ROMAIN ROLLAND

Translated from the French by

ELEANOR STIMSON & VAN WYCK BROOKS

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1925

Summer is the second volume of a work in several volumes that bears the title: The Soul Enchanted.

The first volume is entitled Annette and Sylvie.

CONTENTS

PART ONE CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII PART TWO CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI CHAPTER XXXII CHAPTER XXXIII CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV PART THREE CHAPTER XXXVI CHAPTER XXXVII CHAPTER XXXVIII CHAPTER XXXIX CHAPTER XL CHAPTER XLI CHAPTER XLII CHAPTER XLIII CHAPTER XLIV CHAPTER XLV CHAPTER XLVI CHAPTER XLVII CHAPTER XLVIII CHAPTER XLIX CHAPTER L CHAPTER LI

SUMMER

PART ONE

I

On the half-light of the room, with its closed shutters, Annette was sitting on her bed, smiling, with her white dressing-gown wrapped about her. Her unbound hair, which she had just washed, covered her shoulders. Through the open windows could be seen the motionless, golden warmth of an August mid-afternoon; without observing it, one felt out there the torpor of the Jardin de Boulogne sleeping in the sunlight. Annette shared in this beatitude. She could rest there for hours, stretched out, without stirring, without thinking, without needing to think. It was enough for her to know that there were two of her; and she did not even make an effort to talk with the "little one" who was inside her, because—of this she was sure—he felt what she felt, they understood one another without speaking. Waves of tenderness passed through the happy somnolence of her body. And then she relapsed again into a happy smile.

But if her mind was drowsy, her senses had retained a marvelous clairvoyance; they followed from moment to moment the fine vibrations of the air and the light. . . . A fragrant odor of strawberries in the garden. . . . She enjoyed it with her nostrils and her tongue. Her amused ear caught the slightest sound, the leaves brushed by a breeze, a footstep on the gravel, a voice in the street, a bell ringing for vespers. And the rumble ascending from the great crowds: Paris in 1900 . . . the summer of the Exposition. In the vat of the Champ de Mars thousands of human grapes were fermenting in the sun. . . . Far enough away, yet close enough to the monstrous bubbling to feel its presence and to be safe from it, Annette rejoiced in the contrast of the peace and the shade of her nest. Vain tumult! The truth dwells within me. . . .

II

Her hearing, subtle and wandering like that of a cat, seized upon every sound that passed, one after another, and idly let it fall again; from the floor below she caught the ring of the door-bell and recognized the little steps of Sylvie, who was always in a hurry. Annette would have preferred to be left alone. But she was so solidly settled in her happiness that, no matter who came, nothing could disturb her.

It was only eight days since Sylvie had received her news. Since last spring she had heard nothing from her sister. A personal adventure that had not affected her very much had yet been enough to fill her thoughts: she had not realized how long the silence had been. But when the affair was settled and she found her mind free again, with time to think of it, she began to be troubled. She went to her aunt at the Boulogne house for news. She was very much surprised to hear that Annette had come back some time before. She was rather inclined to give the forgetful soul a good snubbing, but Annette tactfully turned her to another subject that surprised her; gently but feelingly, she had simply told her the whole story. Sylvie found it very difficult to listen to the end. That Annette, the sensible Annette, had done this mad thing and refused to marry afterwards, no, it was unheard of, she simply wouldn't tolerate it! . . . This little Lucretia was scandalized. She railed at Annette; she called her an idiot. Annette remained calm. It was plain that nothing could make her change her mind. Sylvie realized that she had no hold on this obstinate soul: she would have liked to give her a good whipping! . . . But how was it possible to remain angry with such a lovable person who listened as you spoke with such a disarming smile! And then the mysterious charm of this maternity. . . . Sylvie anathematized it as a calamity, but she was too much a woman not to be touched. . . .

And to-day she had come again, with her mind made up to give Annette a good raking over the coals, to break down her stupid resistance, to oblige her to insist on marriage. . . . "If you don't, if you don't, I shall be furious! . . ." She came in like a gust of wind, smelling of rice-powder and battle. And to make a start, without saying good-morning, she began scolding about this mad way of passing one's days, shut up in the dark. But catching sight of the happy eyes of Annette, who stretched out her arms to her, she ran to her and hugged her. She went on scolding: "Fool! Silly! Arch-fool! . . . With her sweeping hair over her long white dressing-gown she looks like an angel. . . . But what a mistake it would be to think she was! . . . The sanctimonious wretch! The little scamp! . . ."

She shook her. Weariedly, contentedly, Annette let her have her way. Sylvie stopped in the middle of her tirade, took her sister's forehead between her hands and pushed back her hair. "She is fresh, she is pink, never have I seen her with such beautiful color. And that look of triumph! Good reason for it! Aren't you ashamed?"

"Not in the least!" said Annette. "I am happier than I have ever been before. And so strong, so well. For the first time in my life I feel complete, I desire nothing more. This longing that is going to be fulfilled for a child goes back so far in my life! Ever since I was a child myself. . . . Yes, when I was seven years old I was already dreaming of it."

"That's a fib," said Sylvie. "Only six months ago you told me you had never felt that maternity was your vocation."

"Do you really think that? Did I really say that?" said Annette, disconcerted. "It's true, I did say it. But I haven't lied, just the same, either now or then. . . . How explain it? I am not pretending. I remember clearly."

"I know how it is," said Sylvie. "When I have a fancy for something, I often immediately remember that I have never wanted anything but that since the day I was born."

Annette frowned; she was not satisfied. "The nature I feel to-day is my real nature. It always has been, but I didn't dare confess it to myself before the time came; I was afraid I was mistaken. Now . . . Oh! now, I see that it is even more beautiful than I had hoped. And it is my whole self. I want nothing more."

"When you wanted Roger or Tullio," said Sylvie maliciously, "you wanted nothing more."

"Oh, you don't understand anything! . . . Can the two things be compared? When I was in love (what you call 'love'), it wasn't I who wished it, I was forced. . . . How I suffered from that force that held me, without being able to resist it! . . . And now you see how my little one has come to my rescue when I was struggling in the bonds of the misery they call love, how he came, how he has saved me. My little liberator!"

Sylvie began to laugh. She had not in the least understood her sister's reasons. But she did not need any reasons to understand her maternal instinct: on that subject the two sisters would always be in accord. They began to chat affectionately about the little unknown creature (was it going to be a man or a woman?)—discussing a thousand nothings, serious and foolish, about its coming, things about which a woman never wearies of chattering.

They had been talking this way for a long time when Sylvie remembered that she had come to administer her lesson, not to sing a duet. "Annette," she said, "enough of this nonsense! There is a time for everything. Roger owes you marriage, and you must insist on it."

Annette made a weary gesture. "Why go back to that? I have told you that Roger offered it to me and that I refused."

"Well, when one has been stupid one should recognize it and change."

"I have no desire to change."

"Why don't you want to? You loved this man. I am sure you still love him. What has happened?"

Annette was unwilling to reply. Sylvie insisted, tactlessly seeking for the deep, personal reasons for their disagreement. Annette made an impatient gesture. Sylvie looked at her, astonished. Annette's expression was angry, her brows were knitted, her eyes full of irritation.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," said Annette, turning aside hastily.

Sylvie had touched a wound that she wanted to forget. Through an inconsistency she could not have explained, but which came from the depths of her nature, she who rejoiced at the coming of the child bore a grudge against the man who had given it to her; she could not forgive herself because her senses had been taken by surprise, because of the passion that had betrayed her in this way—she could not forgive the man who had seized such an opportunity. This instinctive recoil had been the true, hidden reason (hidden from her as from the others) for her flight from Roger and her refusal to see him again. In the depths of her being she hated him because she had loved him. But as her mind was straightforward she repressed these instincts which she felt to be evil. Why was Sylvie forcing her to become aware of them? . . .

Sylvie looked at her and insisted no more. Annette, calm again, ashamed of what she had allowed to become visible, of what she had seen herself, tried to change the subject and said quietly, "I don't want to marry. I am not made for these exclusive bonds. You may tell me that millions of women get used to them, that I exaggerate their seriousness. But I am made in such a way that I take everything seriously. If I give myself, I give myself, too much, and then I am smothered; I feel as if I were drowning with a stone around my neck. Perhaps I am not strong enough. My personality is not firmly established. Ties that are too close are bind-weeds that drain my energy; and there is not enough left for me. I try to please the 'other person,' to be like the image of what he wants me to be, and this ends badly. For in renouncing too much of one's nature one loses one's self-respect and cannot live any more; or one revolts and causes suffering. No, I am an egoist, Sylvie. I was made to live alone."

(Although she was not in any sense lying, she was uttering pretexts that masked the truth from herself.)

"You amuse me," said Sylvie. "You are the last woman to live without love."

