To this madness was added a moral idolatry: by a further play of my imagination, the Phryne that clasped me in her arms also represented glory to me and, above all, honour; virtue performing its noblest sacrifices, genius conceiving the rarest thoughts would scarcely give an idea of this other kind of happiness. I found at one and the same time in my marvelous creation all the blandishments of the senses and all the joys of the soul. Overwhelmed and as it were submerged beneath these dual delights, I no longer knew which was my true existence: I was a man and was not a man; I became cloud, wind, sound; I was a pure spirit, a creature of the air, singing the sovereign felicity. I divested myself of my nature to become one with the maiden of my desires, to be transmuted into her, to touch beauty more closely, to be at once passion given and received, love and the object of love. Suddenly, struck with my madness, I flung myself upon my couch; I rolled myself in my grief; I watered my pillow with scalding tears which none saw, piteous tears which flowed for a nonexistent thing.
*
Soon, no longer able to remain in my tower, I climbed down through the darkness, furtively opened the door leading to the steps, like a murderer, and went to wander in the great wood. After walking at random, waving my hands, embracing the winds which escaped me like the shadow, the object of my pursuit, I leant against the trunk of a beech-tree; I watched the crows which I made fly from one tree to settle on another, or the moon lingering over the unclothed summits of the forest: I would have liked to inhabit this dead world, which reflected the pallor of the tomb. I felt neither the cold nor the dampness of the night; not even the icy breath of dawn would have drawn me from the depth of my thoughts, if at that hour the village bell had not made itself heard.
In most of the villages of Brittany, it is the custom at daybreak to toll the bell for the dead. The peal consists of three repeated notes, which give a monotonous, melancholy, rustic little tune. Nothing suited my sick and wounded soul better than to be recalled to the tribulations of existence by the bell which announced its end. I pictured to myself the herdsman expiring in his unknown hut, and laid in a graveyard no less unknown. What had he come to do in the world? And I, what was I doing in this world? Since I should have to go at last, was it not better to depart in the cool of morning, to arrive early, than to complete the journey beneath the weight and in the heat of day? The blush of longing mantled on my face; the idea of ceasing to exist took possession of my heart in the manner of a sudden joy. At the period of the errors of my youth, I often hoped not to outlive happiness: there lay in the first success a measure of felicity that led me to aspire to destruction.
Bound ever more closely to my phantom, unable to enjoy what did not exist, I was like those mutilated men who contemplate a state of bliss to them unattainable and conjure up dreams whose pleasures rival the tortures of hell. I had, moreover, a presentiment of the misery of my future lot; ingenious in the fabrication of sufferings, I had placed myself between two forms of despair: sometimes I thought myself a mere nullity, incapable of rising above the vulgar herd; sometimes I seemed to feel within myself qualities which would never be appreciated. A secret instinct warned me that, as I moved onward through the world, I should find no part of that which I sought.
Everything furnished food for the bitterness of my disgust: Lucile was unhappy; my mother did not console me; my father made me feel the terrors of life. His moroseness increased with years; old age stiffened his soul as it did his body; he constantly spied upon me to chide me. When I returned from my wild rounds and saw him sitting on the steps, one might have killed me rather than make me enter the castle. Yet this but postponed my torture: obliged as I was to appear at supper, I sat down sheepishly upon the edge of my chair, my cheeks wet with the rain, my hair entangled. I sat motionless beneath my father's glances, and the perspiration stood upon my brow: the last glimmer of reason escaped me.
I attempt my life.
I now come to a moment when I shall need some strength to confess my weakness. The man who attempts to take his own life displays less the vigor of his soul than the exhaustion of his nature. I owned a fowling-piece whose worn trigger often went off when uncocked. I loaded this gun with three bullets, and went to a remote part of the Great Mall. I cocked the gun, placed the muzzle of the barrel in my mouth, and struck the butt-end against the ground; I several times repeated the ordeal; the charge did not go off; the appearance of a keeper stopped my resolve. Involuntary and unconscious fatalist that I was, I presumed that my hour had not come, and I deferred the execution of my project to another day. Had I killed myself, all that I have been would have been buried with me; none would have known of the history that led to my catastrophe; I should have swelled the crowd of nameless unfortunates, I should not have let myself be followed by the traces of my sorrows as a wounded man is followed by the traces of his blood.
Those who might be troubled by these descriptions and tempted to imitate these follies, those who might attach themselves to my memory through my illusions, must remember that they are listening only to a dead man's voice. Reader, whom I shall never know, nothing remains: nought is left of me save that I am in the hands of the living God who has judged me.
An illness, the fruits of this unruly life, put an end to the torments which brought me the first inspirations of the Muse and the first attacks of the passions. These passions with which my soul was overwrought, these yet vague passions resembled the storms at sea which rush from every point of the horizon: inexperienced pilot that I was, I knew not in which direction to spread my sail to the uncertain winds. My chest swelled, a fever laid hold of me; they sent to Bazouges, a small town some five or six leagues from Combourg, for an excellent doctor called Cheftel, whose son[173] played a part in the affair of the Marquis de La Rouërie. He examined me attentively, ordered remedies, and declared that it was essential that I should be removed from my present mode of life. I lay six weeks in danger. One morning my mother came and sat on my bed, and said: