THE FEAR OF LIVING

THE
FEAR OF LIVING

(La Peur de Vivre)

BY

HENRY BORDEAUX

AUTHORIZED ENGLISH VERSION
BY
RUTH HELEN DAVIS

NEW YORK
E·P·DUTTON & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

TO
THE HALLOWED MEMORY OF
ANOTHER MOTHER
WHO KNEW HOW TO SACRIFICE FOR
HER CHILDREN
THIS TRANSLATION IS
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY HER DAUGHTER
RUTH HELEN DAVIS

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

M. Henry Bordeaux’s latest novel, “The Fear of Living,” appeared several months ago, at a season when the “summer novel” was flourishing. That season belongs to the big purveyors of commercial literature and is not the time at which to speak of a real writer. I have, therefore, purposely postponed until to-day my few words about this book, which both public and press have welcomed warmly, but without sufficiently marking its true place. It is one of the best novels that has appeared for a long time. It contrasts, by its vivid originality, with everything that the storytellers of to-day give us. It is a new and daring departure.

It is that, primarily, through the philosophy of life which the author has expressed in it. The “fear of living” is a new and deep-seated evil among us. We value our peace above everything, we wish to keep it at all hazards, however dearly we must pay for it. We shun responsibilities, avoid risks and chances of struggle, flee from adventure and danger, seek to escape from everything that makes for the charm and value of life. We no longer have any faith in the future, because we no longer have faith in ourselves. Writers used for a time to chronicle this sickly weakness under the name of “dilettantism.” Then, the fashion having changed, they began to exalt the claims of energy. But what they understand by that word is nothing but the keen desire to satisfy our passions and ambitions. In place of lazy selfishness they have substituted ruthless selfishness. To spare oneself all kinds of boredom, or to procure oneself the greatest amount of pleasure, these are the only two conceptions they recommend to us. But here is a writer who thinks that to live does not mean to bury oneself in a corner, nor yet to amass money and wear oneself I out with pleasure. He thinks that a life in which I one has suffered, struggled, and worked for others, not for oneself, that a life whose years are counted by emotions, sacrifices, devotions, and renunciations, is a well-filled life. He says it, he believes it, and, while we read it, he makes us believe it. It may be absurd, extravagant, and romantic to the last degree but it is not commonplace.

The characters in the “Fear of Living” are almost all respectable people. Now it is a dogma in our literature that respectable people are not interesting. The heroes of a novel may be rogues, even mediocre and vulgar rogues, turned out “by the dozen”; their adventures may be reduced to some mean little act, commonplace, ridiculous, and sensational. It does not matter; they win our sympathy, and we are ready to find them amusing or touching. But a family that ruins itself to save the honor of a name, a mother who lets her children go one by one to do their duty, a young man who prefers the charm of a pure marriage to the temptations of a sensual love—what interest have such people for us? And even if we do meet the like in our daily life, in the name of Heaven let us leave them where they are, and not let them burden the novel with their sad faces! Such is the prejudice that M. Henry Bordeaux has not feared to face boldly.

Finally he has tried to write a realistic work, and you cannot find a scene in it that is one of the commonplace situations in realism. No infidelity, no child-murder, no atrocious swindling! It has the air of being written as a wager. We have come, indeed, to the point of limiting realistic art to the portrayal only of that which is trivial, low, and worthless. Reality has become with us a synonym for ugliness. We have calmly laid down these definitions. “Every work is realistic which paints vile characters and repulsive scenes, even if these characters be morbid and these scenes be the artificial dreams of a sickly imagination. Unrealistic is every work in which any account is taken of the virtues which are the current coin of most lives.” A writer must be possessed of a rare independence of mind, combined with no ordinary confidence in himself, to maintain that both nobility of soul and elevation of character are also realities.

This is the point of view adopted by M. Henry Bordeaux. There is more true realism in his book than in fifty chosen from among the works of the most famous “Naturalists.” The figures in it all live. The study of provincial manners is very finely developed in it. One chapter might seem a little exaggerated, if one did not feel that its truth is photographic. It is the one in which the Mayor, officially ordered to tell Madame Guibert of the death of her son who had been killed by the enemy, is afraid to compromise himself by crossing the threshold of people classed as reactionaries and sends a policeman in his place! Added to it all is a charming sympathy with nature. Both the people and their surroundings become our familiar friends in this modest home at Le Maupas, the peaceful setting of so many scenes of sorrow.

M. Henry Bordeaux was already honorably known to us through some stories written with a delicate touch, and some judicious critical essays. “The Fear of Living” raises him from his former rank and classes him as a Novelist.

RENE DOUMIC.

(Journal des Débats, 30th Sept. 1902).

PREFACE

In the month of June, 1902, when I published “The Fear of Living,” I had no idea how favorably it would be received by the public. Family tragedies were not the fashion, and I had dared to take a sorely-tried old woman for my heroine.

Since that time new editions have succeeded one another every year. I have had to answer many hundreds of letters (often very badly and briefly) which made me see that I had friends among my readers. At last I was asked, both in France and abroad, to explain the ideas which are the foundation of my work. So, although my novel only aims at increasing the will and the courage to live and not at establishing any doctrine, I was induced to speak about our various modern attitudes towards life. After my addresses I was honored by a request to put them into print. I have gathered together here the notes which helped me to prepare them. If after four years I feel some pride in recording the prolonged influence of a work whose art is perfectly natural and sincere, I must thank for it all those unknown friends who contributed to the result by their infectious sympathy.

I

The fear of living is a disease which extends its ravages principally to old civilisations like our own. The symptoms of this moral phthisis may be outwardly contradictory; for there are two ways of being afraid to live as there are two kinds of selfishness.

The first, the most frequent to-day and the most cowardly, has already been denounced by Dante, who in the third Canto of the Inferno, brands it with the red-hot iron of his scorn. Guided by Virgil, the poet arrives at the gate of the City of Tears. He has not yet entered the door when he hears, rising up to him from the bottom of the abyss, groans, shrieks and cries of despair, which resound under a starless sky. From what lips do these sounds proceed, these sounds which come from near Hell, but not from Hell itself? Dante in his distress asks his master for an explanation.

“Master,” I said, “what do I hear, and what is this crowd which seems so crushed by sorrow?”

And he said: “This is the miserable fate of the sad souls of all those who have lived without blame and without praise. They are mingled with that dread chorus of angels who were neither faithful to God, nor rebellious, but who existed for themselves only. They have been banished from Heaven, because they spoiled its beauty, and the depths of Hell would not receive them because the damned would gain some glory by their presence.”

And I said: “Master, what is the torment that is crushing them and makes them weep so bitterly?”

He answered me: “I will tell you briefly. They have no hope of dying, and their dark life is so vile that they are envious of every other fate. The world has no memory of them, and mercy and justice despise them. Do not speak of them; look and pass on....”

If the “Inferno” describes worse torments, it contains no words more scathing in their disdain than these which describe “those inert ones who are pleasing neither to God nor to his enemies.” The misers who carry burdens, the evil-tempered who struggle in a bog, the voluptuous dragged into an endless whirl-wind, the rogues plunged into a lake of boiling pitch, have deserved their punishment by their acts, and have asserted themselves in evil-doing. The others have asserted themselves neither in evil nor in good. Neither virtuous nor vicious, we do not know what they were. Dull, flabby, and soft, they have not left behind the memory of any personality. They scarcely lived; they were afraid to live.

For the fear of living means precisely that,—to deserve neither blame nor praise. It is the constant all-prevailing desire for peace. It is the flight from responsibilities, struggles, risks, and efforts. It is the careful avoidance of danger, fatigue, exaltation, passion, enthusiasm, sacrifice, every violent action, everything that disturbs and upsets. It is the refusal of life’s claims upon our hearts, our sweat, and our blood. In short, it is the pretence of living, while limiting life, while setting bounds to our destinies. It is that passive selfishness which would rather retrench its appetite than seek the food which it requires; the selfishness which is meanly content with a colorless, dull life, provided it is sure of meeting with no shocks, no difficulties, no obstacles, like the traveler who will only journey along plains and on rubber tires.

Must we quote examples? It is the fear of living which inspires a young man in the choice of a profession, which shows him the special advantages of an official career providing him, in return for work that is moderate in amount and does not take up much time, with a fixed salary and a pension; that modest dream which inspired Goncourt to make this epigram—“France is a country where one sows functionaries and reaps taxes.” Is it not this fear much more often than a keen sense of justice, that drives the weak and envious to that Socialism which would result in the establishment of an all-round equality of mediocrity?

It is certainly this fear which, when it does not lead to a comfortable, selfish, practical, bachelor’s life, prompts those marriages wherein one consults one’s lawyer rather than one’s heart, and thinks of income rather than of the advantages of beauty, physical and moral health, education, courage, ability and taste. Certain theories of the day, which on their critical side are not without justification, pretend to purify the sources of marriage by suppressing the consent of parents which is often too apt to overlook personal characteristics through consideration of the advantages to be gained, and by multiplying the facilities for union with the facilities for divorce; in a word, by associating marriage with those other unions which have no regard for the social order, into which they introduce anarchy. But marriage is the gateway of the family, the foundation of the home; its aim is to complete two lives by joining the one to the other and to bring other beings into the world. It cannot rely solely on that love which is commonly represented with bandaged eyes; for it is not purely an individual act, in that it both continues a tradition and perpetuates a race. Is it the importance of this race and this tradition which has to be considered, or is it only a petty ideal of practical happiness, comfortable and ignoble? Can man not feel himself fit to guide, guard, and direct the destinies of his own? Can woman not deprive herself of luxuries that are useless, or at least merely accessory? Would life, stripped of so many accessories and so many useless things, simplified but not diminished, become unacceptable? Must the place of moral force be taken by the heritage handed down by one’s father?

After marriage, we find again the fear of living in the dread of having children and the restraint of parenthood. To create life has become too heavy a responsibility, too irksome a burden, above all a nuisance; and it is thus that France has been called the land of only sons. By suppressing the choice of making a will the Civil Code has struck a heavy blow at the coherent unity of the family, grouped round its head and supported by its land. But we have lately been told by La Réforme Sociale of the method employed by the Normandy peasants, after having already been employed by so many of the bourgeoisie for the preservation of the inheritance. For the heir nominated by the father, or according to custom, is substituted the only son. In the mountains of Savoy the traveller often notices on the slopes bordering the roads, and sometimes even in the hollows of hidden valleys, shrines dedicated to Our Lady of Deliverance. Young, wives in the hope of having children used to make pilgrimages to these shrines. To-day young wives thank God for a barrenness which in former days was a reproach. A child is such a rarity that it is watched over and spoilt. Thus the fear of living has its effect even on those destinies which depend, so far as their beginnings are concerned, upon us only. So many fathers and mothers cannot consent to be separated from their children, and turn them aside from careers that are wider but more adventurous, from marriages which would take them far away but which would be morally advantageous to them; they weaken them, enervate or wear out their courage instead of arousing it, and in their sentimental selfishness impose on them a servitude which lowers their characters.

Of this fear of living, however, examples are to be found in our public life, in our social life, in the art which expresses the feeling of our times, in our institutions, even in matters of our health.

In public life, why is abstention from the franchise attributed to the moderate party, to those whom one calls or who call themselves “respectable” people?—as if there were such a thing as negative respectability! Quite recently men boasted in certain circles that they never voted; and, if they do not boast of this any more, they make their voting subordinate to hunting and entertainments, and it is fashionable to affect the greatest contempt for politics. In the life of a modern nation, rightly or wrongly, everything reduces itself to politics or is influenced by politics. This is a fact against which it is useless to protest. “The really useful work,” said Mr. Roosevelt, President of the United States, “is not accomplished by the critic who keeps out of the battle but by the man of action who bravely takes part in the struggle, without fear at the sight of blood or sweat.” We have so many of these critics who keep out of the battle and read the papers every morning in order to be able to discuss the affairs of the nation in a superior tone, who vainly regret the past, sigh over the future, and discourage those who undertake to show them the way.

The mere fact of living in society, of enjoying social rank, creates social duties. No one has the right to arrange his life separately, for no one person can dispense with the rest. To pay one’s taxes, grumbling all the time, is not enough. The wealth which represents accumulated work in the past does not exempt one from work. Since it furnishes the means of better and greater production, it should result, not in a class of people who enjoy it, but in a class of leaders; and a leader is one who understands how to take on himself the greatest share of the work and responsibility. But, to judge from observation, it would seem that wealth is only a factor in selfishness, an occasion for petty and ridiculous pleasures—as though wealth were more difficult to bear than poverty. The latter constantly furnishes examples of solidarity and devotion. In these strikes, too often gotten up by the leaders for their own purpose, do we not see the workmen suffering from hunger and poverty for the sake of one another, or subscribing a tithe of their modest wages to help their comrades in other towns and other trades? Do we not find Victor Hugo’s Pauvres Gens to the very life in those paragraphs which tell, in two or three lines, how at the death of some poor wretch with a family the neighbours have fought for possession of the orphaned children, even before the charitable organisations or private benevolence have had time to intervene?

There is no doubt that poverty is very painful to look upon. It disturbs our peace, our comfort, our natural forgetfulness of all that does not minister to our pleasures. People even consent to be generous—through the medium of someone else—to escape the inconvenience of sorrowful spectacles. We have our nerves, our refinement, our horror of the importunate, and we adroitly evade the demands of charity, although we can never deny the power of its appeal. “I do not want to see either illness or death,” says Hedda Gabler, Ibsen’s most morbid heroine, to her husband. “Spare me the sight of everything that is ugly.” And this æsthetic person, at the moment when she kills herself in disgust after having lived for herself alone, sees that ridicule and low ideals have infected like a curse everything she touched.

In the realm of art, the fear of living is mingled with the fear of feeling. It moves those dilettantes who wish neither to make a choice nor to give themselves up, who only yield themselves temporarily to all their intellectual or plastic impulses without ever surrendering to enthusiasm, and who consider themselves superior because they float on the top of things; for, deep as the subject be, love alone can penetrate beneath the surface. This fear also actuates those artists who, in the name of pure art, reject from their work all humanity and poetry; who substitute for those familiar conflicts of the soul, which are the life-food of ancient tragedy, the pretty but unsubstantial painting of pleasure, and are content to elaborate their style like the sides of a costly but empty vase—without the slightest suspicion that in art, as in everything else, there is a definite order of merit, and that they are seated on the lowest step.

It is everywhere, this fear of living; it provides inspiration for the effeminate novelists and the incapable dramatists, who can create none but inconsistent characters, incapable of analysis. In the trivial adventures of their puppets they show us that everything is a matter of arrangement and nothing is worth being taken seriously, instead of inviting us to take our lives in our own hands. The great human cries, in art, are cries of strength and courage, and are often forced into utterance by unhappiness; suggesting that perhaps the happy spirit lacks the depth that is to be found in the abysses of life.

Lastly, timidity, reserve, and a prudence that is sometimes legitimate but often excessive, find their expression even in our public institutions, which multiply our guardians, put us all into leading strings, and relegate to the State the duty of looking after and helping us on all occasions. They have even undertaken to replace the old-fashioned Providence—and by what? By insurance companies! We insure ourselves against accidents, against risks, against death—indeed a far-sighted wisdom! Why should we not be insured also against fear?

Fear stamps the faces of the young men of the new generation, who appear to be anxious only about their health, and who, unable to digest except by the help of mineral waters and camomile, open their mouths only to criticise and to disparage; who praise nothing, like nothing, want nothing, as if they had fishes’ blood in their veins. Why all this trouble to preserve and keep themselves, for all the good that they get out of or contribute to life?

Could youth set less value than it does upon life? The recent suicide of a schoolboy at Lyons added a fresh paragraph—the most terrible of all—to the indictment of the Déracinés, the Uprooted ones, against an education which ignores the facts of family, race, locality, and country. Before going to his death the poor lad wrote on the blackboard, “I am young, I am pure, and I am going to die.” The teaching of his professor of philosophy had disgusted him with life.

What had they taught him? The beauty of pure reason, of science, of humanitarianism. Instead of being told to take his proper place in the order of things, he was called upon to destroy all in order to rebuild all again, to make a clean slate of the past, of tradition, of the destiny which had caused him to be born in a particular country at a particular date, in order to create a new personality for himself, a new universe, a new God. Besides preparing for his material future they expected of him, as of all Frenchmen, that he should create for himself a metaphysics, a politics, and a morality. He succumbed to all these burdens. Life did not appear to him in a shape with exact outlines, with beautiful lights and dark shadows, with the concomitants of effort, joy, and sorrow, with a splendour of created things, with privileges of working, of feeling behind one a past that one may carry forward, and of being able to count even on the future. It was for him a dense fog, which his reason vainly tried to pierce, in which he heard the call neither of God, of race, nor of country. He did not see his own importance, which was not merely individual but collective, he did not understand that everyone’s duty is to recognise one’s own place, that everyone’s strength and profit are to be sought in the realities of existence on which he depends and which in their turn depend on him. And so he learned a new fear of living.

These modern young men have sisters. I will not venture to describe them. A Persian proverb warns us “not to strike a woman, even with a flower.” But the poets, who have every license, even against love, have taken on themselves the task of painting the portrait. Who does not recall the “Lines to a Dead Woman”?

“Yes, good she was—if ’twere enough

That as she passed her hand would give,

Without God seeing, saying aught,

If gold without kind words be alms.

“She thought—if a melodious voice,

A soft and sweet, but empty sound,

Like to the murmur of a stream,

Be token of the thought behind.

“She prayed—if beauty of two eyes,

Which sometimes on the earth were fixed,

Sometimes uplifted to the sky,

Be worthy of the name of prayer.

“She died, and yet she never lived;

She only made pretence at life.

The book fell idly from her hands,

In which not one word had she read.”

“She only made a pretence at life.” How many die to-day who have never lived at all!

Even our health has suffered from the reaction of our moral weakness. Nervous illnesses, which for several years have been making such alarming progress, are nothing else than the result of disabled wills, of weakened personalities. Doctor Grasset, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier, who has gained universal renown by his special study of these diseases, clearly states the necessity of recourse to a moral treatment which consists in building up the personality and strengthening the will. “We must,” he says, “give a patient the desire and the ambition to cure himself, and with that purpose we must show him the object that life still holds for him, the mission that he still has to fulfil in this world.”

“A nervous subject, who does not understand life, who will not admit that life is worth the trouble of living, who goes to sleep at night without wishing to think of the next day, with no satisfaction beyond that of having one day less to live ... this nervous subject will never be cured.

“The doctor must awaken and develop in his patient the ideas of duty, of sacrifice, of sociability. All these great thoughts must replace the morbid ones.

“The patient must be prevented from limiting himself to the fruitless brooding over a past which cannot be altered. Whatever are the injustices, apparent or real, of different lots, every man has before him a part to play, be it small or be it distinguished, in the interests of his fellow men and of humanity in general.

“We must, in other words, take the patient out of himself and turn him more and more towards altruism, by showing him that the cure lies there, and only there.

“A healthy man is an altruistic animal. Egotism and self-centredness are allied to disease; they are the causes and symptoms of disease. As long as one remains an egoist, one is not and cannot be cured.”

In order to appreciate the importance of such words, let us remember that they do not emanate from a theorist, but from an observer of innumerable facts. Such, then, is the physical danger of the fear of living, such is the psychic treatment of it.

II

There is yet another form of the fear of living. Here, it is true, there is no shrinking from effort, from trouble, or from battle. Next to passive selfishness it is necessary to drag into the light, as Apollo dragged Marsyas, that active egotism which is capable of displaying the utmost vigor, but only to satisfy an individual aim, that of one’s own pleasure. This puts to a wrong use our best weapon, which is energy. It claims to subordinate life to its will, to accept it only for what it is actually worth, and therefore it fears life.

Doubtless this curious form of cowardice has more to recommend it than the other, and attracts by a pretence of merit as the Sirens attracted by a pretence of love. Its motto might be the celebrated definition of Mérimée: “Life is a green table, which amuses us only when the stakes are high.” Its defiance of life sometimes becomes a defiance of death, and we cannot quite restrain ourselves from admiration when we see Don Juan—the most brilliant incarnation of this bold selfishness—the breaker of all oaths, the miserable corruptor of all the virtues, alone in the banqueting hall (where, though lights and flowers still suggest triumphant joy, the terrified guests have all fled), to see him rise and go forth, torch in hand and sarcasm on his lips, to meet the statue of the Commander, whose embrace is to crush him.

This energy which demands violent pleasure is the energy of the bandit. It is quite possible to find praise for it. I find it, to the life, in one of those strange, suffocating novels wherein Madame Grazia Deledda truthfully depicts the manners of Sardinia. An old widow in the mountains, to dazzle the young Oli, sings the praises of her dead husband, the best and most devoted of men. “What did he do?” asks Oli. “Ah, he was a brigand.” And when the young girl is surprised at this answer, the widow tells that her husband became a brigand to show his bravery and to occupy the time which is so badly spent when one is idle. Was it not better than frequenting the inn? And in a lyrical strain she celebrates this life of enterprise. “They were,” she says, “brave and skilful, ready for everything, especially for death. You think, perhaps, that all these robbers are bad men? You are wrong, dear sister. They are the men who want to prove their bravery—nothing else. My husband used to say, ‘Once men went to the wars, but to-day there are no more wars and men still feel the need of fighting.’ That is why they go in for brigandage, plunder, and violent deeds, not to do harm, but to show their strength and courage in some way.”[1]

This is the case in business, in politics, in society, to some extent everywhere, with men, and even women, who in one way or another display their strength and courage. They are not necessarily bandits, but they all desire to get only joys, or at least violent sensations, out of life, and aim at throwing it away afterwards like a squeezed orange. These are the mad individualists who will not observe any measure in enjoyment, and see in the world only a personal inheritance to be wasted by them. I know them well, through having often myself looked in their direction with the fever of desire. Never has the possibility of a future life been so insolently rejected, and never have we, as some of us now do, exposed ourselves with such foolhardiness to all dangers of destruction, as though it were necessary to make a blaze of this, our only life, in order to discover in it some divine fire. We plunge it in the whirl-wind of death to increase its intensity for a few precarious moments.

Romanticism, by proclaiming the right to passion, the right to happiness, the right to freedom, encouraged the development of individual force. A new romanticism extols it to-day, and it is chiefly women who preach the gospel. Their invasion of contemporary literature is only one symptom of a more general feminism. Less apt than man to grasp the complexity of social and moral life, the new woman exhausts all her demands in one cry and with a single leap lands at the road’s end to which she is led by confidence in her own powers and by her narrow view of the universe which centres wholly in self. At last individualism has found its philosopher in a poet, Nietzsche,—much misunderstood, by the way,—who grants to the Superman all rights. And why should one not believe in a Superman, especially if one is a modern woman?

But is it not rather curious to call that doctrine the fear of living which glorifies life and doubles its intensity?

I am reminded of a little story which used to be told to me when I was a child. It is the story of a ball of string that a fairy—good or bad—gave to a little boy with these mysterious words:

“This ball represents the length of your life. Each moment will shorten it. I have not the power to increase the time nor even to suspend it, but I have the power of shortening it, and that I give to you. Whenever in your life you come upon hours that are useless, sorrowful, or unpleasant, and wish to shorten them, pull the string and the hours will pass. Farewell and be wise.”

The little boy paid no heed to this prudent advice. He took the ball laughingly, and as he was merry he thought he would let the string shorten itself. Then he began to have wishes. At school he wished for holidays. He was ambitious; he desired to realise his ambitions. And to obtain the objects which he coveted, he pulled and pulled at the string. When he had finished the term of his life he perceived with consternation that he had scarcely lived a few days. Just so our desires would consume our days, if our days depended on our desires.

Thus our individualists whose energy seems to i be of a worthy sort have, on the contrary, a fear of living. They are afraid to live, since they do not wish to live their lives entirely and since, perverted by the abuse of violent sensations, they no longer understand, they fear ordinary life, which seems wearisome and dull to them.

Now this ordinary life plays an important part in the succession of our days. It is almost all the ball of string. To limit life to youth is not to understand it, is indeed to despise it. For it is all worth living, if only we know how to fill it.

Beyond the appetite for those passions which, through their very violence, their risks, their mischances, have a certain grandeur, I see among the symptoms of disease the search for, the need of, distraction. One meets to-day, especially in Paris among the wealthier classes—for poverty suppresses this ardor—men and women who seem to flee from themselves, so agitated are they. They confuse the meaning of agitation and action. It is a terrible confusion, which arose in society principally since the Eighteenth Century. That century began to disturb the springs of our inward life. The Duchess of Maine, as early as that, said that she had contracted “the love of a crowd.” We pass our time outside our homes, or we come back with a crowd, so as to avoid solitude for a single instant. We make out a programme every morning, so harassing that we should refuse to go through it if we were forced to do so. We must amuse ourselves, distract ourselves, forget ourselves. To withdraw within ourselves is to be bored when we have neither love nor faith nor definite aim. And we think we are living a great deal; which is the reason why so many Parisians, men and women, to whom a variety of spectacles and a feast of art are supposed to bring great intellectual development, have seen so much and have retained so little. Life for them is like a cinematograph picture which dazzles the eye and goes back into darkness. They have never worked for their impressions, and these are the only impressions which count.

Now that is not living, to be always “out”—like Madame Benoîton—“out” even to oneself, especially to oneself; any more than it is travelling, when one rushes over the high roads at full speed in a motor without once stopping. Life is not perpetual distraction, and here we have another form of the fear of living.

III

The first form confused cowardly passivity, reserve, and parsimony with courageous resignation, while this militant egotism confuses strength with its display. The only true energy is that which is ordered and disciplined.

We are born in a state of dependence. We depend on all kinds of particular conditions; conditions of country, race, family, environment, education, health, brains, fortune; for there are no men that are free, and herein lies our great equality. Besides, in the course of our life, we shall depend on circumstances which we shall be able neither to foresee nor to avoid. We must resolutely accept this dependence.

It is the chief of all heroisms. Not the heroism with the plumes and the flourish of trumpets, which individualism is willing to extol so as to raise the song of life to the major key; but an obscure heroism—the most difficult, for publicity is a great comfort—which must be sustained and manifested in the smallest things. That haughty individual, capable of heroic acts, shows himself, on coming down from his pedestal, perfectly unbearable and cowardly in the life which (let us not forget) is our daily life; while of another, apparently insignificant, we learn one day, often too late, that he has always been doing wonders. No life is devoid of opportunities to display merit; the thing is to seize these opportunities.

But if we are, in one part of our life, dependent, another part of our life, on the contrary, depends on us. There, our will and our energy can and must come into play. It is their task to increase in wealth, importance, and value the inheritance of our life, as cultivation increases the natural fruitfulness of the land.

Every life demands effort, no one is exempt from sorrow, very few are unacquainted with failure. Effort, sorrow, failure, are so many obstacles which bring out the extent of our merit. “In this life”—to quote President Roosevelt again—“we arrive at nothing without an effort. A healthy State can exist only if the men and women who compose it lead healthy, strong, clean lives; if the children be brought up in the right way, if they try to overcome difficulties, not to avoid them, if they do not seek comfort but know how to snatch triumph from pain and risk. Man must be happy to do man’s work, to dare and be adventurous and work to keep himself and those who depend on him. The wife must be the housekeeper, a companion to the founder of the home, a wise mother, who is not afraid of having many healthy children. In one of his powerful and melancholy books Daudet speaks of the ‘fear of maternity—the terror which haunts the young wife of the present day.’ When such words can be truly said about a nation, that nation is rotten to the core. When men fear work, or rightful war, when women fear maternity, they are trembling on the brink of damnation, and it would be a good thing if they vanished from the earth, where they are the just objects of scorn to all men and women who themselves are brave and high-souled.”[2]

This is the condemnation of idle wealth and inertia. And if the head of the young American nation thinks it necessary to utter such words to stir up the wills of so vigorous a people, how much the more bitter must their application be to our weary France? Over there they scarcely strike at any but the frantic egoists, whose energies it is more easy to direct into the right channels than it is to galvanise into action our fear and cowardice.

President Roosevelt has always made the distinction between material treasures and those moral treasures which give nations and individuals their vitality. In a letter to our Mistral, who had sent him a copy of “Mireille,” he explained this again with his usual clearness. “Industries and railways,” he wrote, “have their use up to a certain point, but courage and power of endurance, the love of our wives and children, the love of home and country, the love of the betrothed for one another, the love and imitation of heroism and sublime endeavors, the simple every-day virtues and the heroic ones,—these are the greatest virtues and if they are lacking, no accumulated wealth, no amount of ‘industrialism,’ however noisy and impressive, no feverish activity, under whatever form it may be shown, will be profitable either to the individual or to the nation. I am not despising the value of these things of the ‘body of the nation’; I merely desire that they should not make us forget that as well as a body there is also a soul.”

IV

If endeavor should stimulate us, pain ought not to crush us. But do we not resist it less well nowadays? Physical pain, more especially, has become unbearable to us. We need sedatives for the smallest ailments, and we are sure that our candor will be applauded if we declare that violent toothache is more painful than any moral pain.

Moral pain is the indispensable complement of human life. Before suffering comes, life does not appear in its true colors, and the weak are not always distinguishable from the strong.

“The woods, cut down, more fair and green shall grow,” said old Ronsard. After all, life has its revenges. Even if it had not, we still ought not to be discouraged. Many faces turn away from failure and resent defeat, even in the case of others. That again is fear. One day a professor of literature, not devoid of irony, having finished a course of lectures on the “Iliad” to a class of young girls, asked his pupils which hero they preferred, Achilles or Hector. Achilles had an overwhelming majority. He was the conqueror. But Homer, more clear-sighted in his psychology, gave the conquered hero the nobler and more generous character, for he knew the share that the gods have in the success or failure of mankind. Our finest French epic, the “Chanson de Roland,” exalts courage under defeat.

Energy fits us to bear failure, pain, and effort. This fine quality needs discipline. Its character depends on the use that is made of it. To cultivate it for itself would be to imitate those people who make sport the aim of their existence. Sport maintains or increases our strength and our health, of which we have need in order to realise our life; but to take them for the actual realisation of life would only be grotesque. Nature develops itself blindly and lavishly. Everything pertaining to the human sphere is subject to order. And, just as no work of art can be produced without submission to the laws of harmony, so there is no fine life without the acceptance of an order conditioned by our dependence and our limitations. But to regulate our energy is not to diminish it. On the contrary, it is to possess and manage it as a horseman his well-trained horse. “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence,” says the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, “and the violent take it by force.” Life itself suffers violence. The lukewarm and moderate natures have never created anything; the creative are the passionate ones who have tamed their passions.

In order to live all our life, it is important to accept it in the past, the present, and the future as well. In the past, this means to recognise a tradition. Neither nations nor individuals appear suddenly in the light of day. We must therefore recognise the ties which bind us to the country where we were born, to the race from which we have sprung. Thus we shall extend ourselves backwards and take to ourselves whatever there is, in the past, that still has life.

But to get inspiration from the past does not mean to identify oneself with it. “The life which tries to expand itself,” says Monseigneur Spalding, “eliminates dead things from it, and if you are a vivifying force, do not adopt the profession of grave-digger.” Nothing begins over again and everything evolves. Everything evolves slowly and under the impulse of what has gone before. Every age has its own new needs, which must be understood. Ours makes great demands. More complex and more troublous, it requires clearer sight, plainer sense of responsibility, and more enlightened intelligence. The segregation of poverty helps to conceal its miseries; industrial and mechanical developments make work less personal, and specialisation destroys part of the joy in work. New conditions of life have sprung up, which need a new spirit of enterprise.

The future, revealed in the faces of our children, reminds us that our goal lies beyond us, and that even in the nightfall of our life we must prepare a shelter for our descendants. We do not build with the same materials if the house is to last but a few years as we do if it is to last for centuries.

V

We must not think that, in developing in ourselves the love of life—of the whole of life—we create a greater fear of death. Our life is not in proportion to its length. Very short lives often give out more perfume than long barren existences. The important thing is not to grow old, but to fill up all one’s days until the last, knowing well that the last will come and give to our life its finished form. For the acceptance of the whole of life includes the acceptance of death.

Figaro opened recently a rather curious discussion among the doctors, which must interest all of us, since it is true that we all must die. It inquired of a certain number of “princes of science,” members of the Academy of Medicine, professors of faculties, eminent surgeons and practitioners, all men with degrees and honors, concerning the following case. A doctor is attending a patient, and finds that the illness is incurable, that the end is only a question of months, of days, or of hours. Must he say so? Must he tell the patient himself, or only the family, and in the latter case, which member of it?

The answers were almost all the same. They might have borrowed the epigram from Pascal: “Men, not being able to cure death, poverty, or ignorance, imagine they can make themselves happy, by not thinking about them; that is the only consolation they have been able to discover for so many ills.” Our doctors, unable to do away with death, think they can do away with the thought of it. They chloroform us morally, in preparation for the operation of the Fates.

There are some very timorous writers who will not even allow the subject to be discussed. They think it irritates their readers and so push it aside with all their strength. Or else they take shelter behind their conscience, which is presumably the only judge of their actions. But the greater part of them have an opinion. They invoke humanity as if it were some new god, who requires lies and demands cowardice. “Nothing must be told the patient which is not cheering,” one of them informs us. “It is charitable to leave a light of hope till the very end,” says a second. A third expounds this maxim: “It is no one’s duty or right to tell a patient that he is lost.” And M. Vaulair, a professor of the University of Liège, declares that when the science of medicine is powerless, its most pressing duty is to give the unhappy one who believes in it the help of a lie. All except one are agreed in maintaining that the patient, the principal person interested, has no right to hear the truth.

Must this truth be told to the family circle? Yes, up to a certain point. One must try to avoid giving pain to a wife, to children, to a father or a mother, who might be overwhelmed by the blow. Tact, prudence, reserve, moderation, hints, counsels, allusions, such are the varied stock-in-trade of the doctor in a case of this kind. He chooses a distant relative, strong and courageous, to whom he gently breaks the news, so as to make sure that he will not succumb to the shock. This relative can do what he likes about the matter. There is nothing more to be said; the family has been warned. A brave man knows the secret, it will be well kept. The doctor is the sole judge in the choice of this confidant. The important thing is that it must not be a near relative, who might be frightened. These doctors are tactful people. We believed them armed against grief, impassive, indifferent, brutal. How mistaken we were about them! What apologies we owe them! They are as gentle as little girls, as compassionate as sisters of mercy. They could not inflict pain without suffering themselves. And when the patient is dying they look for the most distant relative, the hardest and toughest, to confide to him stealthily that a mortal man is about to die.

Thus life will come to a painless end. Is not everything preferable to the terror inspired by death? Everything? Not quite. Certain doctors think that we may well allow a poor old man to die who is of no use to anyone, without telling him; but when they think of the head of a great business or of one of those capitalists who manage some huge concern, they are quite out of countenance. You see, the case becomes serious. What is to happen to all this vast business? What is to be the future of all this capital? Must we not “assure the interests of the heirs”? Yes, the importance of such material things justifies torturing the dying man. In his last moment he must pay for the importance he has enjoyed on earth. They will make him understand that he alone has no right to die quietly and is doomed to be worried till he has made his will, divided his goods, settled the fate of his business. Afterwards they may give him some hope, on condition that he does not use it to destroy what he has just done.

But who is really deceived? What is this comedy that they pretend to play round deathbeds? Do we not know, that some day we must die? Does not this certainty of death impart to life a peculiar significance? Can this be destroyed by not thinking about it? “Really,” M. Brunetière wrote recently, dealing with the subject of the “Falsehood of Universal Peace,” “life is not the greatest good if the foundation of all morality is that many things must be preferred to life; and really death is not the greatest evil, if we are men, so to speak, only in so fair as we rise above the fear of death.”

Our early youth, for which death scarcely exists, knows nothing of the value of days. It thinks our strength inexhaustible and squanders it idly. When we begin to see, around us and in us, the charm and the sadness of transient things, we feel life in all its fulness because we are amazed at the incessant flight of time. Our days are numbered. But the divisions of time are purely conventional. How many days do we lose when again the fervor of life concentrates itself in a few minutes of consciousness? The last minutes that we are destined to live may be the most intense. They may become an important part of our existence if we know that they are the last. They have this tremendous power of summing up in themselves all our past days, of completing the design of our life, of defining its outlines, and sometimes of revealing them for the first time. They bring us the supreme opportunity to correct our faults, to perform the most imperative duties which we have forgotten, to mark the current of our thoughts which has been running to waste in our ordinary pursuits. What right has anyone to steal these minutes from us? It is indeed to steal them, if they are left to us, stripped of their real importance. The man who is about to die should act like a man who is about to die, not as a man who has plenty of time left. You think, you doctors, to soothe him by hiding his danger from him; you take away from him a part of his life whose importance could never be measured in duration. He will waste his remaining strength, if he has kept his mind intact, in guessing at the truth, in scrutinising the blank faces around him, in questioning the throbs of his pulse, the beating of his heart. He will be a prey to all the terrors of doubt, when he has the right to finish his life by preparing for death. By what right do you still decree that the question of his bequest alone shall occupy him? What do you know of his thoughts, of his soul, of the future life, of God? Who has solved these questions? And if you have solved them for yourselves, where do you find the authority to solve them for others? Do not take useless responsibilities on yourselves. Everyone has his own, and that is sufficient. It is not for you to set yourselves up as judges, to ask if the dying man has any affairs to settle—he may have some of which you know nothing—you have no right to choose your confidant, and to be inhuman and cruel. For it is not human to injure life by deforming it, and it does deform it to banish from it all thought of death, which gives it all its significance. A beautiful death is the indispensable complement of a beautiful life, and the ransom of a wicked one. Yes, we must raise ourselves above the fear of death, and for that we must begin to see life as it is, so that we may live bravely, fully, nobly. The fear of death is one with the fear of living, which makes us shrink from the great efforts, the boldness, and the sacrifices that life demands from us. Only one of all these doctors understood this, and that was Sir John Fayrer, a member of the Royal Society of London, and head of the Sanitary Department in India, who dared to say, in the midst of a flock of his colleagues bleating with fear: “An experience of more than sixty years makes me declare very clearly to you: I do not agree that death should surprise a patient; he should be prepared for it.”

VI

Life is, after all, such a precious thing that one must neither reject it entirely like those lazy egoists, who soften and contract it to such a degree that it loses all its value; nor partly reject it like those vigorous egoists, who claim to subordinate it to their choice.

The very act of opening one’s eyes to the light of day involves a debt of gratitude to those who have permitted us to see it. Formerly in the French family there was no doubt as to the goodness of life. The old French family wrote its own story in its “commonplace books.” These commonplace books were humble volumes of accounts, but it soon became the custom to jot down, besides the record of expenditure, the most important facts of private life, such as marriages, deaths, births. Then there were added a few reflections, which sufficed to express a whole range of feeling, a complete conception of life. We have a great number of these books. They recall the time of our fathers and speak to us with the majesty of a last will and testament. It is the gospel of the wise. And it preaches faith in life to those who are inspired by their fathers and are content to be worthy successors to them.

Though one should run through them all, one would not find a single denial of the goodness of life. These workmen, farmers, merchants, always welcome a new-born child with an expression of joy, even if he comes after many others. The forms of baptism are all acts of faith like the one that I came across in the book of Pagès, a merchant of Amiens, who is celebrating the birth of a ninth child: “The divine goodness, continuing to shed its blessings on our marriage, has favored us with the birth of a son.” In the same way, the domestic diary of Joseph de Sudre, of Avignon, is the story—I should say, the epic—of his efforts, his privations, his savings, in order to be able to bring up his numerous offspring. In spite of adverse circumstances and bad harvests, he neglects nothing that contributes to that end. The old French language used only one word to describe the maternal feeding and moral education of the child. It was the verb nourrir, to “bring up,” which we have degraded. Our Joseph de Sudre loses his son, a captain in the King’s service, a man of great promise. After his short and pathetic funeral speech he adds; “I have suffered poverty for him with joy.”

Faith in the goodness of life, acceptance of all its burdens, confidence in the future, were formerly the code of the French family. Since Jean Jacques Rousseau we have replaced belief in the goodness of life by faith in the innate goodness of man. It does not produce the same results.

If now we ask those geniuses who represent the highest achievements of humanity what we ought to think about life, how would they answer us? The great minds in art, literature, and history, are only great when they animate us, when they quicken the movement of our blood and stir our resolution. They realise for us the changing beauty of the world and the transient charm of our days. No artist is great without unlimited love of life. I will quote only one example, the most touching; that of Beethoven. Financial worries, family troubles, a most cruel malady—that deafness which shut him up within himself—moral loneliness, unrealised love, such was the record of his life. A weak soul would have given way to despair. From the depth of all his distress he undertook to celebrate joy, and he did so in his Ninth Symphony.

It is told of him that once, visiting a lady who had just lost her son and not finding words both strong and gentle enough to express his sympathy, he sat down at the piano and played. He played a song of sorrow, but a song of hope also. Thus in our suffering the great masters of art come to our help.

In the lives of great men we can learn courage and the taste for life. There is no reading more consoling, and I quite understand the influence exercised by Plutarch. I wish that biographies of the great men of France, well written, concise and vigorous, were recommended to be read, particularly by our young men. They would incite them to live well. They give us constant occasion to compare our empty days with those well-filled lives, and then we bewail our inaction, our idleness, the pettiness of our lot, which we do not know how to enlarge.

In the life of La Play, that admirable defender of the French family, I lately read this anecdote. He had just recovered from a serious illness, which had brought him to the brink of the grave and the course of which he had traced with his usual clearness. After his recovery, when he was asked what thoughts the feeling of his approaching end had provoked in him, he replied in these memorable words, which may serve me as a conclusion:

“From the brink of the grave I measured, not the vanity of life, but its importance.”

H. B.

April and September, 1905.

[1] Grazia Deledda, “Cenere.”

[2] Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life.”

THE FEAR OF LIVING

THE FEAR OF LIVING

PART I

CHAPTER I
MARCEL’S HOMECOMING

Madame Guibert was waiting in the drawing-room at “Le Maupas,” ready to go out. In one hand she held her umbrella, though the weather was fine and the barometer high, while with the other hand she raised the long crape veil draped over her widow’s bonnet. She sat down for a moment, attempting to wait patiently and, after several glances at the large old-fashioned clock, surmounted by a threatening bronze figure of Vercingetorix the Gaul, she rose again and crossed the room with slow, lagging steps. She seemed to be deep in a study of the quaint old clock-face. She sat down again; this time not on one of the many well-worn armchairs, whose familiar comfort seemed so inviting, but instead upon a cane-seated chair, from which she could rise more promptly and with less effort.

Madame Guibert was advanced in years, short and stout, and scant of breath. In her face gentleness was combined with strength. The pale blue eyes, infinitely tender in their expression and full of unshed tears, revealed a timid and loving nature, easily frightened by the outside world, while the square chin and the thick-set, compact figure suggested energy and endurance. The cheeks, still fresh in spite of the years, showed the noble blood in her veins and a well-preserved, vigorous constitution.

After hesitating several times she summoned up sufficient courage to open the door and call: “Paule, are you coming? It is time to start.”

“Oh, Mother, we have plenty of time,” came the reply in fresh, clear tones.

“The clock says seven,” insisted Madame Guibert, wearily.

“You know that clock is three quarters of an hour fast.”

“But it may have suddenly gone slow. It is very irregular.”

The girl’s answer was merely a burst of laughter, completely devoid of any hint of sarcasm. Then she added:

“I’m putting on my hat; I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Madame Guibert sat down again, resigned. Her eyes wandered about the little country drawing-room, through whose windows, with their double white curtains freshly washed and ironed, the light of a summer evening broke softly, filtering through the foliage of the tall trees outside. The modest furniture was all in keeping; no touch of luxury marred the effect. Its seasoned age bore cheerful testimony to past generations and vanished tastes. There were two engravings, a hundred years old, representing charming episodes from Paul et Virginie. In “The Bath” the young girl was modestly holding up the robe that threatened to slip from her smooth shoulder, as she gently touched the cold water with a pretty, shivering foot. And in “The Torrent,” opposite, the youthful Paul might be seen carrying his little friend, a light burden, as he carefully crossed the turbulent stream. A more recent lithograph depicted “Napoleon’s Farewell at Fontainebleau,” in which against the dark background of thronging grenadiers the white knee-breeches of the Emperor stood out in relief, as the central point of the historic scene. Lastly, as if to give a more modern touch to the walls, a faded water-color pretended to have caught the azure of an eastern sky and also the motley hues of Abd-el-Kader’s smala, captured by a charge of French cavalry. An upright piano, its top covered with scores, and two music cabinets crammed to overflowing indicated an artist’s enthusiasm for music, whereas a former grand, now bereft of its harmonious soul, did duty as a rosewood table.

Madame Guibert’s eyes no longer took in these familiar objects, but they caught sight of a flower-vase out of its proper place. She was accustomed to orderliness so this lapse annoyed her and she hastened to set it straight. This vase held her customary offering, during the season of roses, before the cherished portraits that were at once her joy and her sorrow. This honor was paid daily at the domestic altar, yet withal she did not reproach herself unduly to-day for her neglect, because of the natural preoccupation which filled her heart and mind. From their sombre frames an enlarged photograph of her husband, Dr. Maurice Guibert, who had died at the beginning of the previous year, a victim to his tireless devotion to his patients during an epidemic of typhoid fever; and also another portrait, that of her daughter Thérèse, called to Himself by God when she was only twelve years of age, seemed to smile upon her on this day of rejoicing in her house of mourning. For was not the second son, Marcel, returning to France, after having taken a prominent part in an expedition against the Fahavalos of Madagascar?

After three years’ absence Marcel was coming back safe and sound, a Captain at twenty-eight years of age, and decorated with the Legion of Honor. The telegram sent off that morning from Marseilles had been read and re-read, and was still lying open on the drawing-room table. It announced his arrival at Chambéry on the seven-thirty train. And that was why Madame Guibert had gotten herself ready two hours too soon. She was going to town to meet the homecomer. Already her thoughts were with that train which was s ding along the iron track from Lyons.

Yet she knew that the meeting would be agitating and that she would need all her courage. When Marcel had learnt of the death of his father, he was far away, on the pestilential banks of a Madagascar river. When death calls those whom we love while we are far away, what infinite cruelty and bitterness are added to the blow!

The young man’s first glance would be at her mourning clothes and the recent indications of her advancing years. There would be a shadow between them. She braced herself for the effort, as she reflected: “When the children came home by train it was always he who watched for their arrival on the platform. I must be there to-day in his stead.”

At this moment Paule entered the room. A brilliant frame of black hair set off the rounded ivory of her face. A black dress accentuated her slimness, but she did not look fragile. Resolution and courage were mingled in her proud bearing and firm glance. The glory of youth illumined her sombreness with a radiance like that thrown on the sea at night by the brilliant lights of a ship. This girl of twenty had known suffering at an age when the sensibilities are keenest. She had steeled herself in order that she might not falter; and the secret of her struggle was revealed in her carriage. But withal her dark eyes shone the more brilliantly on this account and her face wore a new gladness, as a rose-tree its first blossom.

Her mother was surprised to see her without her hat.

“What, not ready yet? That is foolish.”

“But you are not ready either,” replied the girl with a bright smile.

She had in her hand a mourning bonnet edged with a white piping, such as widows wear, as she crossed the room with a quick, light step.

“Don’t get up, Mother, please. I want you to look nice when you meet your son, so I have made this bonnet for you. Don’t you like the shape? The one you have on is all worn out.” And with a grace that completely conquered her mother’s opposition, she continued: “Let me be your maid. Your arm pains you.”

“It is my rheumatism,” murmured Madame Guibert.

When she had changed her bonnet, without even a glance in the glass, she said timidly to her daughter, for she did not wish to displease her:

“And now, darling, don’t you think it is nearly time for us to start?”

“Yes,” said Paule, “I will go and tell Trélaz.”

Trélaz was the farmer who was to drive the carriage for them to Chambéry station.

When Paule had gone Mme. Guibert gazed at a group-photograph of her children. There had been six of them then. Now there were only five. Étienne, the eldest, was an engineer in Tonkin. Marcel an officer in the Tirailleurs. Marguerite was a Sister of Charity. François, after failing to pass his examinations, had joined his brother in the Far East. And Paule was the last jewel in her crown of life. What separations, she thought—some of them eternal—had she endured in the course of sixty years!

Paule returned from the farm with the news that Trélaz was ready. She put on her hat in an instant and could not refrain from protesting against her mother’s impatience. She glanced at the old clock which mocked the dock-makers and despite innumerable repairs preserved its own independence of spirit.

“We shall have to wait nearly an hour at the station,” she said.

“I should not like to be late,” insisted Madame Guibert.

And as she left the house she turned to the old servant, who was putting on her spectacles in order that no details of the start might escape her.

“Marie, mind that there are no tramps about!”

She lifted herself with an effort into the rustic carriage which had drawn up in front of the steps. When she had settled down she smiled sweetly at her daughter, and the fleeting expression brought back to her face for just an instant the softness that had been so attractive in her youth. Paule stepped up lightly beside her.

“Now, Trélaz! You will have to drive rather quickly. But don’t use the whip, and be careful going down hill.”

“We always get there somehow,” replied the farmer philosophically.

The carriage started. It was an old time vehicle, of a long-forgotten make. The seats ran lengthwise, and on them the passengers sat back to back, with their feet in a wooden frame. The oddity of its build was a never failing source of jest as people took their places in it.

The mare no less venerable, her hoof now and again striking the rattling wheel as she descended the avenue of chestnuts and heavy foliaged plane-trees at a walking pace and passed through the ever open gate—necessarily so indeed, on account of its useless rusty hinges. She turned into the Vimines road under the shadow of the oak-woods, and, leaving behind a level-crossing, came out on the high road from Lyons to Chambéry, which runs through the village of Cognin. There, the road being easier, the old brown mare stepped less cautiously as though she no longer cared how she went, and finished by breaking into a swinging trot which seemed much too fast for the timid Madame Guibert.

The sun had already disappeared behind the Beacon, one of the peaks of the Lépine range, but the clear light of the summer evening hung over the countryside for quite a long time after.

“Mother, look at the mountains,” said Paule.

They form a vast circle around Chambéry, and their rocky heights were tinged with a gorgeous pink, while around their base and sides floated, like a delicate veil, that bluish haze which is the forerunner of fine morrows. But Madame Guibert’s anxiety was too keen to allow her to contemplate the reflection of the setting sun on the summits of the hills. Suddenly she revealed the cause of her preoccupation:

“Suppose the train is ahead of time!”

And although she had spoken earnestly, she was the first to smile at her own supposition.

At last her eyes noted a soft transparent shadow climbing the mountains, and leaving the cross of Le Nivolet bathed in radiant light for an instant she called her daughter’s attention to this symbol, a token of shining faith. Then the same serene peace fell on all nature and, for the first time in long months, on the faces of the two sad women.

As they neared Chambéry, a break drawn by two fast-trotting horses, passed Trélaz’s old coach.

“It is the Dulaurens’s carriage,” said Paule. “They are going to Aix. They did not bow to us.”

“I don’t suppose they recognised us.”

“Oh, yes, they did. But since we gave up our fortune to save uncle people do not bow to us as they used to.”

She alluded to a family misfortune which had occurred shortly before her father’s death. Madame Guibert took her daughter’s hand:

“But that is nothing, dear. Just think, in a few minutes we shall see Marcel.”

After a short silence Paule asked:

“Wasn’t it father who attended and cured Alice Dulaurens, during that epidemic of typhoid fever at Cognin which finally carried him off?”

“Yes,” murmured the old woman, depressed at this recollection. And it was she who continued softly and uncomplainingly:

“And they even forgot to settle the bill for attendance. That is often the way with rich people. They don’t know what it means for others to live.”

“The reason is because they understand only how to amuse themselves.”

Madame Guibert saw a wave of bitterness cross her daughter’s face, whose every expression she knew.

“We must not envy them,” she said. “In amusing themselves, they forget life. They do not know what fills our hearts. I shall soon be sixty years old. Count my sacrifices and the dear ones I have lost. I am separated from my daughter Thérèse and from my husband, who was my strength. Your eldest sister, Marguerite, is a nun, and I have not seen her for five years. Étienne and François are in Tonkin, and I do not know my grandson who has just been born out there. Marcel is coming back after three years of absence and terrible anxiety. Still my lot has been fortunate. I bless God, who tried me after having crowned me with blessings. Every day I have experienced His goodness. Even in my misery He gave me a support in you.”

With her little ungloved hand Paule pressed her mother’s, cracked and wrinkled.

“Yes, Mother, you are right, I shall complain no more.”

The two miles which separate “Le Maupas” from Chambéry were at length covered. Trélaz set the ladies down at the station and drove his conveyance over to a corner of the Square, away from the hotel omnibuses, the cabs, and the carriages. But the rows of horses envied his mare her well-filled bag of hay which he put before her.

Paule, looking at the clock, noticed with surprise that it was only ten minutes past seven. Her mother saw her face.

“I told you that we should be late.”

The girl smiled: “Late because we shall have to wait only twenty minutes?”

They reached the waiting-room, but as soon as Madame Guibert had opened the door she drew back. Paule gently urged her forward. The room was full of people in evening dress. They were the aristocracy of Chambéry waiting for the theatre-train to Aix-les-Bains. Among them were the Dulaurens family.

Disconcerted, Madame Guibert turned as if to go out, whispering to Paule, “Let us go to the third class waiting-room. It will be pleasanter there.”

“Why?” asked the girl.

At that moment a good-looking young man detached himself from a group of women and came towards them. They recognised Lieutenant Jean Berlier, a friend of Marcel. He bowed to them with a courtesy which expressed his deep sympathy.

“You have come to meet the Captain, haven’t you, Madame? I know you don’t like travelling.”

“Oh, no, I don’t.”

“How pleased he will be to see you; he will soon be here!”

“In the past,” said the old lady to the young man, whom she had known as a boy, “his father used to meet him. You will understand.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jean Berlier, and in order not to dwell on so painful a subject in a public place he added:

“I shall be able to shake Marcel by the hand before I start.”

“You will come and see him at our house, won’t you? Are you going away?”

“For one night. We are going to Aix. It is the first night of ‘La Vie de Bohème.’ But theatres don’t interest you.”

Sincere as ever, Madame Guibert replied: “I never went to one in my life. To tell you frankly, I do not regret it.”

Although she spoke in low tones, there were two girls in light dresses who could hear her, and one of them, a bold-looking brunette, burst out laughing. But perhaps their fun was at the expense of a lieutenant of dragoons, who was speaking to them. Paule looked at her contemptuously from head to foot, her dark eyes flashing like a swift lightning streak.

“Why are you standing?” Jean went on. The old lady chose a seat beside a vacant armchair in a dark corner, as the humble and timid are wont to do.

“No, take the armchair, Mother,” said Paule rather brusquely. She had just exchanged bows—stiff on her part, cordial on the other’s—with the other of the two young girls, who instead of laughing had blushed.

After a few more words the young man left and rejoined his party. Paule looked after him and heard him say to Madame Dulaurens:

“Yes, that is Madame Guibert. She is waiting for her son, who is returning from Madagascar.”

“Which son? She has so many.”

“Why, the officer—Marcel.”

“What is his rank?”

“Captain. He has been decorated and is famous,” said Jean Berlier hurriedly. He was rather annoyed at being thus questioned, for the dark eyed girl was calling him.

But Madame Dulaurens would not release him.

“Famous?” she demanded. “What did he do?”

“Didn’t you hear about the fight at Andriba, when his company’s action decided the day?”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. The name of Marcel Guibert is known throughout the whole of France.”

This, of course, was a great exaggeration. Modern France does not make a display of her military glory. But Madame Dulaurens was impressed and immediately went over to Madame Guibert. The widow was becoming interesting, in spite of her ruined fortunes, if her son had so great a reputation.

“The Captain comes home to-night, Madame,” she began. “The thoughts of us all followed him out there during that terrible campaign, in which he did so much honor to his country. The papers told us the story of his bravery at the battle of Andriba.”

Behind his wife, Monsieur Dulaurens, a mild, ceremonious little man, was nodding his head in sign of approval, while Clément, a fat and jovial youth of eighteen, who had listened to his mother’s words with amazement, pulled at the sleeve of Jean Berlier and whispered:

“Mother has no lack of assurance, has she? She reads nothing but the society paragraphs in the ‘Gaulois’ How could she have remembered a Malagasy name? I know them all—even the most difficult ones. I got them up for a joke once, because of course I know nothing about the expedition. I’ll tell you a few. Ankerramadinika ...”

In the midst of the throng Madame Guibert felt painfully uncomfortable. Just as her poor mourning robes (though carefully mended by her daughter’s hand) contrasted with the fashionable evening gowns, so too she felt that not a thought in common united her to these society people. The whole party had come up and was complimenting her. After Madame Dulaurens’s congratulations, she received those of Madame Orlandi, an old Italian Countess who lived in retirement at Chambéry, and whose many nervous complaints had provided sufficient employment for her doctor. De Marthenay, the lieutenant of dragoons, fixed her with his eyeglass in curiosity that was almost insolent. She answered the questions addressed to her very simply and timidly, her cheeks suffused with blushes; and Paule, noticing her plight, came to her assistance. She was more at ease, but could not prevent a certain stiffness showing itself in her manner, in spite of the friendly demonstrations of the two girls—the brunette, Isabelle Orlandi, whose remarks were as affected as her attitudes, and still more the other, Alice Dulaurens, who was fair and naturally gracious. The latter overwhelmed Paule with attentions and kindness. She had a pretty voice, lisping and softening the hard sounds, and blending all her words in an even sweetness.

“So your brother is coming! Aren’t you happy? It is years since I saw him. Do you remember the time we used to play games together at Le Maupas or at La Chênaie?”

“Yes,” answered Paule. “But we do not play any more now. The garden at Le Maupas is neglected, and that of La Chênaie is too well cared for.”

“Why don’t you come over any more? You must come.”

Paule wondered why this former schoolfellow of hers at the Sacred Heart, from whom life had separated her so far, should show her so much friendship. She looked at her own black dress, so plain, and simple, and admired without a touch of envy the light blue bodice, trimmed with white lace and cut rather low, from which Alice’s white neck, delicate and supple, rose like a frail flower. From the clothes her eyes passed to the wearer’s face. The features were refined and clear-cut, and the faultless complexion was suffused with a dainty pink. She could not help saying:

“How beautiful you are, Alice!”

Immediately the fresh cheeks mantled, and while Mademoiselle Dulaurens stood aside to allow a traveller to pass, Paule saw how the very indolence and half-weariness of her movements bestowed a certain languishing grace on this charming and delicate girl, in whose presence she realised the more her own youthful strength.

“Oh, no, it is you, Paule, ...” protested Alice Dulaurens.

But the noise of the Lyons express suddenly broke in upon the conversation. The whole party rushed out of the waiting-room. The Dulaurens family and their friends began to look for first class carriages in the section of the train intended for the theatre-goers. From the other portion the passengers were already hastening towards the exit.

The first of these was a tall, thin young man, very erect, who held his head thrown back with a haughty air. In his hand he was carrying a sword wrapped in green serge. As soon as he saw Madame Guibert he ran towards her and was soon folded in her arms.

“My son!” she cried, and, in spite of her resolution to be brave, she burst into sobs.

But Marcel straightened himself up after the embrace and gazed with tender emotion at this old figure on whom trials had left their traces. A change came over the bronzed, almost hard, features of the young man. There was no need for them to utter the name that trembled on their lips, and the same pious memory stirred both their hearts. The joy of the meeting gave a poignant new life to the old sorrow.

Paule contemplated with a softened expression her tall, handsome brother and her old mother. By the step of their compartment Alice Dulaurens and Isabelle Orlandi turned, and they too watched the greetings. The eyes of the first rested sympathetically on Marcel, while the eyes of the second looked ironically at Madame Guibert’s stout and agitated form.

Jean Berlier, standing slightly aside, was waiting respectfully. He now came up to Paule.

“How happy they are!” he said. And then he added, with a tinge of melancholy, “When I return from Algeria no one is ever waiting for me.”

As Marcel kissed his young sister, Jean came forward, crying:

“Have you a greeting for me too?”

“What, Jean!” said Marcel, and the two men embraced warmly. Jean was moved but in an instant he was again smiling gaily.

“I shall see you soon,” he said. “I must run now. My train is going.”

“Where are you off to?” asked Marcel.

Jean, on his way to his carriage, half turned and shouted merrily:

“We’re going to show ourselves off at Aix.”

And his fingers seemed to point at random to the various groups clambering into the theatre-train.

Marcel Guibert glanced quickly at the rout of gaily dressed figures. But Paule, looking round, saw Alice leaning out of the window of her carriage to bid her good-bye. She waved her hand to her quickly and undemonstratively, as though she had some misgiving or some superstitious feeling of fear about this seductive vision. Paule was very highly sensitized and her premature misfortunes had made her oversensitive. “Why all these advances?” she asked herself. As her dark eyes rested on her soldier brother, who was leading his mother away on his arm, she added to herself: “Too much good fortune and not enough courage.”

Seeing Trélaz’s vehicle, Marcel cried:

“What, our old carriage!”

“It is the only one we have kept,” explained Madame Guibert, apologetically.

This reply Marcel had not expected when he made the remark. The ancient conveyance had recalled his childhood to him, and now it seemed to him that it also signified the decay of the family. His face darkened. He understood all of a sudden the material difficulties which must have increased the suffering at Le Maupas. Having no personal needs, and accustomed as he was to live on very little, he felt now for his mother and sister and divined the bitterness of their straits. But Madame Guibert was saying to herself, “We ought to have taken a station carriage in his honor.”