"I hate it," said Annette. "But it will not catch me again now. I am protected from it."

"Beautifully protected!" said Sylvie. "He won't protect you in the least; you will have to protect him. You don't want to bind yourself, but have you thought of the fetters this little bundle is going to mean for you?"

"Happiness! With my arms filled, these arms that have been empty so long!"

"You are talking without thinking. Who is going to bring him up?"

"I."

"What about the father? He has rights over his child."

A new cloud of irritation passed over Annette's brows. . . . Rights! Rights over his child! . . . His child! The child of that man, that blind moment which he has already forgotten and which binds me for life! . . . Never! . . . My child is mine! . . . She said, "My child belongs to me."

"He will belong to whom he likes."

"Oh, I know whom he's going to like!"

"Seducer! And suppose that, in spite of everything, he reproaches you some day for depriving him of a father!"

"I shall fill his heart so full that there won't remain the tiniest place for regrets for anyone else."

"You are a monster of egoism."

"I said I was."

"You will be punished."

"Well, so much the worse for me if I can't make him love me! What's to prevent me from loving him and why shouldn't he love me?"

"If you really love him you should think first of his future. Plenty of other people have been obliged to accept a disagreeable marriage for the sake of the child."

"You revolt me," said Annette, "praising those women who condemn themselves to a false marriage, sometimes one built on hatred, out of love for the child. You remind me of that mother who told her daughter she had endured hell for her sake by remaining married. The daughter replied: 'Do you think hell is a good home for a child?'"

"The child needs a father."

"But how about the thousands of people who have gone without one? How many have never known one at all! How many have lost their fathers in early childhood and have been brought up by their mothers alone! Are they inferior to other people? The child needs a protecting love. Why should not mine be enough?"

"You overestimate your strength. Do you know what is awaiting you?"

"I know, I know! The little arms of a child about my neck."

"But do you know the price the world will make you pay for it? It would be much better for you to be married and an adulteress four times over than to have people brand you with the name of an unmarried mother. To dare to assume the pains and responsibilities of motherhood without having first accepted the stamp of their official marriage is something for which a woman of their class is never pardoned. It would be all right for me. What people like myself do is of no consequence. Your bourgeois people even find that it pays to have things so. They are ready enough to praise free love in the working-class, as they do in Louise, but a girl of the bourgeoisie belongs in a private preserve. You are their property. They can buy you by contract, before a lawyer; you can't give yourself in the presence of heaven and say, 'It's my right.' Good Lord, where would we end if property revolted against its master and said, 'I am free! Let anyone who wishes come and cultivate me.'"

Even when she was indignant Sylvie could not speak seriously.

Annette smiled and said, "Customs are made by man. I know. He condemns the woman who dares to have her children outside of marriage without dedicating herself for life to the father of her children. But for many women this means slavery, for they do not love their husbands. Many a woman would remain free and alone with her little ones if she had the courage. I shall try to have it."

Sylvie said, with a touch of pity, "Poor innocent! Your life has been shielded from hardships by the double windows of this bourgeoisie that shuts you in with its prejudices—and its privileges also. Once you leave it, you will never be allowed to enter it again, and you will have a glimpse then of what life is!"

"Well, Sylvie, that's only fair; you are right in saying that I have been privileged; it will be good for me to have my share in what you suffer."

"Too late! One must learn that in childhood. At your age it's no longer possible. Luckily you are rich, you will never know material suffering. But the other, moral suffering . . . your class will cast you out, public opinion will condemn you, every day you will have to endure some little insult. . . . You have a proud and tender heart. It will bleed."

"It will bleed, but one enjoys happiness all the more if one has to pay for it. I want nothing but health and an honest mind. Public opinion has no terrors for me."

"But what if your child suffers from it?"

"Would they dare? Well, we shall fight together against the cowards."

Sitting upright again on her bed, she shook her hair like a lioness.

Sylvie studied her, did her best to preserve her look of severity, was unable to do so, laughed, shrugged her shoulders and sighed, "Poor little idiot!"

Annette coaxingly asked her, "Will you help us?"

Sylvie hugged her furiously. And she shook her fist at the wall. "Beware, anyone who touches you!"

She left. Annette, fatigued by the discussion, fell back into her reverie. This time she had won in the encounter with her sister. But one disturbing thing remained from the conversation, one word uttered by Sylvie . . . Would the child some day reproach her? . . .

Stretched out on her back, with her hands crossed over her breast, she listened to what was within her. The tiny creature was beginning to stir. Annette, with her lips closed, spoke to him as she had so often done. She asked him if she was doing right in keeping him for herself alone; she begged him instantly to tell her if she was right, if he was satisfied: for she would do nothing for which he could blame her. Whereupon the child, naturally enough, replied that she was doing right, that he was satisfied. He said he wanted to be hers, hers alone, and that in order to dedicate herself to him she should remain free and live with him alone. She and he. . . .

Annette laughed with happiness. Her heart was so full that she could not speak. And with her head heavy and intoxicated with her joy she fell asleep. . . .

III

As soon as Annette's condition began to be visible, Sylvie obliged her sister to move away from Paris. It was the beginning of autumn; before long her friends would be coming back from their vacations. Surprisingly enough, Annette offered no resistance. She was not afraid of public opinion, but anything that might mean discord just now would have been intolerable to her; nothing must disturb her harmony!

She allowed herself to be conducted by Sylvie to a place on the Côte d'Azure, but she did not stay there. It offered her no peaceful seclusion. The neighborhood of the sea made her feel uncomfortable. Annette was a landswoman. She could marvel at the ocean, but she could not live on familiar terms with it. She submitted to the powerful fascination of its breath, but this breath was not beneficial to her. It reawoke in her too many hidden anxieties; it aroused what she did not wish to be conscious of . . . not yet, not now. . . . There are beings whom we do not love because, they say, we are afraid to love them. (Does that mean we do love them?) Annette fought against the sea because she was fighting against herself, against a dangerous Annette from whom she was trying to escape. . . .

She set out again northward, to the neighborhood of the Savoyard lakes, and took quarters for the winter in a little town at the foot of the mountains. Sylvie was only informed after she was settled. Kept in Paris by her work, she could only make her sister brief, occasional visits, and it troubled her to know that Annette was alone in this forsaken spot. But Annette, during this time, could not be alone enough, nor could the spot be sufficiently forsaken. She would have found a hermitage delightful. The richer her inner life was, the more need she felt for a clear, soundless atmosphere. She did not suffer, as Sylvie supposed, from being abandoned to strange hands in her condition. In the first place, she had so much affection to give that no one seemed to her a stranger, and, as sympathy attracts sympathy, she did not long remain a stranger to anyone else. It was not that the country-people, who had little curiosity, put themselves out to know her. They bowed back and forth, exchanged a few cordial words as they passed, or from their doorsteps or over the hedges. They wished each other well. Probably in case of need she could not have counted too far on this good will, but, such as it was, it still meant a good deal in the daily round. The days were lighter for it. Annette found the cool kindness of these good souls, of whom she knew nothing and who left her alone, more to her taste than the tyrannical exactions of relatives and friends who assume over us the rights of heavy-handed guardians.

Mid-November. . . . Sitting by the window, sewing, she looked out at the new-fallen snow over the fields and the white-capped trees. But her eyes returned to a wedding announcement. . . . The marriage of Roger Brissot to a young girl of the political world in Paris. (Annette knew her.) . . . Roger had lost no time. The Brissot ladies, angered by Annette's flight, had hastened to bring about another wedding before people should begin to gossip about their son's discomfiture, and Roger, in his resentment, had accepted their choice. Annette could feel no surprise, nor could she complain. She forced herself to think that she was glad for poor Roger's sake. But the news disturbed her more than she would have wished. So many memories quivered in her soul and her flesh! And there, in that flesh, was the life brought into being by him. . . . In the depths of the shadow, the agitations of those former days were stirring. . . . No, no, Annette would not allow them to come out into the open! She felt an aversion for those fevers of the past. Everything that was sensual wearied her. Disgust, revolt. And that animosity. (She acknowledged it now.) The echo of the ancestral hatred of the female for the male who has fertilized her.

She sewed; she sewed; she wanted to forget. Often when she was nervous and saw a dangerous cloud gathering on the horizon, she had recourse to the prayer-wheel of work. She sewed, and her thoughts slipped back into their proper order.

So they slipped back to-day. After half an hour of silent application, her anxiety had passed, her smile had reappeared. As Annette lifted the forehead that was bent over her work, her eyes were peaceful and she said, "So be it!"

The sun laughed over the snow. Annette left her work and dressed to go out. Her ankles and her feet were a little swollen and she had to force herself to walk; but once she was outside she found that she enjoyed it. For her little companion was with her as she strolled along. He was making his presence known now. In the evening especially he measured the dimensions of his nest; he groped about in all directions.

