He said:
"I would not have recognized you myself--you were such a little thing then, and here you are so big!--but how is it that you did not recognize me?"
She answered with a despairing movement of her hands:
"I see so many men that they all seem to me alike."
He kept his eyes still fixed on her intently, oppressed by an emotion that dazed him, and filled him with such pain as to make him long to cry like a little child that has been whipped. He still held her in his arms, while she sat astride on his knees, with his open hands against the girl"s back; and now by sheer dint of looking continually at her, he at length recognized her, the little sister left behind in the country with all those whom she had seen die, while he had been tossing on the seas.
Then, suddenly taking between his big seaman"s paws this head found once more, he began to kiss her, as one kisses kindred flesh. And after that, sobs, a man"s deep sobs, heaving like great billows, rose up in his throat, resembling the hiccoughs of drunkenness.
He stammered:
"And this is you--this is you, Francoise--my little Francoise!"--
Then, all at once, he sprang up, began swearing in an awful voice, and struck the table such a blow with his fists that the gla.s.ses were knocked down and smashed. After that, he advanced three steps, staggered, stretched out his arms, and fell on his face. And he rolled on the ground, crying out, beating the floor with his hands and feet, and uttering such groans that they seemed like a death-rattle.
All those comrades of his stared at him, and laughed.
"He"s not a bit drunk," said one.
"He ought to be put to bed," said another. "If he goes out, we"ll all be run in together."
Then, as he had money in his pockets, the landlady offered to let him have a bed, and his comrades, themselves so much intoxicated that they could not stand upright, hoisted him up the narrow stairs to the apartment of the woman who had just been in his company, and who remained sitting on a chair, at the foot of that bed of crime, weeping quite as freely as he had wept, until the morning dawned.
THE HERMIT
We had gone to see, with some friends, the old hermit installed on an antique mound covered with tall trees, in the midst of the vast plain which extends from Cannes to La Napoule.
On our return we spoke of those strange lay solitaries, numerous in former times, but now a vanished race. We sought to find out the moral causes, and endeavored to determine the nature of the griefs which in bygone days had driven men into solitudes.
All of a sudden one of our companions said:
"I have known two solitaries--a man and a woman. The woman must be living still. She dwelt, five years ago, on the ruins of a mountain top absolutely deserted on the coast of Corsica, fifteen or twenty kilometers away from every house. She lived there with a maid-servant. I went to see her. She had certainly been a distinguished woman of the world. She received me with politeness and even in a gracious manner, but I know nothing about her, and I could find out nothing about her.
"As for the man, I am going to relate to you his ill-omened adventure:
Look round! You see over there that peaked woody mountain which stands by itself behind La Napoule in front of the summits of the Esterel; it is called in the district Snake Mountain. There is where my solitary lived within the walls of a little antique temple about a dozen years ago.
Having heard about him, I resolved to make his acquaintance, and I set out for Cannes on horseback one March morning. Leaving my steed at the inn at La Napoule, I commenced climbing on foot that singular cave, about one hundred and fifty perhaps, or two hundred meters in height, and covered with aromatic plants, especially cysti, whose odor is so sharp and penetrating that it irritates you and causes you discomfort. The soil is stony, and you can see gliding over the pebbles long adders which disappear in the gra.s.s. Hence this well-deserved appellation of Snake Mountain. On certain days, the reptiles seem to spring into existence under your feet when you climb the declivity exposed to the rays of the sun. They are so numerous that you no longer venture to go on, and experience a strange sense of uneasiness, not fear, for those creatures are harmless, but a sort of mysterious terror. I had several times the peculiar sensation of climbing a sacred mountain of antiquity, a fantastic hill perfumed and mysterious, covered with cysti and inhabited by serpents and crowned with a temple.
This temple still exists. They told me, at any rate, that it was a temple; for I did not seek to know more about it so as not to destroy the illusion.
So then, one March morning, I climbed up there under the pretext of admiring the country. On reaching the top, I perceived, in fact, walls and a man sitting on a stone. He was scarcely more than forty years of age, though his hair was quite white; but his beard was still almost black. He was fondling a cat which had cuddled itself upon his knees, and did not seem to mind me. I took a walk around the ruins, one portion of which covered over and shut in by means of branches, straw, gra.s.s and stones, was inhabited by him, and I made my way towards the place which he occupied.
