A long month has passed since my return to Paris. Twice Rose has written to announce her arrival: I waited for her at the station and she did not come. Poor child! We all know how difficult it is to break one's bonds, even the most detested1. A thousand invisible ties keep us in the place where chance has set us; and, when we are about to rend2 them, they become so many unsuspected pangs3. Instinct blindly resists all change, as though it were unable to distinguish what reason dimly descries4 beyond the trials and dangers of the moment. Rose is leaving nothing but wretchedness; in front of her is a fair and pleasant prospect5. Nevertheless, she hesitates and she is unhappy.
In my present restless state, I no longer know what I wish. If she came to-morrow, should I be glad or not? I cannot tell. I can no longer tell. Those who do not suffer from this absurd mania6 for action escape those painful moments when we are at the
mercy of a distracted will that no longer knows exactly what it ought to want. In absence, our feelings pass through so many contradictory7 phases! When the hour of return comes, finding it impossible to collect so many conflicting sentiments or to bring back to one point so many different desires, we surrender ourselves to the impression of the moment; and this impression often has nothing in common with what we had previously8 felt and hoped.
I have done my utmost to make her come. Lately, I have been sending her urgent and encouraging letters daily. Now, the hour is approaching; and my only feeling is one of anguish9.
I have told her twenty times that the talk about responsibility which I hear all around me brings a smile to my lips. I have told her how, by making my conduct depend on hers, I relieved myself of all personal anxiety. And to-day my task appears to me so heavy that I can only laugh at my presumption10.
2
It was foolish of me to write to her:
"What are your faults? Teach me to know you. Tell me what you are."
In reality, our faults arise from our circumstances. Events alone set us the questions to which our actions give a definite answer. Up to the present, Rose has not lived; she has been accumulating forces that are now about to come into being. What will they be? Whither will they tend? We can assume nothing in a life that is but beginning; and is it not just this that encourages us to seek and to help? Each of us has only to look back in order to know that, in the shifting soil of characters, we can fix or establish nothing. I found her acquiescing11 in a shameful12 servitude; and yet I have faith in the nobility of her soul. She was untruthful; there was no relation between her wishes and her actions, her thoughts and her words. Nevertheless, I do not doubt her essential honesty.
The atmosphere that surrounds us is so often treacherous13 to our pliant14 natures! We women are obliged to lie. So long as we have not found our "love," we look in vain for a little confidence. No one believes us, no one receives the best part of our soul. One would think that, for those who listen to us, our sincerest words are poisoned as they pass through our fairest smiles. And, when nature has made us beautiful and gifted, people take pleasure
in judging us severely15, as they might look at the summer days through dark-tinted window-panes.
We are always refused recognition. The first feeling which any work that we perform arouses is one of doubt. Its merit is disputed. And yet we have devoted16 a part of our youth to it; we have left with it a little of our freshness and our bloom. Very often, it is the ransom17 of our sorrow. Our love is written upon it; and it bears the imprint18 alike of our smiles and of our tears. Do we not know that woman, for all her culture, remains19 closer than man to her instinct and her "soil?" She is less purely20 intellectual but more sensitive than man; and, while he can create everything in the silence of his imagination, she has to live and suffer everything that she brings into the world. She conceives and realises with her flesh and with her blood.
A woman said to me, one day:
"If I had to begin life over again, I should not have the courage to avoid a single danger, pain or disappointment. In surmounting21 them, I have gained a power of resistance which forms the framework of my present and my future. I can see the sparkle of my happiness better when I keep in the shadow of my sad memories; and all that I accomplish, all
that I write seems to me to flow from my past tears."
To refuse recognition to a woman's work is to refuse to recognise her soul, her existence and every throb22 of her heart!...
Man does not know that torture which every true woman suffers when she feels that those who are listening to her do not hear her real words, that those who are looking at her do not see what she is making every effort to show. Even when she is obeying the simplest impulses of her nature, people distrust what she says and what she does; and in some women, good and kind and beautiful, we see repeated the artless miracle of the flowers that exhaust themselves in giving too much fragrance23 and too much blossom. How fearful and timid this moral isolation24 makes us! And how thrice courageous25 we must be in the hour of realisation! If effort sometimes seems useless to men, what about women, who see themselves ever confronted by a blank wall of scepticism?
A man is valued by the weight of the forces which he stirs up for and against himself. The forces which woman encounters are nearly all hostile.
