The Malady of the Century

by Max Simon Nordau

"Must one put everything into words?" he returned, with an uneasy smile.

"It is true," she answered; "I ought to be accustomed to your German ways by this time. But your reserve is quite uncanny to us Southerners. You are silent where our hearts simply overflow with words quite of themselves. You are content to think where we shout for joy."

With these words Pilar depicted her own state. She felt in truth that she could shout for joy, and the happy words flowed of themselves from her lips. Now at last the future stood clearly and definitely outlined before her eyes. Now indeed she was bound to Wilhelm, as was her burning desire, and that far faster than by any documents with solemn signatures and official seals. Her heart was so light, she felt as if her feet no longer touched the ground and that she must float away into the blue ether like the ecstatic saints in the church pictures of her own country. She talked incessantly of the coming being, and thought of nothing else waking or sleeping. She had not the slightest doubt that it would be a boy. Isabel had to lay the cards a dozen times, and the knave of spades came to the top nearly every time, an infallible promise of a boy. And how beautiful he would be, the son of such a handsome father, the fruit of such transcendent love! She consulted with Wilhelm what name he should receive, and wanted a definite statement or a suggestion, or at least some slight conjecture as to the profession his father would choose for him. And should he be educated in Paris? Would it not be too great a strain upon the little brain to have to learn French, Spanish, and German at the same time? What anxieties, what responsibilities, but at the same time what bliss! She did not even let Wilhelm see the whole depth of her feelings, knowing that he would not follow her in these extravagant raptures. She did not let him see her kneel two or three times a day at the altar or on her priedieu, and cover the silver Madonna del Pilar with ecstatic kisses. He knew nothing of her having sent for the priest of the diocese and ordered a number of masses. She did not take him with her when—her impatience leading her far ahead of events—she rushed from shop to shop looking for a cradle, and only put off buying one because she could find none in all Paris that was sumptuous and costly enough.

This went on for about a fortnight, till one day she tottered into Wilhelm's room, all dissolved in tears, sank sobbing at his feet, and hid her face on his knee.

"Pilar, what has happened?" he cried in alarm.

"Oh, Wilhelm, Wilhelm," was all the answer he could get from her; and only after long and loving persuasion did she murmur in such low and broken tones that she had to repeat her words before he could understand her, "My happiness was premature, I was mistaken."

She was inconsolable at the destruction of her airy castle, and was ill for days, the first time since Wilhelm had known her. He sympathized deeply with her in her grief, but he did not conceal from himself that he was infinitely relieved at the turn affairs had taken. With such a morbidly analytical and yet profoundly moral nature as his, no rapture of the senses could possibly last for six months and more. The passion in which reason plays no part was past and over long ago, and during the last few weeks he had reflected upon the situation with ever-increasing clearness and deliberation. At first he had not been quite sure of his feelings, but earnest self-examination by degrees made everything plain to him. What he was most distinctly conscious of was a sense of profound disgust at his present manner of life. Things could not remain as they were. Sooner or later it must inevitably come to the knowledge of his friends. What would they think of him for leading such a life at Pilar's side, in her house? She had children who would some day sit in judgment upon her conduct and his. And how did he stand in the eyes of the servants and the visitors whose acquaintance Pilar had forced upon him? If at least she would give up her outside circle of friends! But that she either could not or would not do, and so brought ill-natured witnesses of their relations to the house, and Wilhelm must needs accommodate himself to an intercourse with second-rate people who inevitably form the set of a woman whose domestic circumstances are not clearly, or rather all too clearly defined. And before these people, who appeared to him greatly inferior to himself, both morally and intellectually, he was forced to cast down his eyes. Reflect as he might upon the situation, the result was always the same—it must be put to an end to. But how?

There remained always the possibility that her husband might die and she be thus free to marry him. Strange, he always hurried over this solution of the difficulty. In his inner consciousness he was apparently not desirous of making the connection a lifelong one, even if sanctioned by lawful formalities. Leave her. He shuddered at the thought. It would be criminal to cause her so great a grief, for he was assured that she loved him passionately, and he was deeply and fondly grateful to her for doing so. She might some day grow tired of him. He hoped for this, but the hope was so faint, so secret, so hidden, that he hardly dared confess it to himself, knowing well that it was a deadly and altogether undeserved insult to her love. And even this faint hope vanished when she whispered the news of her prospective motherhood in his ear; now there was no possibility of a dissolution of their connection. If a human creature was indebted to him for its life, he must give himself up to it, and to this sacred duty he must sacrifice freedom, happiness, even self-respect. But his heart contracted with a bitter pang at the thought. It was as if a black curtain had been drawn in front of him, or a window walled up which permitted a view over the open country from a dark room.

However, he had been spared this crowning addition to the burden of his discomfort, and he breathed more freely. But the episode had served to rend the last remaining veil that hung before his moral eye. That the situation should seem so unbearable, that he was so sensitive to the opinion of others, that his blood had run cold at Pilar's news, that he had felt the disappointment of her hopes as a relief, that the idea that the danger might recur should fill him with terror—this all pointed to one fact, the realization of which forced itself upon him with inexorable persistency; he did not love Pilar, or at any rate he did not love her sufficiently—not enough to take her finally into his life, and, possessing her, to forget himself and all the world beside.

In the midst of his torturing efforts to come to some conclusion he noticed that Auguste, who had come to his room with a letter, lingered about in an undecided manner, as if he had something to say but did not know exactly how to say it.