The ceremony ended, my father entered my room. He walked back and forth for some time without speaking, his arms crossed on his back.
"Ah! my poor Monsieur," lamented old Marie, "what a terrible misfortune!"
"Yes; yes," replied my father, "it is a great, a terrible misfortune!"
He sank into an armchair, heaving a sigh. I can see him right now with his swollen eyelids, his dejected look, his hanging arms. He had a handkerchief in his hand, and from time to time brought it to his eyes, red from tears.
"Perhaps I did not take good care of her, Marie. … She did not like to have me around. … Yet I did what I could, everything I could. … How frightful she looked, all rigid on the bed! … Ah, God! I shall always see her that way. The day after tomorrow she would be thirty-one, would she not?"
My father drew me toward him and seated me on his knees.
"You love me all the same, don't you, my little Jean?" he asked, rocking me. "Tell me, do you love me? I have no one but you! … "
Speaking to himself he said:
"Perhaps it is better that it is so. Who knows what the outcome would be later on! … Yes, perhaps it is better this way. … Ah! poor little one, look at me straight! … "
And as if at that very moment he had divined in my eyes which resembled the eyes of my mother a whole destiny of suffering, he pressed me close to his breast and burst into tears.
"My little Jean!—Ah! my poor little Jean!"
Worn out by the emotion and fatigue of the night before, he fell asleep, holding me in his arms. And I, seized suddenly with a feeling of great pity, listened to this unknown heart which for the first time was beating close to mine.
It had been decided a few months previous to this that I should not be sent to college, but that I should have a private tutor. My father did not approve of this method of education. But he had met with such opposition that he thought best not to interfere, and just as he had sacrificed his domination of husband over wife, he also gave up his right of a father over me. Now I was to have a tutor, for my father wanted to remain faithful to the wishes of my mother even when she was dead.
One fine morning I saw him arrive, a very grave-looking gentleman, very blond, very close shaven, who wore blue spectacles. Monsieur Jules Rigard had very obsolete ideas on education, he carried himself with the stiffness of a servant, and bore a sacerdotal air which, far from encouraging me to learn, made all study disgusting to me. He had been told without a doubt that my mentality was slow and sluggish and, as I understood nothing from his first lesson, he took that judgment for granted and treated me like an idiot. It never occurred to him to penetrate into my young mind, to hold converse with my heart; never did he ask himself whether under this sad mask of a lonesome child there were not hidden ardent aspirations quite beyond my age, an all too passionate and restless nature eager to know, which introspectively and morbidly unfolded itself in the silence of secret thoughts and mute ecstasies.
Monsieur Rigard stupefied me with Greek and Latin, and that was all. Ah! how many children understood and guided properly, might have become great if they had not been permanently deformed by this frightful crushing of their brains by an imbecile father or an ignorant teacher. Is it all, then, to have lustfully begotten you on an evening of passion, and must not one continue the work of one's life forces by giving you intellectual nourishment as well, in order that it may strengthen your life and provide you with weapons to defend it. The truth was that my soul felt even lonelier with my father than with my teacher! Yet he did everything he could to please me. He consciously, though stupidly, strove to show his love for me. But when I was with him, he could never find anything to tell me outside of foolish, idle tales, bogey man stories, terrifying legends of the revolution of 1848 which had left in him an invincible fear, or else a tale of the brigandage of one Lebecq, a great republican who scandalized the country by his passionate opposition to the curé and his obduracy in refusing to hang red bunting on the walls on national holidays.
Often he would take me along in his cabriolet, on his business trips in the country and, when perplexed as I was by the mystery of nature which every day unfolded itself around me, I asked him questions, he would not know how or what to answer and would dodge the answer thus: "You are too young to be told that! Wait till you grow up." And feeling miserable by the side of the large body of my father which swayed with the jolts of the road, I huddled up inside the cabriolet, while my father was killing with the stick of his whip the gad flies which swarmed on our mare's croup. Every now and then he would say: "I have never seen such pestering things; we'll have storm, that's sure."
In the church of Saint-Michel, inside a small chapel, illumined by the red glimmer of a window, upon an altar ornamented with embroidery and vases full of flowers, stood a statue of the Virgin. She had a pink body, a blue cloak bespangled with silver stars, a lilac-colored robe whose folds fell modestly upon gilt sandals. … In her arms she held a child, rosy and nude with a golden halo around its head, and the eyes of the mother rested rapturously upon the child. For several months this plaster Virgin was my sole friend, and the entire time which I could steal from my lessons I used to spend before this image, contemplating its tender colors. She appeared to me so beautiful, so kind and sweet that no human creature could rival in beauty, kindness and sweetness this painted piece of statuary which spoke to me in an unknown and delightful language and from which there came to me something like the intoxicating odor of incense and myrrh. When near her I was in truth a different child; I felt how rosier my cheeks were getting, how my blood was flowing more vigorously in my veins, how my thoughts disentangled themselves more easily and quickly; it seemed to me that the black veil which hung over my mentality was gradually being lifted, revealing new lights to me.
Marie was made an accomplice in my stealthy flights to the church; she often led me to the chapel where I remained for hours conversing with the Virgin, while the old nurse fervently recited her Rosary, kneeling before the altar. She had to get me out of my state of ecstasy by force, because otherwise, absorbed as I had been in the dreams which transported me to heaven, I would never have thought of returning home. My passion for this Virgin became so strong that away from her I was miserable and wished I had never left her at all. "Monsieur Jean will surely become a priest," old Marie used to say. It was like a yearning for possession, like a violent desire to take her, to entwine her, to cover her with kisses.
I took a notion to make a sketch of her: with what love, it would be impossible for you to imagine. When the statue had taken on a semblance of crude form on the paper, it gave me joy without end. All the energy in me that I could put forward I employed in this work, which I thought admirable and superhuman. More than twenty times I started the drawing over again, incensed with the crayon for not conforming to the delicacy of the lines, incensed with the paper upon which the image would not appear as live and real as I should have liked to see it. I was rabid on this point. My will was bent upon this unique goal. At length I succeeded in giving more or less exact substance to my idea of the plaster Virgin—but how naïve an idea it was. And immediately thereafter I stopped thinking of it. An inner voice had told me that nature was more beautiful, more moving, more splendid, and I began to notice the sun which caressed the trees, which played