The disciple

by Paul Bourget

She would fall into silence without any apparent reason, but really because her whole being became dissolved into the charm of things about her. She possessed in the state of pure instinct and unconscious sensation the faculty which makes the great poets and the great lovers, namely, the faculty of forgetting oneself, of dispelling oneself, of losing oneself entirely in whatever touches the heart, whether it be a veiled horizon, a silent and yellow-tinted forest, a piece of music or a touching story.

I did not, at the beginning of our acquaintance, formulate the contrast between that combative animal her brother and this creature of sweetness and grace who ran up the stone staircases of the château with a step so light that it seemed scarcely poised, and whose smile was so welcoming and yet so timid.

I will dare to tell all, since I repeat it, I am not writing in order to paint myself in beautiful colors, but to show myself as I am. I will not say that the desire to make myself beloved by this adorable child, in whose atmosphere I began to feel so much pleasure, was not caused by this contrast between her and her brother.

Perhaps the soul of this young girl became as a field of battle for the secret, the obscure antipathy which two weeks had transformed into hate? Perhaps there was concealed the cruel pleasure of humiliating the soldier, the gentleman, by outraging him in what he held most precious? I know that this is horrible, but I should not be worthy of being your pupil if I did not disclose the lowest depth of my heart. And, after all, this odious cloud of sensations may be only a necessary phenomenon, like the others, like the romantic grace of Charlotte, like the simple energy of her brother, and like my own complexities—so obscure even to myself.

§ IV. THE FIRST CRISIS.

I remember very distinctly the day on which the project of winning the love of the sister of Count André presented itself to me, no longer as a romantically visionary idea, but as a precise possibility, near, almost immediate.

After I had been at the château two months I went to Clermont to pass the New-Year holidays with my mother, and I had been back a week. The snow had been falling for forty-eight hours. The winters in our mountains are so severe that nothing but the marquis’ monomania can explain his obstinacy in remaining in this savage lone waste, which is indefinitely swept by sudden and violent gusts of wind.

It is proper to state that the marquise watched over the comfort of the household with a marvelous adjustment of daily resources, and although Aydat is considered isolated by the inhabitants of Saint-Saturnin and Saint-Amand-Tallende, the communication with Clermont remains open even in the worst rigor of the season. Then the season offers sudden and radiant changes, mornings of storm are suddenly succeeded by evenings of incomparable azure in which the country beams as if transformed by the enchantment of light.

This was the case on the day my fatal resolution became fixed and took form. I can see the lake now, covered with a thin sheet of ice, under which the supple shivering of the water could be discerned. I see the vast slope of the Cheyre, white with snow, its whiteness broken by dark spots of lava; and perfectly white, without a spot, rises the circle of mountains, the Puy de Dôme, the Puy de la Vache, that of Vichatel, that of De la Rodde, that of Mont Redon, while the forest of Rouillet stands out against the background of snow and azure.

Some minute details rise again before my eyes which were then scarcely noticed and have remained concealed, one knows not in what hiding-place of the memory. I see a cluster of birches whose despoiled branches are tinted with rose. I see the crystals which sparkle at the end of a tuft of broom which, thin and still green, marks the tracks of a fox on the immaculate carpet, and the flight of a magpie which cries out in the middle of the road, and this sharp cry renders the silence of this immense horizon almost perceptible. I see some yellow and brown sheep which are driven by a shepherd clothed in a blue blouse, wearing a large, low, round hat, and accompanied by a red and shaggy dog with shining yellow eyes, very near together.