Among the guests that evening was a famous artist, M. Paul Bayard, whose most admired works, The First Glance, and Cain after his Crime, ranked with the chefs-d'œuvre of the greatest masters of the day.
Said M. Bayard: “I have not studied, like you, doctor, from life. I don't know any insane persons, and what I am going to tell you is not founded on fact. But this is what I think about this strange remorse felt by innocent people: who knows if they may not have committed spiritually the crime of which they think themselves guilty materially? In this hypothesis they have completely forgotten the real and spiritual crime, which they committed really and spiritually; they did not even know or feel it at the instant they committed it. But this crime real, spiritual, and forgotten is transformed, by virtue of madness, into a material crime, of which they are innocent, but of which they believe themselves guilty. Perhaps a man has betrayed his friend; instead of accusing himself of this treason, he accuses himself of another fault which resembles that one, as the body resembles the soul. I repeat, I cannot cite an example. It is purely hypothetical; but something which I cannot define makes me think it possible, nay, even probable. The guilty person deceived his conscience; conscience in turn deceives him. To make a child understand, we give examples of sensible things. Perhaps justice thus acts with these men, and, finding them insensible in the sphere of the mind, transports their crime into the sphere of the body.
“Perhaps it is a real crime, but too subtle to be understood by them, that descends to their level, and pursues them under the appearance of an external and sensible crime, the only one which they can understand. There are whimsical scruples which resemble madness, as exaggeration resembles falsehood. Who knows if these scruples are not the wanderings, or, if you prefer it, the transpositions of remorse? I say remorse. I do not say repentance, for repentance enlightens, and remorse blinds. Between repentance and remorse there is an abyss: the first gives peace, the second destroys [pg 707] it. Perhaps conscience, not being able to make itself felt by the guilty person on its own ground, speaks to him, by way of revenge, in language as coarse as himself, on his own domain. Through a terrible justice, it makes him reproach himself with what appears unjust on the surface, but which is a thousand times just at the bottom. Conscience, which spoke in vain at the moment of the crime, now arms itself against the criminal as a phantom. We are men here to-night, as we appear to each other; but who knows if we are not for some one somewhere, at this moment, phantoms?”
The doctor rose, and, taking the artist's hand, said: “I do not know how much truth there may be in your theory. I only know one thing: that you are a man of genius, and, if I had doubted it before, I am now convinced of it. I will reflect on your words; they open to me a new horizon.”
“I have always been pursued by the thought,” said the artist, “that there is a moment when a man understands for the first time what he has seen since his infancy. It is the day when the eyes of the mind open. It is this I have attempted to show in my picture—The First Glance. But as the horizon is constantly enlarging, I endeavor to throw upon everything, each time, a look which I may call The First Glance. In the other composition, Cain after his Crime, I wished to show in Cain, not the melodramatic assassin, but a vulgar, common man. The stigmata of anger, of which he received the visible mark, opens to him the eyes of the soul. He throws upon his crime a first glance. There are spiritual Cains whose arms are innocent. Perhaps there may be some among the insane, of whom we have spoken; and in that case there is more truth in their madness than in their previous security. Their insanity only deceives them about the nature of the crime; their security deceived them about the crime itself.”
The doctor was thoughtful. He took the artist aside, and in a low tone said: “Shall we leave together?” And they left.
After their departure the conversation turned on what had just been said.
“Were you always a materialist?” asked one person of his neighbor.
“It is scarcely fair or generous to choose this moment for such a question,” was the reply.
“As for me,” said a young lady, “I don't like to hear M. Bayard talk. He is a great artist—that I admit; but when he commences in that style, he worries me!”