Conscience — Complete






CHAPTER XLIV. AFTER LONG YEARS

Saniel did not return until quite late in the afternoon. When he opened the door with his key he was surprised at not seeing his wife run to him and kiss him.

“She is painting,” he said to himself, “she did not hear me.”

He passed into the parlor, convinced that he would find her at her easel; but he did not see her, and the easel was not in its usual place, there nor anywhere else.

He knocked at the door of Madame Cormier’s room; there was no reply; he knocked louder a second time, and after waiting a moment he entered. The room was empty; there was no bed, no furniture, no one.

Stupefied, he looked around him, then returning to the vestibule he called: “Phillis! Phillis!”

There was no reply. He ran to the kitchen, no one was there; he went into his office, no one there. But as he looked about him, he saw Phillis’s letter on his desk, and his heart leaped; he grasped it eagerly, and opened it with a trembling hand. It was as follows:

   “I have gone, never to return. My despair and disgust of life are
   such, that without my mother and the poor being who is so far away,
   I should kill myself; but in spite of the horror of my position I
   was obliged to reflect, and I do not wish to aggravate by folly the
   wickedness that is going on about me. My mother is no longer young;
   she is ill and has suffered cruelly. Not only do I owe it to her to
   brighten her old age by my presence, by the material and moral
   support that I can give her, but she must have faith that I am there
   to replace her, and to open my arms to her son, to my brother. The
   least that I can do for them is to wait courageously for him; and,
   however weary, terrible, or frightful my life may be hereafter, I
   shall bear it so that the unfortunate, the pariah, whom a pitiless
   fate has pursued, will find on his return a hearth, a home, a
   friend. This will be my only object, my reason for living; and in
   order to save myself from sluggishness and weariness, my thoughts
   will always be on the time when he will return, he whom I will call
   my child, and whom my love must save and cure. I know that long
   years separate me from that day, and that until it comes my broken
   heart will never have a moment of repose; but I shall employ this
   time in working for him, for the brother, for the child, for the
   cherished being who will come to me aged and desperate; and I wish
   that he may yet believe in something good, that he will not imagine
   everything in this world is unjust and infamous, for he will return
   to me weighed down by twenty years of shame, of degrading and
   undeserved shame. How will he bear these twenty years? What
   efforts must I not make to prove to him that he should not abandon
   himself to despair, and that life often offers the remedy,
   compassion to the most profound, to the most unjust human sorrows?
   How can I make him believe that? How lead his poor heart, closed to
   confidence, to feeling, to the tears that alone can relieve it? God
   who has so sorely tried me, without doubt will come to my aid, and
   will inspire me with words of consolation, will show me the path to
   follow, and give me the strength to persevere. Have I not already
   to thank Him for being alone in the world, outside of a mother and
   brother who will not betray me? I have no children, and I am spared
   the terror of seeing a soul growing in evil, an intelligence
   escaping from me to follow the path of infamy or dishonor. I leave,
   then, as I came. I was a poor girl, I go away a poor woman. I have
   taken the clothing and personal effects that I brought into our
   common home, nothing that was bought with your money; and I forbid
   you to interfere with my wish in this question of material things,
   as well as in my resolution to fly from you. Nothing can ever
   reunite us; nothing shall reunite us, no consideration, no
   necessity. I reject the past, this guilty past, the responsibility
   of which weighs so heavily on my conscience, and I should like to
   lose the memory of the detested time. It would be impossible for me
   to accept the struggle, or supplications, if you think it expedient
   to make any. I have cut our bonds, and hereafter we shall be as far
   apart as if one of us were dead, or even farther. Have no scruples,
   then, in leaving me alone to face a new life, a beginning that may
   appear difficult to one not situated as I am. The trials of former
   times were good for me, since they accustomed me to the difficulties
   of work. The desolation of to-day will sustain me, in the sense
   that having suffered all I can suffer, I no longer fear some
   discouraging catastrophe that will check me in my resolutions. In
   order not to compromise you, and more fully to become myself again,
   I shall take my family name—a dishonored name—but I shall bear it
   without shame. I shall live obscurely, absorbed in work and in
   trying to forget your existence; do the same yourself. If you think
   of the past, you will find, perhaps, that I am hard; yet this
   departure is not an egotistic desertion. I am no good to you, and
   the repose that you want would shun you hereafter in my presence.
   On the contrary, strive for forgetfulness, as I shall. If you
   contrive to wipe out of your life the part that is associated with
   me, perhaps you will be able to banish the remainder, and to recover
   some of the calm of other days. I can no longer remember that I
   have loved you, for my position is such that I have not the refuge
   of memory; at my age I must remain without a past as without a
   future; the consolation of the unfortunate is lost to me with
   everything else. I cannot rise out of my sorrow to try to find one
   hour when life was sweet to me; those hours, on the contrary, make
   me tremble, and I reproach myself for them as if they were a crime.
   Thus, whichever way I turn, I find only sadness and sharp regrets;
   everything is blighted, dishonored for me.”
 

Standing in the middle of his office he read this hastily written letter breathlessly. Arrived at the end he looked about him vaguely. His chair was near his desk; he let himself fall into it and remained there prostrated, holding the letter in his shaking hand.

“Alone!”

It was an October afternoon, dark and muddy; in the Rue des Saints-Peres, in front of the houses that hide the Charity Hospital, coupes were standing, and their long line extended to the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where the coachmen, having left their seats, talked together like persons who were accustomed to meet each other. At half-past four o’clock, in the deepening twilight, men with grave looks and dark clothes—members of the Academy of Medicine—the Tuesday sitting over, issued from the porch, and entered their carriages. Some of them walked alone, briskly, in a great hurry; others demonstrated a skilful tardiness, stopping to talk politely to a journalist, and to give him notes of the day’s meeting, or continuing, with a ‘confrere’ who was not an Academician, the conversation begun in the room of the ‘pas-perdus’; it was the Bourse of consultations that was just closed. Not all the members of the Academy have, in truth, a long list of patients to visit; but each one has a vote to give, and they are those whom the candidates surround, trying to win them.

One of the Academicians who appeared the last at the top of the steps was a man of great height but bent figure, with hollow cheeks and pale face lighted by pale blue eyes with a strange expression, both hard and desolate at the same time. He advanced alone, and his heavy gait and dragging step gave him the appearance of a man sixty years of age, while in other ways he retained a certain youthfulness. It was Saniel, twenty years older.

Without exchanging a bow or a hand-shake with any one, he descended to the pavement and walked to the boulevard, where he opened the door of a coups whose interior showed a complete ambulant library—a writing table with paper, ink, and lamp, pockets full of books and pamphlets.

Just as he was about to enter, a voice stopped him.

He turned; it was one of his old pupils, who had recently become a physician in the suburb of Gentilly.

“What is it?” asked Saniel.

“I want to ask you to come and assist me in a curious case of spasms, where your intervention may be decisive.”

“Where?”

“At the Maison-Blanche, a poor woman. What day could you give me?”

“Is it urgent?”

“Yes.”

“In that case I will go at once. Give the address to my coachman, and get in with me.”

But at this moment a white-haired man dressed in chestnut velvet, wearing a felt hat and sabots, came toward them, accompanied by two young men with whom he discoursed in a loud tone while gesticulating. People turned to look at them, so original was the appearance of old Brigard, the same man from head to foot that he had always been.

He came to Saniel with outstretched hands, and Saniel, taking off his hat, received him with marked respect.

“Enchanted to meet you,” Brigard said, “for I went to your office yesterday and did not find you.”

“Why did you not send me word beforehand? If you need me I am at your disposal.”

“Thanks, but happily I do not need your advice, neither for myself nor my family; it was simply that I wished to see you. Arriving at your house before your office hours, I waited in your reception-room and several patients came after me—a young woman who appeared to suffer cruelly, an old lady who was extremely anxious, and lastly a man who had some nervous disease that would not permit him to sit still. And, looking at them, I said to myself that as I was only making a friendly visit I would not remain and prolong the waiting of these unfortunates who counted the minutes, so I came away.”

“May I ask to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

The two young men who accompanied Brigard, and Saniel’s old pupil discreetly withdrew.

“The desire to present you my congratulations. When I learned of your candidature to the Academy of Medicine I said to myself: Here is one who has no chance; friend Saniel has originality and force; he has succeeded brilliantly; but these qualities are not exactly academic. I was deceived. You have broken open the doors, which is the only way that I understand of entering these places. That is why I congratulate you. And, besides, I did you wrong formerly—”

“Wrong? You?”

“I accused you of believing yourself stronger than life; in truth you were. My compliments!”

After warmly pressing Saniel’s hands, he went on his way with his two disciples, preaching to them.

The young doctor approached Saniel.

“He is an original,” he said.

“A happy man!” was the only reply.

     ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

     As ignorant as a schoolmaster
     As free from prejudices as one may be, one always retains a few
     Confidence in one’s self is strength, but it is also weakness
     Conscience is a bad weighing-machine
     Conscience is only an affair of environment and of education
     Find it more easy to make myself feared than loved
     For the rest of his life he would be the prisoner of his crime
     Force, which is the last word of the philosophy of life
     He did not sleep, so much the better! He would work more
     I believed in the virtue of work, and look at me!
     In his eyes everything was decided by luck
     Intelligent persons have no remorse
     It is the first crime that costs
     It is only those who own something who worry about the price
     Leant—and when I did not lose my friends I lost my money
     Leisure must be had for light reading, and even more for love
     Looking for a needle in a bundle of hay
     Neither so simple nor so easy as they at first appeared
     One does not judge those whom one loves
     People whose principle was never to pay a doctor
     Power to work, that was never disturbed or weakened by anything
     Reason before the deed, and not after
     Repeated and explained what he had already said and explained
     She could not bear contempt
     The strong walk alone because they need no one
     We are so unhappy that our souls are weak against joy
     We weep, we do not complain
     Will not admit that conscience is the proper guide of our action
     You love me, therefore you do not know me

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