The sun rose higher, rendering the plain larger, extending the distant horizon still farther. … I felt a compassion for this man and I loved him … yes I swear I loved him! … Well, then, how did that happen? … A detonation was suddenly heard, and at that very moment I caught sight of a boot in the air, of a torn piece of a military cloak, of a mane flying about wildly on the road … and then nothing, I heard the noise of a blow with a sabre, the heavy fall of a body, furious beats of a gallop … then nothing. … My rifle was warm, and smoke was coming out of it. … I let it fall to the ground. … Was I the victim of hallucination? … Clearly not. Of the large shadow which rose skyward at the middle of the road like an equestrian statue of bronze there was left but a small corpse all black, stretched out face downward, with crossed arms. … I recalled the poor cat that my father had killed, when with fascinated eyes she had been following the flight of a butterfly. …
Stupidly, unconsciously, I had killed a man whom I loved, a man with whom my soul had just identified itself, a man who in the dazzling splendor of the rising sun was retracing the purest dreams of his life! … Perhaps I had killed him at the very moment that that man had said to himself: "And when I shall see her again at home. … " Why? For what reason? Since I loved him, since, if soldiers had menaced him, I would have defended him! Why of all men was it he I assassinated? In two bounds I was beside this man; I called him … he did not move. My bullet had pierced his neck under the ear, and blood was gushing from an opened vein with a gurgling sound, collecting into a red pool and sticking to his beard. … With trembling hands I raised him slowly, his head swung from side to side, fell back, inert and heavy. … I felt his chest where the heart was: it beat no longer. … Then I raised him again, supporting his head with my knees, and suddenly I saw his eyes, his two clear eyes which looked at me sadly, without hatred, without reproach, his two eyes which seemed to be alive! … I thought I was going to faint, but gathering all my strength in a supreme effort, I clasped the dead body of the Prussian, placed it right in front of me and pressing my lips against this bleeding face from which long, purple threads of congealed slaver were hanging, I desperately kissed it! …
From this moment on I don't remember anything. … I see again smoky fields covered with snow, and ruins burning incessantly, ever recurring dismal flights, delirious marches during the night, confusion at the crossroads congested with ammunition wagons, where the dragoons with drawn swords were driving their horses right into our midst and trying to cut a way through the wagons; I see again funeral carriages, followed by dead bodies of young men which we buried in the frozen ground, saying to ourselves that tomorrow would be our turn; I see again, near the cannon carriages, large carcasses of horses dismembered by howitzer shells, stiff, cut up, over which we used to quarrel in the evening, from which we used to carry away, into our tents, bleeding portions which we devoured growling, showing our teeth like wolves! … And I see again the surgeon, with sleeves of his white coat rolled up, pipe in mouth, amputating on a table, in a farmhouse, by the smoky light of a tallow candle, the foot of a little soldier still wearing his coarse shoes! … But above all I see again the Priory, when worn out and broken in body and spirit by these sufferings, rendered apathetic by the disaster of defeat I re-entered it one nice and sunny day. … The windows of the large house were closed, the window blinds were down in every room. … Felix, more bent than ever, was cleaning the walk and Marie, seated near the kitchen door, was knitting a pair of stockings, wagging her head.
"Well! Well!" I shouted, "is that the way you receive me!"
As soon as the two noticed me, Felix went away as if frightened and Marie growing pale, uttered a cry.
"What's the matter?" I asked with a heavy heart. "How about father?"
The old woman looked at me fixedly.
"Why, don't you know? … Haven't you received anything? … Ah, my poor Monsieur Jean! My poor Monsieur Jean!"
And with eyes filled with tears, she stretched out her arms in the direction of the cemetery.
"Yes! Yes! There is where he is now, with Madame," she said in a dull voice.
CHAPTER III
Toc, toc, toc.
And at the same time a small drawn otter skin bonnet appeared in the slight opening of the door, followed by two smiling eyes under a veil, then a long fur cape which outlined the slender body of a young woman.
"I am not disturbing you? … May I come in?"
Lirat, the painter, raised his head.
"Ah! it's you, Madame!" he said in a curt tone, almost irritated, while shaking his hands soiled with pastel. "Why, yes, certainly. … Come right in!"
He left his easel and offered a seat.
"How is Charles?" he asked.
"He is all right, thank you."
She sat down, smiling, and her smile was really charming as well as sad. Although covered with a veil, her clear eyes of pinkish blue, her very large eyes which illuminated her whole figure, seemed to be radiating infinite kindness. … She was dressed very elegantly, without striving to be pretentious. A little over-perfumed, however. … There was a moment of silence.
The studio of the painter Lirat, situated in a peaceful section of the Faubourg Saint Honoré, on Rodrigues Square, was a vast, bare place with grey walls, with rough carpentry work and without furniture. Lirat called it familiarly "his hangar." A hangar it was, indeed, where the north winds blew and the rain entered the room through the small crevices in the roof. Two long tables of plain wood supported boxes of paint, scrap books, blocks, handles of fans, Japanese albums, casts, a mess of odd and useless things. Near a book case filled with old magazines in a corner there was a pile of pasteboard, canvas, torn sketches with the stretchers sticking through. A shattered sofa creaking with a sound like that of a piano out of tune, whenever one tried to sit on it, two rickety arm chairs, a looking glass without a frame—constituted the only luxury of the studio illumined by trembling sunlight. In the winter, on days when Lirat had a model posing for him in the studio, he used to light his little cast iron stove whose chimney, crooked into several large bends, supported by iron wire and covered with rust, rose in a serpentine fashion in the middle of the room, before losing itself in the roof through an opening, all too large. On other days, even during the coldest nights, he substituted for the heat of the stove an old coat of astracan fur, worn out, bald and scabby, which he put on with real pleasure.
Lirat took a childish pride in this dilapidated studio, and he boasted of its bareness as other painters do of their embroidered plush and tapestries, invariably historical in origin. Nay, he even wanted it to be still less attractive, he wanted its floor to be the bare ground. "It is in my studio that I learn who my best friends are," he would often say, "they always come again, the others stay away. That's very convenient." Very few came more than once.
The young woman was attractively seated in her chair, her bust slightly bent forward, her hands buried in her muff; from time to time she would take out an embroidered handkerchief and bring it slowly to her mouth which I could not see because of the thick border of the veil which hid it, but which I surmised was very beautiful, very red and exquisitely shaped. In her whole figure, elegant and refined, about which, in spite of the smile which rendered it so alluring, there was an air of modesty and even haughtiness, I could distinguish only these beautiful eyes which rested on objects like the rays of some heavenly star, and I followed her gaze which passed from the floor to the frame work, so vibrant with luminosity and caresses. The embarrassing silence continued. I thought I alone