3
I was close upon sixteen. One day, I heard some one say, speaking of some trifling26 thing of which I was wrongly suspected:
"She is no longer a child. She's a woman now and she's lying."
That was a cruel speech, the sort of speech that influences a whole life. My eyes were gradually opened to the dreary27 injustice28 that casts its shadow over the fairest destinies of women. Nothing around them seems clear and natural. Doubt lies in wait for them, calumny29 rends30 them. Now my hour was coming: my skirts, touching31 the ground for the first time, had suggested the suspicion of deceit and hypocrisy32.
It was perhaps this wound, inflicted33 on the soul of the growing girl, that left the most serious mark on my soul as a woman. Thanks to a strange prick34 of conscience, to a singular need to give to others what I did not obtain, I wanted to trust and I did trust! I gave my confidence passionately35, utterly36, rapturously! And this made wells of such deep and impetuous joy spring up in me that I felt no bitterness when I saw my confidence marred37 as it passed
through others, even as a clear stream is muddied in following its course.
Still, I wanted more; I sought to concentrate in one person, herself generous and confiding38, the happiness which I lacked and whose infinite value I suspected. Ah, what a blessed relief when I found her! I was as one who has never seen his face save in distorting mirrors and who suddenly sees himself as he hoped to be. It seems to me that my happiness dates from that day. Before then, I suffered, I was all astray, an ill wind hovered39 round me; and, on the sands of other lives, there was never a trace of my footsteps where I believed that I had passed. Henceforth, another soul would read mine! Another's eyes would own the candour of my eyes!
It was little more than a child that introduced me to love and kindness. She was treated with iron severity, she was unhappy; I was alone: she became my daily companion. Alas40! too early ripe, too intelligent, she was of those who cannot stay. Is it a presentiment41 that makes them hurry so, or is it rather their eagerness to live, their over-sharpened senses that wear out their strength?
4
She was not fifteen; but, already matured in body and mind, she attracted immediate42 attention. Her walk was so superb that I cannot think of her without seeing her come swiftly to me, with that dear smile of hers and with her lovely arms outstretched in greeting. Her limpid43 eyes obeyed the light, the light of her heart and the light of the sky, whereas her dark hair, always tangled44 and rebellious45, bore witness to the protest of her dauntless spirit. In her company I tasted for the first time the delight of souls that join and blend and unite in mutual46 trust. In an ecstasy47 of sincerity48, for hours I imagined myself baptising her whole life with my faith. I said to her, over and over again:
"I believe in you.... I believe in you.... Do you understand what that means? It is something greater and better than 'I love you:' it means that one can never be alone again!"
She died a few months later; and for years I was to seek in vain in others' hearts and eyes the pure and limpid faith which reflects everything that bends over it.
One can love people without knowing them fully49;
one cannot believe in them without mingling50 one's soul with theirs; and the moral luxury of it is so great that, when we have once known it, if only for a moment, we demand it from all with whom we come in contact.
Roseline, all that I then wished for, that charming bond of tenderness and confidence which should link women together, that difficult and precious happiness which I knew for one hour through that child-soul: that is what I am trying to offer you.
And perhaps you will have something better still, because the assistance which you receive is deliberate and has stood the test. In the place of that artless faith rushing to meet life, you find a soul that has been steeped in it. Rose, may my faith and my soul be your two mirrors. In one, you will see your forces rise even as we catch the first swell51 of a cornfield at dawn. In the other, they will appear to you enlarged, multiplied, transformed according to nature's laws, ripened52 by the dazzling suns of noon, utilised by the intellect, ready at last to nourish you and nourish others.
5
Then I met men, I met other women, without ever attaining53 the wish of my heart. They came and went. But, at each soul that I lost, I found my own a little more and I remember most gratefully those who were the most cruel. This man was ill and unconscious of his actions; that woman was wicked; that man too frivolous54; and another was a liar55....
A liar! Even to-day, among those withered56 attachments57 which it pleases me to evoke58, this last arrests my thoughts. For it was he—O singular contrast!—who, by his lying and duplicity, finished the work begun by the frank confidence of the child.