"Heavens, how narrow this is!" he seemed to say. "Is it never going to end?"

Then he went to sleep again. By day, when she was out walking, he was well-behaved. But he seemed to be looking out through his mother's eyes, for to these eyes everything appeared to be new. What fresh colors! Nature had just placed them on the canvas. Annette's cheeks too had a beautiful color. Her heart beat more vigorously and her blood ran. She enjoyed every odor, every taste; when nobody was looking she would eat a little snow by the roadside. Delicious! She remembered that as a child she had done the same thing when her nurse's back was turned. And she sucked the stems of the damp, frozen reeds. She had a shiver of epicurean delight down the whole length of her throat; as the snowflakes melted on her tongue, she too melted with the luxurious pleasure of it.

After she had walked for an hour or two in the country, along the snowy roads, alone yet not alone, alone but with all the company in the world, under the grey canopy of the winter sky, listening to the song of her own springtime, she turned back towards the town, her cheeks whipped red by the cold wind, her eyes shining. Before the baker's window she would yield to the attraction of some dainty made of chocolate or honey. (What a glutton the little fellow was!) Then she would go and sit down, at nightfall, in the church, before an altar, dark and golden like the honey. And she who had no practical religion, no religious faith—or thought she had no faith—would remain there till they closed the doors, dreaming, praying, loving. Night fell; the altar-lamps, faintly swinging, collected the last gleams in the darkness. Annette became stiff, chilly, a little numb in her woolen overcoat as she warmed herself at her own sun. A holy calm was within her. She was dreaming for the child of a life enveloped in sweetness, in silence—in her own loving arms.

IV

On one of the first days of the year the child was born. A boy. Sylvie arrived just in time to welcome him. In spite of her suffering, which drew from her an occasional groan—no tears, Annette, interested, absorbed, was a little disappointed to find, surprisingly, that she was more present at the event than the cause of it. The great emotion she had expected had not appeared. When travail begins, one is caught in a trap. No means of escaping: one has to go through with it. One resigns oneself and bends all one's strength to reach the end as quickly as possible. One's mind is clear, but one's energy is entirely occupied in enduring the pain. One scarcely thinks of the child at all. No room for tender or exalted feelings. Those that have previously filled one's heart vanish. It is truly hard, harsh "labor," a labor of the flesh and the muscles, wholly physical, with nothing beautiful or beneficent about it. Up to the very moment when one's liberation comes, when one feels the little body slip from one's own body . . . At last!

Then, instantly, one's joy returns. With her teeth chattering, worn out, almost collapsing at the bottom of an Arctic ocean, Annette stretched out her cold hands to grasp and press to her own bruised limbs her living fruit—her dearly beloved.

There were no longer two of her now. They were no longer two in one, as before. A fragment of herself was detached in space like a little satellite, drawn by gravity about a star, an additional tiny force the effect of which was immense in the psychic atmosphere. A strange thing that, in this new couple formed by the segmentation of a being, the larger should depend more for support upon the smaller than the smaller upon the larger. Its wailing cry, through its very weakness, was a source of strength for Annette. Oh, the wealth that comes to us from a loved one who cannot exist without us! Annette, with her stiffened breasts, at which the little animal greedily tugged, eagerly poured into the body of her son the flood of milk and hope with which she was swollen.

Then began to unroll the first touching cycle of the vita nuova, that discovery of the world, as old as the world, which every mother experiences again as she bends over the cradle. The tireless watcher awaiting with beating heart the awakening of her Sleeping Beauty. In his sapphire eyes, with their violet depths, Annette found herself reflected—they were so brilliant. What did it see, this gaze, as indefinite and limitless as the great blue eye of heaven—empty or profound, one couldn't say which? And what sudden shadows were cast upon this pure mirror by those clouds of suffering, those invisible furies, those unknown passions, come heaven knows whence! Was it from her past or from his future? The face or the reverse of the same medal. . . . "You are what I have been. I am what you will be. What will you be? What am I?". . . Annette questioned herself in the eyes of her sphinx. And as she observed this consciousness rising hourly from the depths, she lived over again, without realizing it, in this homunculus, the birth of humanity.

One by one little Marc opened his windows to the world. There began to pass over the uniform surface of his liquid stare more definite gleams, like a flock of birds seeking for a place to alight. After a few weeks the flower of a smile appeared on the living shrub. And then the birds that had settled there began to chirp. Forgotten was the tragic nightmare of the first days, forgotten the terror of the unknown earth, the cries of the being brutally dragged from the maternal shell, cast naked and bruised into the cruel light. The little man was comforted and took possession of life. And he found it good. He explored it, touched and tasted it greedily with his mouth, his eyes, his feet, his hands, his back. He gloried in his prize, playing in astonishment with the sounds that emerged from his pipe. One prize more, his voice! He listened to himself singing. But his singing did not give him more delight than it gave his mother. Annette was intoxicated by it. This little stream of a voice made her heart melt. The shrill cries that rose from the instrument gave her an exquisite pleasure as they pierced her ear.

"Cry louder, my darling! Yes, assert the life that is in you!"

He asserted it with an energy that had no need of encouragement. Joy, anger, whims, he protested them loudly in every key. Annette, who was a novice in motherhood and a scandalously bad educator, found it all charming; she did not have the strength to resist these tyrannical appeals. She would get up ten times during the night rather than hear him groan. And from dawn to dark she let him cling to her breast like a greedy leech. The child could not have been happier, but it was not very good for her.

When she saw her sister again in the spring, Sylvie found her thinner, and she was disturbed. Annette still seemed to be just as happy, but her expression had become a little feverish; the tears came into her eyes at any affectionate word. She admitted that she did not sleep enough, that she did not know how to get proper help, and she felt inadequate before the practical difficulties that arose in regard to the care and health of the child. She said all this, affecting to laugh at her faint-heartedness, but the fine assurance she had felt at the outset had vanished. She was startled to discover that she was not as robust as she had thought; as she had never been ill, she had not known the limits of her strength, and she believed she could use it uncalculatingly. She realized now that these limits were narrow and that she could not pass them with impunity. What a fragile thing life is! At other times this realization would not have affected her. But now that her life was double, and someone else, even more fragile than herself, depended upon this fragile thing. . . . Heavens, what would happen if she disappeared? During her sleepless nights Annette turned this fear over in her mind many a time. . . . She listened to her sleeping child, and at the least change in its respiration, a slightly quicker breath, a cry or even a silence, her own heart stopped beating. And as soon as this anxiety had once entered it took up its abode in her. Annette no longer knew the solemn, carefree calm of the night hours when the motionless body and the thought-free mind, dreaming without sleeping, floated like water-flowers, motionless, on the nocturnal pond. An Elysian quietude, in which the grace that is granted one is only felt by the heart after it has been lost. Henceforth, the watching soul is distrustful every moment. In the most confident moments apprehension lies concealed.

Sylvie was not mistaken. Under Annette's valiant smile, as she joked about her weakness, she perceived how physically disordered she was, perceived her animal need of joining her own kind again. She decided that Annette should leave her retreat and come back and settle in some house in the country a few hours from Paris where Sylvie could see her almost every day and the news of her return would not become known. Annette had no objection, but she insisted upon returning boldly to her own house in Paris. She would not hear of any opposition to this. In vain Sylvie pointed out to her that it would be most unwise, that her peace of mind would be endangered. Annette was immovable. Her pride would not endure anything that looked like running away in the face of public opinion. During the happy year when she had been brooding over the child, she had not thought of public opinion. She had lived alone with her happiness; there was no room for a third person. For several months her happiness had not diminished; she would have liked the world to know of it, and it was painful to her to admit to herself that she must hide it. The constant thought of this had hurt her. What, did she have to conceal as something shameful this jewel that was all her pride? She would seem to be denying it!

"Deny you, my treasure!" She kissed him passionately. "I should not have run away. I should have forced people to accept you from the very beginning. But no more of this secrecy! I shall show you to people and say, 'Look at my beautiful baby! You other mothers haven't anything like him, have you?'"

V

She returned to Paris and settled there. The daughter of Raoul Rivière knew very well that it would not be so easy to induce people to accept her situation. But although she had inherited her father's contemptuous attitude towards the world, she had not acquired from him the habit of yielding outwardly to its prejudices in order to escape from it all the more effectively. She meant to face it down and get the better of it.

Her first experience was favorable enough. In Annette's absence her old Aunt Victorine had remained in charge of the house, as she had done now for many years. This diminutive person of more than sixty had a fresh complexion, unwrinkled cheeks and tight little ringlets close about her face. Calm, gentle, inoffensive, excessively timid, she had kept herself sheltered from everything that might have disturbed her. From her childhood Annette had always seen this Dame Trot of an aunt about the house, looking after all the bothersome domestic duties, seeing that everything was clean and comfortable and watching over the kitchen (for she was an epicure), playing the part of an old family servant for whom, just because she was part of the household furniture, nobody put himself out. Her opinions had no weight; as a matter of fact, she had none. In the course of the thirty years she had passed under her brother's roof Aunt Victorine might have seen and heard strange things. But she had seen nothing, heard nothing. It would have required force to make her see what she did not wish to see. Raoul had taken no precautions. In his circle of intimates he called her the deaf-mute of his seraglio. He made fun of her to her face, fooled her, was rude to her, called her a blockhead, made her cry, and then coaxed her back into a good humor, gave her a noisy smack on both cheeks and induced her to coddle him as if he had been a big boy. She had remembered him as a man with a heart of gold, indeed as a saint—which would have amused him very much in his grave if, for a Raoul Rivière, a tireless lover of the superficial things of this world, anything that lay beneath had been worth so much as a smile.

It would not have been difficult for Annette to impress upon Aunt Victorine's eyes an equally advantageous image of her personality. She had inherited, along with the house, the worship which the old family tabby rendered to the master. The only thing that was necessary was not to disturb her illusions. Annette hesitated a long time before making up her mind to do so. She had kept her aunt in ignorance of her adventure. In leaving Paris she had used her health and her desire to travel as a pretext. Far as this was from corresponding with the facts, her aunt had appeared to believe it; she was not inquisitive and shrank from hearing anything that might upset her. But, sooner or later, she had to know the truth. Sylvie, after the child's birth, undertook to inform her. The poor woman was completely taken aback. It was very hard for her to understand the situation; she had never been brought face to face with anything of the kind. She sent Annette several frantic letters, so incoherent that Annette might have thought—at her age people have no pity—that Aunt Victorine herself had just had the baby. She consoled her as best she could. Sylvie was convinced that the old lady would leave the house. But to leave the house was the last thought that could have entered Aunt Victorine's head. For the rest, her mind was thrown into the most inextricable confusion. She was quite incapable of giving any advice, for advice was what she herself needed. The only thing she could do was to lament. But one does not live by lamentation, and, as one has to live in spite of everything, she ended by discovering in Annette's misfortune a trial sent by heaven. She was beginning to get used to it, in the absence of her niece, whose removal kept the disgraceful occurrence at a distance, when Annette announced that she was coming back.

Annette was deeply moved on her return home. Sylvie had come to the station to meet her. Aunt Victorine could not make up her mind to do this; and, when she heard the house-door opening, she precipitately mounted the stairs which she had half descended and ran and shut herself up in her room. There Annette found her in tears. Her aunt, throwing her arms about her, repeated, "My poor child! How is it possible? How is it possible?"

Annette, more disturbed than she wished to appear, assumed an air of assurance and said bluntly, with a laugh, "There will be time enough to explain it all. Let's go down to dinner now."

The old lady allowed herself to be led downstairs. She continued to whimper. Annette said to her, "Hush, hush, dear aunt! You mustn't cry."

Her aunt tried to remember what she had wanted to say. There were a good many things, lamentations, rebukes, questions, exclamations. But out of them all she could extract nothing: nothing emerged but one great sigh after another. Annette took her at once into the presence of the baby, who was sleeping blissfully, its whole little body relaxed and plump, its head thrown back. She fell into an ecstasy and clasped her hands: the old retainer's heart instantly swore fealty to the new head of the house. From this moment, young once more, she attached herself to the chariot of the little god. At times she remembered that, in spite of all, he was an object of scandal, and she found herself in confusion again. Annette, talking with an affected indifference, watched with the corner of her eye the good old face that was growing so long. "Come, what's the matter?" she asked. "You must give some reason."

Once more Aunt Victorine began her confused lamentations.

"Yes," said Annette, drumming with her fingers. "Yes . . . But, after all, what's to be done? Would you like to have us lose our dear little boy?"

(She knew very well what she was doing in making a point of this coaxing "our.")

Her superstitious aunt, quite upset, protested, "Annette, don't say that. It's dangerous. How can you say such things?"

"Well, then, you mustn't look that way. As long as our little one is here, as long as he has come, what are we going to do about it? What better can we do than to love him and be happy?"

Her aunt might have replied, "Yes, but why should he have come?" But she no longer had the strength to wish him away. Morality might have wished it. The world and religion. Dignity and peace of mind. Peace of mind, above all, perhaps. Her innermost thought, which she did not confess to herself, was, "Heaven help us! If only that unhappy child had not told me anything about it!"

In the end, as it was impossible to reconcile contradictory thoughts, Aunt Victorine ceased to think at all. Abandoning herself to instinct, she became the old hen that has spent her life bringing up the chicks of others. She accepted it.

But Annette had no particular reason to congratulate herself. There are allies who bring more trouble than help. Through her aunt, annoyances from outside speedily began to reach Annette. Madame Victorine was a gossip, and she lent her ear to everything the neighborhood had to say about her niece's return. She would come running home, bathed in tears, to repeat it to Annette. Annette would scold her affectionately, but she could not help being affected by this stupid tittle-tattle. When the old woman came in she would wonder now with a shiver, "What is she going to tell me this time?"

She forbade her to talk. But when her aunt was silent, it was even worse, thanks to what she did not say, her sighs, her look of distress. And Annette was storing up an increasing irritation against this poisonous public opinion which she pretended to ignore.

If she had been prudent she would at least have avoided occasions for coming in contact with it. But she was too much alive to be prudent. People are only prudent when they have suffered from not being so. Human nature is so made that Annette, who contemptuously turned her back on the judgment of the world, burned to know what people were saying behind her back. And, dreading every morning that the day would not pass without bringing her the echo of some disturbing remark, she was ready to go out in search of them when no such remarks came. She was spared the trouble. From her family, from her cousins of both sexes, with whom she maintained only the most distant connection, she received scandalized letters and lectures that she could hardly endure. Their claim to pose as judges of her conduct and champions of the family honor should have seemed less irritating than grotesque to one who, like Annette, had been only too well informed by her father about the secret history of the family and knew how to take the measure of these Aristarchuses. But Annette was in no laughing mood: she would seize her pen and send off a biting reply, which added spite to their other motives for condemning her and rendered the latter implacable.

These austere censors could invoke as an excuse for their intervention the much abused but still customary rights of relationship. But what rights did strangers have to be severe with her, strangers who were not harmed in any way because she did as she chose with herself? Meeting in the street some amiable society woman in whose drawing-room she had once been received, she would stop to exchange a few civil words. The other, looking her over curiously and letting her talk, scarcely answering herself, would presently pass on with a cold politeness. One woman, to whom Annette had written asking for some information, did not reply. Pursuing her inquiry, Annette wrote to a friend of her mother's, an old lady whom she respected and who had shown some affectionate feeling for herself; she suggested going to see her. In reply came an embarrassed letter, expressing regret that the latter was unable to receive her: she was leaving Paris. These little constantly repeated affronts wounded Annette's sensibility. She was afraid of other rebuffs, but the strange thing was that this fear led her nervously to provoke them.

For example, in the case of her friend Lucile Cordier. The two young women had known each other for a long time. In the society where they moved Lucile was the person whom Annette liked best; and without being very intimate they had always enjoyed seeing each other. Annette learned from her aunt that Lucile's sister was going to be married. She had had no word of this from Lucile. She wrote to congratulate her. Lucile remained silent. Annette knew she ought not to insist. And yet she did insist, through a strange need of being sure, of suffering.

She went to Lucile's house. There was a sound of voices in the drawing-room. It was her day at home. Annette remembered this just as she entered the room. It was too late to turn back. The conversation was animated. A dozen persons, almost all known to Annette. At her appearance the voices stopped point-blank. Only for a few seconds. Annette, anxious, but feeling that she was committed to a fight, entered. With a smile on her lips, without looking to right or left, she went up to Lucile. Lucile rose, embarrassed. Small and blonde, with half-open, caressing, gentle and yet shrewd eyes, a tired little smile, a mouse-like expression and rather prominent teeth, lively, indifferent to people and ideas while appearing to be devoted to the former and attached to the latter, she was cautious, weak, and not very frank; she liked to please; she was anxious not to fall out with anyone and to get along with everyone. So far as she was concerned, Annette's conduct had not troubled her at all. Her sharp, inquisitive nose, always on the alert, was amused by scandal. The adventure struck her as absurd and would merely have diverted her if, from the worldly point of view, it had not been embarrassing. When Annette wrote to her that she was coming back, Lucile had thought, "What bad luck! How am I going to answer her?"

She did not want to hurt Annette. On the other hand, she did not wish to run the risk of being misjudged. Not being able to think of anything to say in reply, she had put it off from day to day. She expected to see Annette, but later (there was no hurry about it!)—when people would not know about it. This did not prevent her from talking at Annette's expense and assuming a scandalized air when she was with others.

And now Annette's sudden appearance placed her—("This is too much!")—under the obligation of making an immediate choice. Lucile was much more angry with Annette for playing this mean trick on her than for having had a child. ("Two, if she likes, if she would only leave me alone!")

With a furious little light in her eyes that was quickly extinguished, she took the hand that Annette held out to her, answering her smile with that honeyed smile of her own which Annette knew so well. (No one could resist its tender seductiveness.) It lasted only for a moment. With all those eyes flashing about her, with every ear alert, Lucile at once perceived the irony of the company. Instantly her expression froze; after a few words of welcome she affectedly resumed the interrupted conversation, and with an unexpressed understanding everyone began to talk again.

Annette, left outside the conversation, realized that she was rejected. But she did not accept this at all. She knew the weakness of Lucile's character. Armed with her proud smile, seated in the midst of a group which, without appearing to see her, seemed to be wholly occupied in exchanging words that were as empty as they were lively, she glanced about with her calm eyes at everybody in the room. The glances of the others, meeting hers, turned aside to avoid her. One pair of eyes, however, did not have time to escape. They remained fixed upon her, full of annoyance and spite. Annette recognized the large doll-like face of Marie-Louise de Baudru, the daughter of a rich lawyer, the wife of a judge, whose family had always remained socially on cordial terms with the Rivières while cherishing towards them a deep-seated antipathy. Marie-Louise de Baudru incarnated in her stout person the most substantial qualities of the upper bourgeoisie: order, probity, the lack of curiosity, of charity, especially of intelligence, all the legal virtues, a firm verbal faith, empty as a butcher's shop of doubts and thought, and the religious worship of propriety, all the proprieties, her family, her property, her country, her Church, her moral code, her tradition and her negations. In short, a massive and compact ego like a block obstructing the sun. No room, near her, for the tub of Diogenes! Nothing was so repugnant to the Baudrus as independence of any kind, religious, moral, intellectual, political or social. A natural aversion! They confounded all its forms under the common taunt of "anarchism." This anarchism they had always suspected in the Rivières. And instinctively Marie-Louise, like the rest of her family, had distrusted Annette. She could not pardon the liberty which Annette had enjoyed in her education and her life as a young girl. There may have been a touch of envy in these unkind judgments. One sole consideration kept her from expressing them, the Rivières' fortune. Wealth commands esteem: it is one of the pillars—the firmest—of the social order. But this is on condition that it does not disturb the basis of everything, the legally established family. The supporters of society are on the watch there: hands off! Annette had struck at the cardinal principles. The watch-dog had awakened, though it held its peace, for it does not bark in society. But its look spoke for it, Annette perceived the bitterest scorn in that of Marie-Louise de Baudru. Her eyes rested calmly on those of her plump judge; and, addressing her with a little familiar bow, she forced her to respond. Marie-Louise, choking with anger at not being able to resist the injunction, bowed also, avenging herself by giving her coldest look. Annette had already turned indifferently away, and her eyes, which were making the tour of the drawing-room, returned to Lucile.

Quite unembarrassed, she threw herself into the conversation that had begun. She cut into the story Lucile was telling with a general remark and obliged her to reply. They had to make room for her. They could not help listening to her politely, with interest and even pleasure, for she was so witty. But they did not reply, their minds wandered, they talked about other things. The conversation died away, started up again in little bursts, jumping from subject to subject. In the silence Annette heard herself talking in a detached tone, and she listened to her own voice as if it were that of a stranger: true woman that she was, fine, sensitive and proud, she missed none of these little humiliations. Accustomed from childhood to understand and use the equivocal language of drawing-rooms, she could divine, under the veil of deliberate inattentiveness, dubious smiles, disingenuous politeness, the wounds that were intended for her. She was hurt, but she laughed, and she went on talking. The others were thinking, "What poise that girl has!"

Lucile took advantage of the departure of one of the guests to accompany her to the door and escape from Annette. The latter found herself abandoned to a group that had made up its mind to ignore her. Giving up any attempt to prolong the ordeal, she was on the point of rising to leave in turn when, crossing the drawing-room, Marcel Franck approached her. He had come in some time before, though she had not noticed him, for all her attention was occupied by her effort not to yield to the discouragement that was overcoming her. And as, with a humorous pity, he watched her talking, he admired her pride. He said to himself, "What made you come here and brave these idiots? Crazy little thing! It's enough to wring one's heart."

He decided to lend her a helping hand. He bowed to her pleasantly. Annette's grateful eyes lighted up. Everybody about them became silent, all those hard, watching faces. "Well," he said, "so the globe-trotter is back again. Have you had enough of 'contemplé son azur, ô Méditerranée'?"

He wanted to turn the conversation to some harmless subject. But what demon drove her on? Pride, the instinct of bravado, or simply frankness? She replied gaily, "So far as the azure is concerned, I have scarcely contemplated anything for months but my baby's eyes."

A little breeze of irony passed over those who were near them. Smiles and glances were discreetly exchanged. But Marie-Louise de Baudru rose indignantly; red, with her stout breast swollen with enough angry contempt to burst her gown, she pushed back her chair and, without bowing to anyone, started for the door and went out. The temperature of the drawing-room fell several degrees. Annette remained alone in her corner with Marcel Franck. He looked at her, sorry for her, half banteringly, and murmured, "You are imprudent."

"How imprudent?" she asked in a clear voice.

She seemed to be looking for something at her feet. Then she rose, without haste, and, coldly bowing and bowed to, went out.

No one who saw her in the street, walking along with her rhythmic step, her head high, her cool, correct, indifferent air, would have suspected the storm of contempt that was making her wounded heart leap. But, once in the Boulogne house, she shut herself up in her room with the child and pressed him to her with bitter tears. And she laughed defiantly.

VI

There were plenty of interesting houses in Paris where Annette would have been honorably received—especially in the society that should have been familiar to the daughter of Rivière the architect, among those artists who live on the fringe of social Philistia, who, though they are endowed with the traditional family spirit, have no prejudices and carry the bourgeois virtues even into free unions. But Annette had little acquaintance among the women of the artistic world. With a very orderly mind and reserved manners that were anything but Bohemian, she had little taste for their habits and conversation, though she had plenty of respect for their great qualities of courage, good nature and endurance. For it is certainly true that in ordinary life relations are founded much less on respect than on a community of instincts and habits. Besides, Raoul Rivière had long ago dropped his old companions. As soon as his success had permitted him to enter the sphere of wealth and official honors, this man of strong appetites had broken with the haud aurea mediocritas. He had been too intelligent not to appreciate the society of men who worked more than that of the Parisian drawing-rooms which he criticized among his intimates with cruel irony, but he had established himself in the latter because it gave him a wider pasturage. He had managed to escape secretly into other and very mixed circles, where he was able to satisfy his passion for pleasure and his need of unrestrained independence, for he led a double or triple life. But few were aware of this, and his daughter had had no knowledge of anything but his outward and business life.

Annette's social circle was virtually limited to this rich and more or less distinguished upper bourgeoisie which, as a new reigning class, has ended by diligent effort in creating for itself a shadow of tradition. Indeed, along with the other attributes of power, it has purchased the lamp of enlightenment—a lamp, however, that only shines from under a heavy shade and dreads nothing so much as being moved, nothing so much as the enlarging of the illumined circle on the table; for the least change of position threatens to destroy its certitudes. Annette, who instinctively loved the light, had sought for it where she could, in those university studies which in her set were regarded as pretentious. But the light she had found there had been much filtered; it was the light of lecture-rooms and libraries, refracted, never direct. There Annette had acquired a certain boldness of thought that was entirely abstract and did not prevent the best of her comrades from being timid and completely chaotic in the face of reality. Another film was interposed between her eyes and the daylight outside, her fortune. In spite of all she could do, this barrier separated her from the general community. Annette did not suspect how shut in she was. That is the other side of wealth: it is a privileged enclosure, but an enclosure none the less, a garden that is walled in.

And this was not all. Now that she had to leave her circle, Annette, who, for a long time, had fearlessly considered what was awaiting her, did not want to do so. Let him who disapproves of the illogical condemn her! Man—woman still less—is not all of a piece, especially at those transitional ages when the instincts of revolt and rebirth are mingled with the conservative habits that paralyze them. One cannot at a stroke liberate oneself from the prejudices of one's environment and the needs one has acquired. Even the freest souls cannot do so. One has regrets, doubts, one wants to lose nothing, one wants to have everything. Annette, in her sincerity, with her need of love, with her need of being free, with her desire not to be false, was still anxious not to sacrifice her acquired advantages. She was willing to withdraw from her social set; she could not endure being rejected by it; she could not accept the idea of forfeiting it. And her youthful pride, which life had not yet forced to lower its crest, refused to seek asylum in another environment that was socially more humble, even if she respected it more. This, in the eyes of the world, would have been to admit that she was conquered. It was better to be isolated than déclassée.

Trifling as these considerations were, they were not unreasonable. In the struggle between the conventions of a class and one of its revolting members who braves them, the class, which forms a solid block against the imprudent soul as it casts him forth, drives him elsewhere and watches for his weaknesses in order to justify its interdiction.

In the world of Nature as soon as a symptom of weakness appears, and some creature reveals itself as an object of prey, spider-webs are stretched about it. There is nothing unfair about this, nothing sinister. It is merely the natural law. Nature is always hunting. Everyone in turn is hunter or hunted. Annette was the hunted.

The hunters made their appearance. All unsuspecting, Annette received a call from her friend Marcel Franck.

She was alone in the house. The baby had gone out for his daily airing; her aunt was with him. Annette, who was rather tired, was resting in her room. She was not expecting to see anyone, but when Marcel's card was brought to her she gladly sent word for him to come in. She was grateful to him for having taken her part at Lucile's. Not that he had compromised himself. But she had not expected that.

Stretched out in her chaise longue, she received him unceremoniously as an old friend. She was still in her morning négligé. Since she had become a mother, she had lost her devotion to order and the meticulous correctness that Sylvie had teased her about. Marcel was the last person to mind this. He found her prettier than ever, with a fresh, attractive plumpness, a gentle languor, a dewy look in her eyes which were softened with happiness. Annette talked quite without reserve; she was pleased to see once more the discerning confidant of her old hesitations. She liked his intelligence, his intellectual tact; he inspired confidence in her. Franck revealed all his old cordiality and fine comprehension, but from the beginning of the conversation she was struck by the suggestion of a new familiarity in his manner.

They recalled their last meeting before Annette's unfortunate visit at the Brissots' in Burgundy, and Annette agreed that Marcel had seen all too clearly what was going to happen. She was anxious to speak of the impossibility of her marriage to Roger, but a blush spread over her face as it occurred to her that Marcel looked at the whole matter in quite a different way and considered it a joke. Marcel remarked mischievously, "You saw it as well as I." And he laughed at the turn the adventure had taken.

He had the air of being a sort of accomplice. Annette was confused, and she concealed her feeling with a touch of irony. Marcel went a step further: "You saw it much better than I did. We men are absurd enough to believe that we can teach women out of our own precious wisdom, and we get caught instead when, with their insidious voices, their big, beautiful eyes, they anxiously ask us what they ought to do. They know very well. They flatter our folly. We love to teach, but they can give us cards and spades. When I foretold that you would not be caught in the Brissots' net, I never suspected that you would escape from its meshes in such a masterly way. It was a wonderful stroke. Well done! What can't you do when you set your mind on it! I compliment you on your courage." Annette listened to this with a feeling of embarrassment. How strange it was! She had undertaken to vindicate her right to behave as she had done; the other day, at Lucile's, she had been ready to affirm it against the whole universe. But it made her uncomfortable to hear herself praised in this tone by Marcel. Her modesty and her dignity were hurt. "Don't compliment me," she said. "I have less courage than you think. I didn't desire in advance what has happened. I never thought of it."

Then, seized with a scruple and too proud to lie, she continued, "I am mistaken. Yes, I did think of it. But only to fear it, not to desire it. And that is what remains incomprehensible to me. How could I have let it happen, the thing I feared, that I didn't want?"

"Quite natural," said Marcel. "What we fear hypnotizes us. After all, it doesn't follow that because we fear a thing we don't desire it. But everyone does not dare to do what he is afraid to do. You did dare. You dared to make a mistake. One has to make mistakes in life. We learn through our mistakes, and we must learn. Only, while you were daring, I do think, my friend, that you might have taken precautions. Your partner seems to me very much to blame for having left you with this burden to bear."

Annette, a little shocked, said, "It is not a burden to me."

Marcel supposed that Annette in her generosity wanted to excuse Roger. "You still love him?" he asked.

"Whom?" Annette asked.

"Good!" said Marcel, laughing. "Evidently you don't still love him."

"I love my baby," said Annette. "The rest belongs to the past. And, as for the past, one no longer feels sure that it ever existed. One doesn't understand it any more. It's sad."

"That has its charm too," said Marcel.

"Not for me," said Annette. "I am not a dilettante. But my son is the present, and it is a present that will last longer than I."

"The present that repulses us, the present to which we in turn shall be the past some day."

"So much the worse for me!" said Annette. "Even so, it will be good to be trampled on by his little feet."

Marcel laughed at this passionate outburst. "You can't understand me," said Annette. "You have not seen Marc, my little masterpiece. And even if you saw him, you wouldn't know how to look at him. You are a good judge of pictures, statues, useless knick-knacks. You couldn't judge that unique marvel, the body of a little child. It would do no good for me to describe him to you."

She did describe him, however, lovingly and at length. She laughed at her own ardent, exaggerated expressions, but she could not keep them back. She broke off as she saw Marcel's indulgent, bantering look. "I am boring you. Excuse me! You don't understand, do you?"

"Of course." Marcel understood. Marcel understood everything. Everyone to his own taste. He would not dispute that.

"In short," he said, "to sum it up, you have blossomed out into maternity. You have flown in the face of public order and the family as established by law. And, far from regretting it, you defy authority."

"What authority?" Annette asked. "I defy nothing."

"Well, then, public opinion, tradition, the Code Napoléon."

"I have nothing to do with all these things."

"That's the worst kind of defiance, the kind people will never pardon. But so be it! You have broken with everything, you have rid yourself of the whole clan. What are you going to do now?"

"Just what I did before."

Marcel looked sceptical.

"What, do you think I can't live as I used to do?"

"It would hardly be worth while. And besides . . ."

Marcel unhappily recalled the call at Lucile's: if she wished to resume her old place in society Annette would meet with little success. She knew this: it was unnecessary for anyone to tell her, and in her wounded pride she had no desire to repeat the experience. But she was surprised by Marcel's insistence in pointing this out to her; he was usually more tactful.

"Well," she said, "it matters very little now that I have my child."

"But you can't reduce your existence merely to him."

"I don't think that would be reducing it. Enlarging it, I should say. I see a world in him, a world that is going to grow. I shall grow with it."

With much solicitude and no less irony, Marcel set to work to prove to her that this world would not be enough for a nature as eager and exacting as hers. With knitted brows and a pang at her heart Annette listened to him. Mentally, in her irritation, she protested, "No, no!"

She could not help being anxious, however, when she remembered that once before Marcel had had such clear foresight. But why was he so bent upon convincing her of it? Why should he take so much trouble to prove to her that she should profit by the liberty she had won, that she should not be afraid of living on the fringe of society? (He called it "outside and above the bourgeois conventions.")

There were in Annette two or three Annettes who always bore one another company. As a general thing, only one spoke while the others listened. Just now two of them were speaking at once: the passionate, sentimental Annette who was the victim of her impressions and their willing dupe, and another who observed and was amused at the hidden motives of the heart. She had good eyes. She saw through Marcel. They had changed places. Formerly it had been he who read her secret thoughts. To-day, to-day there had come to Annette (just when?—exactly from the moment of her 'metamorphosis') an insight into souls and their secret movements—intermittent, to be sure—the novelty of which surprised and amused her in the midst of her anxieties.

Stretched out in her chair, with her head thrown back, her arms behind her neck and her mouth slightly open, she studied the ceiling; but out of the corner of her half-closed eyes she watched Marcel as he talked. She could have uttered in advance the words he was about to say; she could have sworn what was going to happen. With an amused curiosity that was a little sarcastic, for which she reproached herself, she let him go on.

(One must see and know, as he said just now, one must learn . . . learn. . . .)

She was learning to understand a friend.

(Yes, I understand you. . . . An Annette fallen from the tree would be good to pick up again. He is gently shaking the tree to make her tumble off. He is speculating on Annette's confusion. And yet he is in love with her. Yes, he is certainly in love with her. Not very bright, brother man! His voice begins to have a coaxing sound. See how tender he is growing. And now, look out! I wager he is going to bend over me.)

Several seconds in advance she foresaw Marcel's blond beard leaning towards her; she foresaw the caressing mouth that was about to alight on hers. She wanted to spare him the humiliation. And just at the exact moment she rose, and, with her outstretched hands, gently pushed Marcel's shoulders away.

"Good-bye, my friend," she said.

Marcel looked into those penetrating eyes that were scrutinizing him with a little malice in their depths. He smiled. He had been mistaken. But it had been a good battle. He was perfectly aware that, with all the calmness in the world, he had been given his dismissal. And yet, of this he was sure, Annette's feeling towards him was not one of indifference. Let whoever could understand it! The strange girl was escaping him.

VII

Marcel did not reappear, and Annette took no steps to bring him back. They were still friends, but each was angry with the other. Just because Annette's feeling towards Marcel was not one of indifference, she was touched by what she had seen in him. She was not offended by this; it was the old story . . . Too old a story! . . . No, Annette had no grievance against Marcel. Only, only she could not forget what had happened! That is the way it is with forgivenesses granted by the mind which the heart does not ratify. Secretly bitter, she was forced to recognize, even more through Marcel's too free attempt than through the harsh welcome she had encountered in Lucile's drawing-room, that her situation was changed. She realized that she was no longer protected by the conventional consideration that society accords to those of its members who appear to submit to its laws. She would have to defend herself alone. She was exposed.

She closed her door to the world. She took care not to tell Sylvie of the experiences she had had; Sylvie had predicted them and she would be triumphant. She kept her secret and shut herself up with her child. She had decided henceforth to live only for him.

When little Marc came back from his airing in the evening, after Marcel's call, she welcomed him with transports. He laughed when he saw her and stretched out to her his four wriggling paws. She fell on him as a starved wolf falls on its prey; she devoured him with kisses; she pretended to eat every morsel of his body; she thrust his little feet into her mouth; and as she undressed him she tickled him from head to foot with her lips. "Yum-yum! I'm going to eat you up! That fool!" she exclaimed, calling him to witness. "That fool who had the impudence to tell me that you would not be enough for me! What insolence! You not enough for me, my king, my little god! Tell me that you are my little god! And what am I then? The little god's mother! The world belongs to us! All the things we are going to do together! See everything, have everything, try everything, taste everything, create everything!"

And indeed they did create everything. To discover and to create, are they not the same thing? To invent is to find. One finds what one invents, one discovers what one creates, what one dreams of, what one draws up from the fish-pond of one's musings. For the two of them, mother and child, it was the hour of great discoveries. The first words of the little boy, the game of exploration, when one measures the world with one's arms and legs. Every morning Annette, with her child, set out for conquest. She enjoyed it as much as he, perhaps more. It seemed to her that she was reliving her own childhood, but with complete consciousness and complete joy. He, the gay little soul, was full of joy too. He was a beautiful child, healthy, chubby all over, a little pink pig just ready for the spit. ("What else could you expect?" as Sylvie said.) In his plump, elastic body there was too much compressed force; he was like a rubber ball that insists upon bouncing. Every new contact with life threw him into a clamorous delight. The enormous power of dreaming that belongs to every baby amplified his discoveries and prolonged the vibrations of happiness into veritable chimes of bells. Annette was never behind him; it was as if they were having a contest as to who should be the happiest and make the most noise. Sylvie said that Annette was crazy, but she would have behaved the same way herself. And after this tumult they would both have hours of absolute, delicious, exhausted silence. The little one, tired out after so much movement, slept obliviously. Annette was dropping with fatigue, but for a long time she would refuse to go to sleep in order to enjoy the other's slumber; and the fire of her love, driven back into her heart, hidden like the light of a candle behind one's hand so as not to awaken the little sleeper, burned with a long silent flame that rose upward to heaven. She prayed . . . Mary beside the manger . . . She prayed to the child.

These months were still beautiful and shining. But they were not as pure as those of the previous year. Less limpid. They were full of an exalted, excessive joy that was a little exaggerated.

A vigorous, healthy nature like Annette's must create, perpetually create, create with its whole being, body and spirit. Create, or else brood over the creation that is to be. It is a necessity, and happiness comes only through satisfying it. Every creative period has its own limited field, and its rising force follows a trajectory that descends again sharply. Annette had passed the summit of the curve. Nevertheless, the transport of creation persists in the mother for a very long time after childbirth. Suckling prolongs the transfusion of the blood, and invisible bonds keep the two bodies in communication. The creative abundance of the spirit of the infant compensates for the impoverishment of the spirit of the mother. The river that is running out tries to replenish itself from the stream that is flowing over. It becomes a torrent so as to merge with the little torrent. But strive as it may, the little one outruns it. The child was already withdrawing into the distance. Annette had difficulty in following him.

Before he was able to frame a complete sentence he already had his little hidden thoughts, cupboards of which he kept the keys. Heaven knew what he concealed there: his reflexions on people, his scraps of reasoning, odds and ends of images, sensations, play-words the sound of which amused him, though he did not know what they meant, a singing monologue that had no sequence, no end, no beginning. He was perfectly well aware, perhaps not of what he was hiding, but that he was hiding something. For the more one tried to find out what he was thinking, the more mischievously he refused to let one know. He even amused himself sometimes putting one off the track; with his little tongue, which was as clumsy as his hands, as it stumbled about among the syllables, he was already trying to lie, to mystify people. It was a pleasure to prove his own importance to others and to himself by making fun of those who tried to penetrate into his private domain. This scrap of a being, scarcely born, had the fundamental instinct of the mine that is not yours—of "You shan't have any of my peanuts." His whole wealth lay in fragments of thoughts: he built walls to hide them from his mother's eyes. And she, with that lack of foresight which is common to all mothers, was proud that he knew so well how to say the No with which he so early manifested his personality. She haughtily proclaimed, "He has a will of iron."

She thought she had forged this iron herself. But against whom?

Against herself, to begin with; for, in the eyes of this little ego, she was the not-I, the external world, a habitable external world, of course, warm, soft and milky, that one could exploit, that one wanted to dominate. External to the I . . . I am not it. I possess it. But it does not possess me!

No, she did not possess him! She began to feel it; this Lilliputian intended to belong to no one but himself. He needed her, but she needed him: the child's instinct told him so. In all probability, this instinct, guarded by his egocentricity, told him that she needed him much more and that it was therefore quite fair for him to abuse it. And, heaven knows, this was true: she did need him much more.

"Well, fair or not, abuse me, little monster! Just the same, it's no use, you can't get along without me for a long time yet. I hold you. There, I plunge you into your bath. Protest, young carp! . . . He looks insulted; his mouth is open, as if this little personage were choking with indignation at being treated like a bundle. . . . And I turn you and turn you again! Heavens, what music! You are going to be a singer, my son. Well, cry out your do-re-me. Bravo! You do the singing, but it's I who make you dance. . . . Isn't it a shame for me to abuse your weakness in this way? Oh, how mean this mother is! Poor midget! Well, you'll avenge yourself on her when you are grown up. Meanwhile, protest! In spite of your dignity, look, I'm going to kiss you on your little behind."

He kicked. She laughed. But it was in vain she held him; she held only the shell. The animal within escaped into his burrow. Every day he became more difficult to grasp. It was a loving chase, a passionate struggle. But it was a struggle, a chase. One had to keep one's wind.

The thousand little regular attentions that a baby demands fill the days. Simple, monotonous as they are, they do not allow one to think of anything else. Aside from him, always him, one's mind is in shivers. The swiftest thought is interrupted ten times over. The child invades everything; this little mass of flesh blocks one's horizon. Annette did not complain. She did not even have time to regret it. She lived in a plenitude of busy fatigue that was a blessing to her at first, but that gradually became an obscure weariness. One's strength is used up, one's soul wanders aimlessly: it does not stay where one has left it. It follows its way like a sleep-walker, and when it awakens it does not know where it is. Annette woke up one day conscious of a load of fatigue that had been accumulating for months, and an indefinable shadow mingled with the joy that dwelt in her.

She was unwilling to attribute this to anything but physical exhaustion; and to prove to herself that her happiness was in no way altered she manifested it in more clamorous effusions than were necessary. Especially before others, as if she were afraid that they would discover in her what she did not wish to be seen. This exaggerated gaiety was followed later, when she was alone, by depression. Sadness? No. An obscure uneasiness, a vague restlessness, the feeling, which she repressed, of a partial dissatisfaction. Not that she expected anything from outside (she could still get along without that), but she suffered from the unemployment of a part of her nature. Certain forces of the mind had been at a standstill for a long time; the economy of her being had undergone a disturbance. Annette, deprived of society, driven back upon herself alone and feeling the sting of a nostalgia that she tried to stifle, tried to find a resource in the company of books. But the volumes remained open at the same page; the brain had become unaccustomed to the effort of following the unfolding chain of the words; the continual breaks which the constant preoccupation with the child made in her thought dislocated her attention and shook it, somnolent and enervated as it was, as a moored ship dances on the current without the power either to advance or to remain still. Instead of reacting, Annette remained shut up in herself, musing drowsily over the open book; or she tried to divert herself in a flood of passionate nonsense with the child. Sylvie, who saw that she could not find expression for her multiple energy with the little one, said to her, "You should go out more, take exercise, walk as you used to do."