The view here is splendid. On the right is the Esterel with its peaked summit strangely carved, then the boundless sea stretching as far as the distant coast of Italy with its numerous capes, facing Cannes, the Lerins Islands green and flat, which look as if they were floating, and the last of which shows in the direction of the open sea an old castellated fortress with battlemented towers built in the very waves.
Then, commanding a view of green mountain-side where you could see, at an equal distance, like innumerable eggs laid on the edge of the sh.o.r.e the long chaplet of villas and white villages built among the trees rose the Alps, whose summits are still shrouded in a hood of snow.
I murmured:
"Good heavens, this is beautiful!"
The man raised his head, and said:
"Yes, but when you see it every day, it is monstrous."
Then he spoke, he chatted, and tired himself with talking--my solitary, I detained him.
I did not tarry long that day, and only endeavored to ascertain the color of misanthropy. He created on me especially the impression of being bored with other people, weary of everything, hopelessly disillusioned and disgusted with himself as well as the rest.
I left him after a half-hour"s conversation. But I came back, eight hours later, and once again in the following week, then every week, so that before two months we were friends.
Now, one evening at the close of May, I decided that the moment had arrived, and I brought provisions in order to dine with him on Snake Mountain.
It was one of those evenings of the South so odorous in that country where flowers are cultivated just as wheat is in the North, in that country where every essence that perfumes the flesh and the dress of women is manufactured, one of those evenings when the breath of the innumerable orange-trees with which the gardens and all the recesses of the dales are planted, excite and cause languor so that old men have dreams of love.
My solitary received me with manifest pleasure. He willingly consented to share in my dinner.
I made him drink a little wine, to which he had ceased to be accustomed.
He brightened up and began to talk about his past life. He had always resided in Paris, and had, it seemed to me, lived a gay bachelor"s life.
I asked him abruptly:
"What put into your head this funny notion of going to live on the top of a mountain?"
He answered immediately:
"Her! it was because I got the most painful shock that a man can experience. But why hide from you this misfortune of mine? It will make you pity me, perhaps! And then--I have never told anyone--never--and I would like to know, for once, what another thinks of it, and how he judges it."
"Born in Paris, brought up in Paris, I grew to manhood and spent my life in that city. My parents had left me an income of some thousands of francs a year, and I procured as a shelter, a modest and tranquil place which enabled me to pa.s.s as wealthy for a bachelor.
"I had, since my youth, led a bachelor"s life. You know what that is.
Free and without family, resolved not to take a legitimate wife, I pa.s.sed at one time three months with one, at another time six months with another, then a year without a companion, taking as my prey the ma.s.s of women who are either to be had for the asking or bought.
"This every day, or, if you like the phrase better, commonplace, existence agreed with me, satisfied my natural tastes for changes and silliness. I lived on the boulevard, in theaters and cafes, always out of doors, always without a regular home, though I was comfortably housed. I was one of those thousands of beings who let themselves float like corks, through life, for whom the walls of Paris are the walls of the world, and who have no care about anything, having no pa.s.sion for anything. I was what is called a good fellow, without accomplishments and without defects. That is all. And I judge myself correctly.
"Then, from twenty to forty years, my existence flowed along slowly or rapidly without any remarkable event. How quickly they pa.s.s, the monstrous years of Paris, when none of those memories worth fixing the date of find way into the soul, these long and yet hurried years, trivial and gay, when you eat, drink and laugh without knowing why, your lips stretched out towards all they can taste and all they can kiss, without having a longing for anything. You are young, and you grow old without doing any of the things that others do, without any attachment, any root, any bond, almost without friends, without family, without wife, without children.
"So, gently and quickly, I reached my fortieth year; and in order to celebrate this anniversary, I invited myself to take a good dinner all alone in one of the princ.i.p.al cafes.
"After dinner, I was in doubt as to what I would do. I felt disposed to go to a theater; and then the idea came into my head to make a pilgrimage to the Latin quarters, where I had in former days lived as a law-student.
So I made my way across Paris, and without premeditation went in to one of those public-houses where you are served by girls.