He was a liar.—Lying came to him so easily and naturally that he himself did not discriminate59 between what he had done and what he had said, between what he had actually experienced and the life which he pretended to have lived. His was a strange nature, which, in its eagerness to seem, forgot to be, a nature which, no longer distinguishing its frontiers from another's, lost in the end its own domain60! A strange example of a strayed consciousness which, knowing no dividing line, attributed the acts of others to itself, spoke61 from their hearts and led their
existences! He walked through life as one walks through a gallery whose walls are panelled with mirrors. He could not take a step without thinking that he was taking a thousand; and his vanity enhanced his least actions to such a degree that he actually believed himself the lover of a woman if he merely kissed her hand. It was thus that he boasted of making innumerable conquests at every hour of the day; and, to hear him talk, always tired and exhausted62 with love, he was a wreck63 at twenty, as the price of his inordinate64 exploits. Enamoured of his appearance, he saw nothing beyond the blankness of his little soul, or rather he made it the origin and the end of everything. Poor empty head! Wretched puppet, whose spring was the vanity which every passer-by could set in motion at will!
At a time when I myself did not know it, he had cleverly discovered what he must appear to be in order to arouse my enthusiasm, thus offering me the illusion of that faith which I aspire65 to awaken66 in you, my Roseline. Certainly, I owe him much! If an exact copy of a masterpiece can stir us as deeply as the original, the perfect impersonation of a fine intellect and a noble character can influence us very happily. How grateful I am to him for the trouble
which he took to give me a representation of virtues67 which he did not possess! They were painted on his soul in such relief, a relief which no reality gives, as I was afterwards to learn! The artificial lilies that decorate the chapel68 of the church hard by have an assurance that is absent from those which will soon fade over there, on the table. The false boasts an unvarying brilliance69, an imposing70 emphasis which we never find in the true. And, no doubt, the qualities of which he vouchsafed71 me the sight would never have had such value in my eyes, if his fatuousness72 had not displayed them to my youthful admiration73 as one shows an object behind a magnifying-glass.
And what does it matter to me now that they were false, those gifts with which that soul seemed laden74, if for a moment I pictured them as real! After the error was dispelled75, the image which I once thought true remained in me. It had determined76 my tastes, fixed77 my opinions, set my mind at rest. Subsequently, I was to try and refashion the perfection of which I had beheld78 the mirage79 and, with still greater ardour, I was to pursue in others and conquer at last the reality of the once-known happiness which I thought that I had found in him.
We are none the poorer when a sad truth takes the
place of a beautiful dream. Knowledge has already filled the void which the lost illusion leaves behind it....
6
Let us seek then, Rose, let us seek even after we have found! Whether we be denied or heard, let us go on seeking! When we have lovingly performed the little things necessary that a flower may peradventure blossom, if it does not give us what we hoped for, does that prevent us from loving another exactly like it and from tending it with all the greater skill and care?
Our ignorance must be renewed in the presence of each life that touches ours. May the quest suffice to keep our faith eternally young, that wonderful, childlike faith which alone encourages, finds and sets free.
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1
detested
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| v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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descries
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| v.被看到的，被发现的，被注意到的( descried的现在分词 ) | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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mania
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| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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7
contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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acquiescing
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| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的现在分词 ) | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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pliant
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| adj.顺从的；可弯曲的 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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17
ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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18
imprint
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| n.印痕，痕迹；深刻的印象；vt.压印，牢记 | |
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19
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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20
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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21
surmounting
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| 战胜( surmount的现在分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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22
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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23
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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24
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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25
courageous
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| adj.勇敢的，有胆量的 | |
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26
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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27
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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28
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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29
calumny
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| n.诽谤，污蔑，中伤 | |
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30
rends
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| v.撕碎( rend的第三人称单数 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破 | |
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31
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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32
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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33
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
prick
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| v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛 | |
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35
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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36
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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37
marred
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| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
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38
confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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39
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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40
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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41
presentiment
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| n.预感，预觉 | |
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42
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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43
limpid
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| adj.清澈的，透明的 | |
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44
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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45
rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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46
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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47
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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48
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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49
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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50
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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51
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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52
ripened
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
attaining
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的现在分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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54
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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55
liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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56
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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57
attachments
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| n.（用电子邮件发送的）附件( attachment的名词复数 )；附着；连接；附属物 | |
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58
evoke
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| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
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59
discriminate
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| v.区别，辨别，区分；有区别地对待 | |
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60
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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61
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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62
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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63
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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64
inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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65
aspire
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| vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于 | |
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66
awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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67
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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68
chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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69
brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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70
imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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71
vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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72
fatuousness
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| n.愚昧，昏庸，蠢 | |
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73
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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74
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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75
dispelled
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| v.驱散，赶跑( dispel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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77
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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78
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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79
mirage
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景 | |
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