For the sake of peace, Annette said she would go out, but she did not budge. She had a reason which she kept to herself: she was afraid of meeting her old friends and exposing herself to some slight, some coldly distant greeting. A superficial reason which she gave herself. In former times she would have ignored these petty offences, but now she had a neurasthenic tendency to avoid all contacts. Then why not leave Paris and live in the country, as Sylvie advised? She did not say she would not, but she did nothing; it involved making a decision, and she was not willing to stir from her torpor.

So she allowed her motionless days to float along, without a wave, like a becalmed sea that is preparing to ebb. An interlude, an apparent arrest in the eternal rhythm of respiration: the breath is suspended. Joy is tiptoeing away. Trouble is approaching on muffled feet. The trouble has not yet come. But a nescio quid warns one: "Do not move!" It is waiting outside the door.

VIII

It entered. But it was not what she had expected. It is useless to attempt to foresee happiness or trouble. When they arrive they are never what we have looked for.

One night when, suspended between sky and sea, on the borders of happiness and melancholy, Annette was skirting the cape of sleep, without knowing whether she was on this side of it or that, she became aware of a danger. Unaware whence it was coming or what it was, she collected her strength to fly to the help of the child who was sleeping near her. For already her consciousness, which never slept without one ear open, had realized that he was threatened. She forced herself to awaken and listened anxiously. She was not mistaken. Even when she was sound asleep the slightest alteration in the breathing of the dear little creature reached her. The respiration of the child was hurried; by a mysterious osmosis, Annette felt the oppression in her own chest. She turned on the light and leaned over the cradle. The little one was not awake; he was sleeping uneasily; his face was not red, which seemed to the mother a reassuring symptom; she touched his body, found the skin dry, the extremities cold; she covered him more warmly. This seemed to quiet him. She watched him for a few minutes, then turned out the light, trying to persuade herself that the alarm would not be repeated. But after a brief respite the hoarse breathing began again. Annette deceived herself as long as she possibly could. "No, he is not breathing harder or more quickly. It's only that I am agitated."

As if her will could impose itself upon the child, she forced herself to remain motionless. But it was no longer possible to doubt. The oppression was increasing, the breath came more quickly. And with a fit of coughing the child woke up and began to cry. Annette leaped out of bed. She took the child in her arms. He was burning, his face was pale, his lips were blue. Annette was distracted. She called Aunt Victorine, who only added her own agitation to the scene. That very day the telephone had been disconnected for repairs, and there was no way of communicating with the doctor. There was no druggist in the neighborhood. The Boulogne house was isolated; the maid was unwilling to run through the deserted streets at this hour of the night. They would have to wait for morning. And the sickness was growing worse. It was enough to make one lose one's head. Annette very nearly did so; but knowing that she must not she did not. Her aunt, whimpering, fluttered like a fly about the globe of a lamp. Annette said to her harshly, "It does no good to groan. Help me! Or, if you can't do anything, go to sleep and leave me alone. I will save him by myself."

Her aunt, petrified by this, recovered her composure; her long experience as a watcher at sickbeds dispelled Annette's most terrible apprehension, that of diphtheria. Annette retained an unspoken doubt; so did her aunt. One may always be mistaken. And even if it was not diphtheria, there were so many other mortal disorders. Not to know what it was added still more to their fright. But whether or not Annette's heart was frozen with terror, her movements were calm and just what they should have been. Without knowing it, moved by the maternal instinct alone, she did exactly the right thing for the child. (So the doctor told her the next day.) She did not leave him lying on his back for long, she changed his position, she struggled against his fits of suffocation. What neither experience nor science could have taught her the love within her dictated, for she suffered what he suffered. She suffered more. She regarded herself as responsible for it.

Responsible! The tension of an ordeal, especially of an illness that strikes a beloved being, often creates a superstitious state of mind in which one needs to accuse oneself for the suffering of the innocent one. Annette not only reproached herself for not having watched over the child, for having been imprudent with him, but she discovered that she had criminal thoughts in the back of her mind: a passing weariness of the child, the shadow of an unconfessed regret that her life should have been swamped in his. Was it quite certain that she had really felt and repressed this regret, this weariness? No doubt, since they emerged at this moment. But who could say whether she had not invented them through this need she felt, when she was powerless to act in a practical way, to act in thought, even if it meant turning her desperate energies against herself?

She turned them also against the great Enemy, against the unknown God. As she saw the little swollen face, as she breathed her breath into him, softly raising him in her hands with careful movements, she passionately asked his pardon for having brought him into the world, stolen him away from peace, thrown him into this life a prey to suffering, to mischance, to the evil hazards of heaven knew what blind master! And with her flesh creeping, like an animal at the entrance of his burrow, she growled, she sniffed the approach of the great murderous deities; she prepared to fight with them for her child, she bared her teeth. Like every mother whose child is threatened, she was the eternal Niobe who, in order to turn the mortal shaft against herself, hurls her furious defiance at the Murderer.

But no one in Annette's household divined this silent battle.

In the morning the doctor came; he complimented her on her presence of mind and the first steps she had taken—so different from what sometimes happens when an anxious affection spoils everything by its awkwardness. But she only grasped from his words what he said about the epidemics of grippe and measles that were raging in Paris and the possibility that her child had caught the germs of bronchial pneumonia. In refusing to leave Paris, as she had promised to do, she had thus been guilty towards the child. She judged herself pitilessly. This sentence she passed on herself had at least the advantage of limiting the field of her responsibility, for it dispelled any other remorse.

At the first news, Sylvie had arrived hastily, and the little patient had plenty of attention. But Annette, refusing to leave her place, took hardly any rest and remained in the breach during the days, the nights, the days. The perspiration on the little body and its burning suffocation melted her own being. The illness kneaded them into one mass. The child seemed to be aware of this, for in the moments when the fear of an attack of coughing contracted his sides his eyes rested, heavy with reproaches and an appeal for help, on the eyes of the mother. He seemed to be saying, "It's going to hurt me again! There it is coming back! Save me!"

And, pressing him to her, she would reply, "Yes, I shall save you! Don't be afraid, it's not going to get you!"

The attack came, and the child strangled. But he was not alone. She stiffened with him in order to break the noose. He felt that she was struggling, that she, the great protectress, would not abandon him; and the reassuring sound of her gentle voice and the pressure of her fingers gave him confidence, said to him, "I am here."

As he cried and struck the air with his little arms, he knew she would fight it.

And she did fight it, the nameless thing. The illness yielded. The noose relaxed. And the little birdlike body of the child, still palpitating, abandoned itself to the hands that had saved it. How good it was to breathe, the two of them, after that plunge into the depths! The wave of air that streamed through the mouth of the child bathed the throat of the mother and swelled her breasts with an icy pleasure.

These respites were of short duration. The struggle continued, alternating with periods of exhaustion. His condition was improving when the child had a sudden relapse from some unknown cause. His faithful watchers naturally tormented themselves all the more, accusing themselves of some moment of forgetfulness that had threatened his recovery. Annette said to herself, "If he dies, I shall kill myself."

For many nights she had been used to going without sleep; she kept it up as long as the child needed her aid, but during the hours when he slept and her own mind, reassured, might have made the most of this and relaxed, her spirit was more uneasy than ever. It vibrated like a telegraph-wire in the wind. Impossible to close her eyes. It was dangerous for her to lie there facing her distracted brain. Annette would turn on the light again and try to fix her mind upon some definite line of thought in order to escape from this vertigo. But it was only to turn over and over all sorts of superstitious, childish, extravagant ideas—or so they appeared to a mind that was accustomed to rational methods. She told herself that if calamity hung over her it was because she had been too completely happy, and it seemed to her that if her son was to recover she must suffer in some other direction. An obscure, powerful belief in some painful compensation, mounting up from the depths of time. Primitive peoples, in order to placate the ferocious bargaining god, the god who never gives something for nothing and demands cash payments, used to sacrifice their first-born: they purchased with this ransom the safety of the rest of their fortunes. And for her first-born Annette would gladly have given her life and all her wealth.

"Take my all," she said, "but let him live!"

Then at once she thought, "This is absurd. Nobody is listening to me."

It was no use. The old atavistic instinct continued to scent, somewhere about her, the presence of the jealous God. And, holding on, bargaining bitterly, she said, "Let us make an agreement. I am willing to pay on the spot. The child is mine. Take your choice of the rest!"

As if to justify her superstition, events took Annette at her word. One morning, when Aunt Victorine had gone to the lawyer's to get some money that he should have sent them some time before, she came back in tears. That very morning Annette had had the joy of being finally reassured about her child's health. The doctor had just left: this time he had announced that the child was definitely convalescent. Annette, in a transport of happiness, but still trembling, hardly dared to believe in her newly recovered happiness. At this moment she saw the door opening and at the first glance perceived her aunt's broken look. Her heart throbbed as she thought, "What new misfortune has befallen us?"

The old lady could hardly speak. At last she said, "The office is closed. M. Grenu has disappeared."