The disciple

by Paul Bourget

I tell you this childishness to prove the degree of my sincerity, and to show how little I resemble the poor and ambitious young man that so many romances have described.

With my taste for duplication, I remember to have remarked this difference with pleasure. I recalled Julien Sorel of “Rouge et Noir,” arriving at the house of M. de Rênal, the temptations of Rubempré, in Balzac, in front of the house of the Bargetons, some pages also of the “Vingtras de Vallés.” I analyzed the sensations which were concealed behind the lusts and the revolts of these different heroes.

There is always a surprise in passing from one society to another, but there was not a trace of envy or maliciousness in me. I looked at the marquis as he slept, wrapped, on this cool November afternoon, in a furred coat whose turned-up collar half-concealed his face. A robe of dark soft wool covered his legs. Dark embroidered skin gloves protected his hands. His hat of felt as fine as silk was pulled down over his eyes. I only felt that these details represented a kind of existence very different from ours with the poor and petty economy of our home which only my mother’s scrupulous neatness saved from meanness.

I rejoiced that I did not feel any envy, not the least atom, at the sight of these signs of prosperous fortune, neither envy nor embarrassment. I had myself completely under control, and was steeled against all vulgar prejudice by my doctrine, your doctrine, and by the sovereign superiority of my ideas. I will have traced a perfect portrait of my mind at this time if I add that I had resolved to erase love from the programme of my life. I had had, since my adventure with Marianne, another little experience, with the wife of a professor at the Lyceum, so absolutely silly and withal so ridiculously pretentious that I came out of it strengthened in my contempt for the “Dame,” speaking after Schopenhauer, and also in my disgust for sensuality.

I attribute to the profound influences of Catholic discipline this repulsion from the flesh which has survived the dogmas of spirituality. I know very well, from an experience too often repeated, that this repulsion was insufficient to hinder profound relapses, but I depended upon the silence of the château to free me from all temptation and to practice in its full rigor the great maxim of the ancient sage: “Force all your sex to mount to the brain.” Ah! this idolatry of the brain, of my thinking Self, it has been so strong in me that I have thought seriously of studying the monastic rules that I might apply them to the culture of my mind. Yes, I have contemplated making my meditations every day, like the monks, upon the articles of my philosophic credo, of celebrating every day, like the monks, the fête of one of my saints, of Spinoza, of Hobbes, of Stendhal, of Stuart Mill, of you, my dear master, in evoking the image and the doctrines of the initiative thus chosen, and impregnating myself with his example.

I know that all this was very youthful and very naïve, but, you see, I was not such a man as this family stigmatizes to-day, the intriguing plebeian who was dreaming of a fine marriage, and the idea connecting my life with that of Mlle, de Jussat was implanted, inspired, so to speak, by circumstances.

I do not write to you to paint myself in a romantic light, and I do not know why I should conceal from you that, among the circumstances which urged me toward this enterprise so far from my thought on my arrival, the first was the impression produced on me by Count André the brother of the poor dead girl, whose remembrance, now that I am approaching the drama, becomes almost a torture; but let us go back to this arrival.

It is almost five o’clock. The landau moves rapidly along. The marquis is awake. He points out the frozen bosom of the little lake, all rosy under a setting sun, which empurples the dried foliage of the beeches and oaks; and, beyond the château, a large building of modern construction, white, with its slender towers and its pepper-box roof, grows nearer at every turn of the gray road.

The steeple of a village, rather of a hamlet, raises its slates above some houses with thatched roofs. It is passed. We are now in the avenue of trees which leads to the château, then before the perron and immediately in the vestibule.

We entered the salon. How peaceful it was, lighted by lamps with large shades, with the fire burning gayly in the chimney. The Marquise de Jussat with her daughter, was working at some knitting for the poor; my future pupil was looking over a book of engravings, as he stood against the open piano; Mlle. Charlotte’s governess and a religieuse were seated, farther off, sewing. Count André was reading a paper, which he put down at the moment of our arrival.