They drove across Chambéry, the sleepy capital of Savoy, which the historic castle sets off as if it were a military plume, proud and delicate against the sky. Marcel breathed his native air rapturously. When they left the town, Trélaz’s antiquated equipage recalled a host of recollections. The scene before his eyes suggested his happy, spirited youth. How often, from the Vimines woods, had he enjoyed the bold outlines and vivid lighting of the picture! With the naked walls of Pas-de-la-Fosse in the foreground, and of Granier in the background, which looks out from above over the nearer mountains, it was like a wide sweeping curve of verdure outstretched, and harmoniously defined by three steeples: Belle Combette, softly ensconced among the trees, like a sheep amid the lush grass; Montagnol, the tallest, sombre and dominant like some fortress; Saint-Cassin, humbler and slighter, resting against the thick woods which almost concealed it. A strange incongruous landscape, tempering the harshness of the rough and threatening crags with the sweet softness of this peaceful slope.

When the carriage left the high road, it passed the level crossing over the railway from Saint-André-le-Gaz, and followed the Vimines road, up the steep gradient which plunges into the forest and leads past the open gate of Le Maupas. Marcel got out here to lighten the horse’s burden. He was the first to reach the little rustic house smothered, as in the old days, under the wistaria, jasmine, and roses. And too, as in the old days the twilight lent to the trees in the avenue a sombre, placid, serious look. As he walked, the gravel in the courtyard made the same crunching sound as of old.

On the threshold he awaited his mother and helped her ascend the steps; and when they had entered he clasped the poor, weeping woman to his heart. Paule also at last surrendered herself to the emotion she had too long restrained. The head of the family was no longer there. On the threshold of the home his son had brought back to mind the strong profile, the kindly smile, the self-reliance of the departed.

In this meeting to-day three people tasted the whole flavor of human life, with its mingling of joy and grief.

Meanwhile the Dulaurens family, Madame Orlandi and her daughter, and Lieutenant Armand de Marthenay, had taken their places in the same first class carriage. Isabelle took possession of a corner and with the utmost difficulty kept another for her admirer, Jean Berlier. But when he made up his mind to enter the carriage, at the very moment the train was starting, he was not too well received by the girl.

“Why don’t you stay on the platform and embrace all the men that pass?” she asked.

Jean smiled: “I do the same to the ladies.”

Isabelle was not disarmed. “You made a show of yourself with that Guibert lot. It was ridiculous.”

Alice Dulaurens blushed, but did not dare to protest. The young man was not so easily disconcerted. He did not disdain, in his flirtations, a tone of irony and mockery, which exasperated, if it also attracted, his companion, the pretty and spoilt darling of her family.

“It is true,” he admitted, “that the Guiberts, on meeting each other after three years of separation and mourning, neglected to conform to custom to please you. And even your dress did not win a single glance from the handsome captain.”

“The handsome captain, indeed!”

“He is bald,” observed de Marthenay, whose own thick hair stuck up like a tooth-brush.

“Yes, he became so in the colonies. In a French garrison he would perhaps have kept an abundant covering on his head.”

Isabelle would not own herself vanquished. A spitefulness to which she would not have confessed urged her to attack Jean’s friends, and she went beyond all bounds:

“You heard, I suppose, that your captain’s mother is a perfect phenomenon? She has never set foot in a theatre! I wonder what sort of a life she has led.”

Jean Berlier, who had the greatest respect for Madame Guibert, became bitter.

“She has done what you will never do, Mademoiselle, she has lived for the sake of others.”

“That is not living at all,” retorted Isabelle.

“Do you think so? For my part, I believe that she has lived more than you will ever live, if you were to exist for a hundred years.”

“Oh, indeed! I defy anyone to live at a higher pressure than I do.”

“You get excitement, but that’s not the same thing. Of what effort are you capable?” And then, cutting his lecture short, the young man asked with a laugh: “Are you even capable of a love match?”

“Certainly not! You mean, I suppose, one without money? Thank you for nothing. Fancy vegetating mournfully on dry bread and cotton dresses!” As she spoke, her lovely teeth looked sharp and greedy.

“Come, cheer up,” said Jean, “and show me your hand.”

She held out her fine ungloved hand. He pretended to examine it carefully.

“I see that you will marry a man forty years of age, ugly, and a millionaire. But, after the marriage, he will show his real disposition, sordid avarice. One is always punished in the same way in which one has sinned.”

The grave sententious tone in which he uttered his nonsense amused the whole carriage.

When the conversation had again become general, Isabelle, restored once more to calm, murmured gaily to her vis-à-vis:

“So much the worse for the miser! I shall be untrue to him.”

“With me, do you mean?” asked Jean, smiling.

“Perhaps with you. Yes, certainly with you!”

And again bursting into laughter, she showed her white teeth, as sound as a puppy’s, while she stared boldly at the young man who appealed so much to her taste.

Alice, abashed by the boldness of the conversation, blushed for her companion. Then wrapping herself in her own thoughts, she fell half asleep and dreamed of the love-match which Isabelle despised, but in connection with which certain lately-seen features dimly presented themselves to her imagination.

Madame Dulaurens, preoccupied about the success of her At Homes during the season, remarked to her son, who was repeating to her some fantastic Madagascar names; “He seems to be quite a hero. We must certainly invite him.”

And her husband, resuming the thread of a long and peaceful conversation, agreed with Madame Orlandi.

“Above all things, calm must be preserved. That is the secret of life.”

CHAPTER II
BROTHER AND SISTER

In the friendship between brother and sister there is a frank and simple sweetness that makes it a sentiment apart from all others. In its nature it is free from the violent outbursts of love and those passionate transports which are too intoxicating to be lasting. It is distinguished, however, from ordinary friendship between persons of the same sex, by the element of modest discretion and tenderness introduced into it by the woman. What makes it still more singular is the marvellous ability of the two parties to such a friendship to think and to feel alike, this springing from a common origin and a childhood spent together. The two can then understand a half-uttered word, can call back memories at the same moment, can live again together the days of old and inhale again the perfume of the past. Even love itself lacks this quality and may well envy its possession.

Seated in two basket-chairs in the garden of Le Maupas, Marcel and Paule Guibert, with no waste of useless confidences, realised the joy of discovering that during their separation life had ripened and molded their souls alike even though a great distance had separated them. They thought otherwise than in former days, but they still thought together.

“I am so happy here,” said the young man, “that I want to do nothing all day long.”

Marcel was tired and needed rest. In spite of his robust health, he showed some traces of his life in the colonies. He still had attacks of fever, though they grew rarer and rarer. He looked to the health-bringing air of Savoy to put new life into him.

It was one of those calm summer afternoons in the country, when it seems that one can almost feel the vibration of the sunshine. Not a breath of air fanned their faces. Only in the tree-tops a lazy breeze stirred the delicate leaves of the lime-trees, which trembled and showed by turn the dark green of their upper and the pale green of their lower surfaces.

On the rustic table, its round top cut from a single slate, were scattered papers and letters. Paule set herself to open the mail to which her brother paid so little heed.

“More articles about you,” she cried, “in the Clarion des Alpes and La Savoie Républicaine. Do you want to read them?”

“No, please not,” begged the captain.

“Some invitations,” Paule went on. “The men of your year are giving a dinner in your honor. A season-ticket for the Aix-les-Bains Casino. Another for the Villa des Fleurs. The Baroness de Vittoz is at home on Tuesdays.”

“What is all this to me? I want to see nobody, absolutely nobody.”

“You have become fashionable! You must play your part. They are disposing of your liberty. That’s one way of sharing in your laurels.”

“Let’s agree not to talk about it, Paule dear.”

“But everyone is talking about it. Glory is the rage to-day. Some day soon the Dulaurenses will call upon us, and other people too whom we have not seen since the story of our ruin got about.”

Her smooth forehead, overshadowed by dark hair, still wore the furrow which testified to the bitterness of that time of trial.

Marcel said nothing. He let himself be carried away by the multitudinous memories connected with the land which was his forefathers’. In his mind’s eye he could see the shadows of the past springing up from the ground about him and hovering round him like a flock of birds. Only the members of large families can know the happy exaltation of spirit which has its birth in an environment that is fresh, gay, and frank. This blessing, which changes childhood with a stroke of the wand into fairyland and is able to shed its sweetness throughout middle life right down to old age, is the reward of those who have had the courage to live and to perpetuate life. So Marcel now smiled upon another tiny Marcel, whom he could see distinctly scampering over the neighboring fields with a merry little troop of brothers and sisters. Then began with Paule the series of “Do you remembers.” He plunged back into the far away years when the soul is still wrapped in mystery, and finally he said:

“Do you remember.... But no, you were not born then. We were lying on the grass. They were our first holidays, I think. Father used to tell us about the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” and we straightway translated the stories into action. I was in turn Hector and the cunning Ulysses. But at that time I preferred Hector, for he is generous and of that tragic courage which impresses a child’s mind. Since then reading Homer has been to me like visiting a friend. Who can tell whether or not I owe to these influences my taste for adventure?”