-blooded tide of my thoughts flowed over me.
They flowed on, of themselves, no longer halting, as they had on the walk, on the edge of each discovery; I no longer kept saying to myself as when I hammered out my pitiless steps: "I have lied, I have always lied, I have lived only on the outskirts of my life...." The air was still, the soul alone sounded, and the soul also was at peace. I went down into the depths—to find the soul's sweet beginnings, I suppose.
There were no beginnings. Though my early memories came back obediently, they were not illuminating. The catechism.... With outstretched hands and rounded voice, the Abbé Daudret was telling of the wicked, those whom the Almighty was waiting to punish in the hereafter. Crushed by the word wicked, stifled by the heavy solemnity of the church, withdrawn into my littleness, I comprehended, with dull, recurring pangs, that I was among the damned, I, the model little girl. We went home again; I was calm, unruffled, obedient, but if any one used the word sinful in my hearing, if I came across it threatening in black and white, I felt as if a brutal fist had struck my shoulder; I blushed, a swift remorse flamed in my bowels; that word was meant for me, I was the guilty one.
At last one day I found out why I was guilty. I had not known before.
I had been summoned to the small drawing-room; the shutters were closed; my mother, a dim figure in the twilight, was saying good-bye to a lady in deep mourning whose veil framed a face of alabaster. How beautiful she was! The quivering shadows made a halo around her. I scarcely dared to approach her because I remembered the whispers that buzzed about her name and the envy that glittered in the eyes of the women. How beautiful she was!... Her heavy lashes weighed down her lids.... I wanted to say something to her, just one word. I could not, could not even repeat what my mother, leaning towards me, told me to say.... As the lady was leaving she turned in the doorway, fixed her great wide eyes on me and said with an even sadder note in her velvety voice: "The child is going to be beautiful."
I heard myself exclaim with joy. As soon as the door closed, I ran to the glass, which seemed to be waiting for me. My whole being was aflame as I raised myself on tiptoe to receive the first echo of her words from the mirror.... But my mother was already coming back and saying severely: "You know it isn't true...." I was still on tiptoe. "You are ugly!" My spirits dropped and instantly were bottled up in me. Everything was clear, I understood, I understood....
It was an epitome of my life. The seasons passed; I maintained silence, always, hiding my good qualities, hiding my bad qualities, encountering only remorse between the two extremes; for it is by remorse that they are joined together.
Consequently my mind stored up no happening, no deeper or fainter impression, only remorse. Remorse never left me.