Volume 19 / Part 4 — Cain, What Hast Thou Done With Thy Brother?

By Ernest Hello.

From The Revue Du Monde Catholique.

By way of preface, I will relate a true story given by F. Agathon, a priest of the Monastery of Ruba, and preserved in the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert.

F. Agathon says: “One day I descended into the valley of Ruba to find the holy solitary, F. Pémeu, as I wished to consult him on a subject that weighed heavily upon my mind. We conversed until late in the evening, and then he sent me into a cavern to pass the rest of the night. Now, as it was winter, and the cold extreme, I was nearly frozen. The next morning, when the old man came in to see me, he asked: ‘How have you passed the night, my son?’

“ ‘Father,’ I answered, ‘I must say, in truth, I passed a terrible night, on account of the extraordinary severity of the cold.’

“ ‘And I did not feel it at all,’ he replied.

“These words filled me with astonishment, [pg 699] as he was nearly naked, and I said: ‘I beg of you, father, to tell me how that could have happened.’

“ ‘For the reason,’ he answered, ‘that a lion came and lay down beside me, and kept me warm. But nevertheless, my dear son, I can assure you that I shall be devoured by wild beasts.’

“ ‘Why do you say so?’ I asked.

“ ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘when I was a shepherd in our country (we were both from Galatia), I would have saved the life of a traveller, if I had accompanied him; but I did not show him that charity, and he was devoured by the dogs. Therefore I shall most certainly meet with a similar death.’

“And it really happened as he said. For three years afterwards he was torn to pieces by wild beasts.”

I.

Dear Marie, cease to think of me; all is ended; I am lost. I do not tell you what will become of me; I know nothing myself. I only know that yesterday I received the fatal blow, from which I cannot recover.

I had just finished the last picture, of which I have so often spoke to you—The First Glance. It is the portrait of a young man, who awakens and looks around him, as though he saw everything for the first time.

Some of my friends thought the picture splendid, but added that it would not sell well, as my name was unknown to the public.

After innumerable attempts, all equally unfortunate, I showed it yesterday to a very rich amateur—Baron de Brienne. He examined the picture, thought it remarkable, and then asked if I had often exhibited my pictures.

On my replying in the negative, his expression changed.

“I thought,” said he, “I did not know your name. You must make yourself known. This picture has great merit, and this sketch also,” he added, throwing a rapid glance at my other picture just commenced—you know it, Marie—Cain after his Crime—“but, in fact, you are not known,” he concluded.

“But, sir,” I replied, “I am endeavoring to make myself known.”

“Well,” continued the baron, “you have talent, that I acknowledge; but I doubt if it is the kind of talent that will be appreciated by the public. If I bought your picture, I would be asked where I found it. As it stands there, it has a certain value; but if you were dead, it would be worth a hundred times as much, and perhaps would soon find purchasers, possibly myself among the first. You see I can't change the world. So it is with men; they will pay the most ridiculous price for objects of art whose worth is guaranteed by a signature, but will not bother themselves to talk up unknown talent. I,” he added with a happy smile, “recently gave a hundred thousand francs for a picture which I do not place above yours; but it was a Murillo! I am a modest man, and always side with the majority. The majority is always right, and, for my part, I am not vain enough to think I know more than the entire human race. Make yourself known; everything is in that. Make yourself known; put your pictures in the exhibition; receive medals and decorations. But, above all, die; your pictures then will be worth so much gold. You see you are talking to a practical man, who don't believe in [pg 700] neglected genius. Au revoir, monsieur. You really have talent; more even than that, I do not hesitate to say you have genius. Au revoir.”

This, Marie, was my last adventure. All the others were similar. I will spare you any further details. I have told you in a few words what in reality was a long agony. But despair is brief; it has not the courage to dwell on separate facts; it sums up the causes, and only shows the effects.

Now, my dear Marie, you know what happened yesterday. The day before there came another gentleman, who had not the time to examine my picture as it deserved. This he explained to me for two hours without looking at the picture. He really had no time; for example, every morning he visits his stables from ten to twelve, and in the afternoon rows on the lake from four to six.

As for Baron de Brienne, when he left, he assured me he held my talent in the highest estimation; that he would like to have a gallery of pictures all painted by me, as it would probably one day be very valuable; later, my pictures would sell splendidly, and he could make money by the operation.

If there is ever to be a later day for me, I shall find him, when I will no longer need him, and he will be the first to show me honor.

Adieu, Marie. I was so sanguine, so buoyed up with hope, it needed all this time—all this precious time, of which these gentlemen had so little to waste—to bring me where I am now.

I think the baron saw despair in my face, for he used a singular expression on leaving which I had not provoked by any remark.

“My dear sir, do not look so dismal and wretched. I am not the Don Quixote of budding genius. Make yourself known, make yourself known, and you will find me! But if your courage fails, you will commit blunders and spoil your talent, for which I will not be responsible; like Pilate, I wash my hands of you!”

I listened to them going down the stairs.

“No, no,” said he to his wife; “you see for my portrait I must have a master, a signature.”

“Perhaps,” replied the baroness—“perhaps we have done wrong to discourage the young man.”

“Discourage? What are you talking about? I told him he had great talent. Do you wish to know what I think?” he added, as he stood for an instant before her. “What ruins art in the present day is that it is gorged with gold, and that too few men of genius die in the hospital—that is the reason!”

Adieu, Marie.

Something else was said, which Paul did not hear.

The baroness paused, as she was about to enter the carriage.

“Well, what is the matter with you?” said her husband.

“I am not very well,” she replied.

“So much more reason for getting in the carriage. What ails you?”

“The face of that young man haunts me. Who knows what despair may drive him to? Who knows how terrible may be his hidden suffering? Let us go back. I feel as though we had just committed a crime. Let us go back. Thirty years ago I read a story which I had long forgotten, but that now returns vaguely to my memory as a warning. I no longer remember [pg 701] the whole, but the impression comes back vague and terrible after thirty years. Ah! let us go back.”

The baron stopped, and laughed immensely.

“Ha! ha! Are you crazy? Haven't I the right to choose the pictures I wish to buy? Is there a law which compels me to buy pictures from this gentleman? I speak to you very seriously, my dear; such fancies as these will make you crazy. There is a great deal of insanity in our present day. Let us take care, let us take care!”

II.

Marie, after reading her brother's letter, was half frantic with terror, as she knew him thoroughly, and understood his bitter despair. She lost no time, but left in the first train. Arrived in Paris, she ran to the little house in the Quartier Latin where Paul lived. She was too excited to take a carriage. The rapid walk seemed to soothe her. In the cars she longed for quicker movement; in the street she wished for wings; at the door she would rather have been at the other end of the world. She dared not go up. She stopped, suffocated with the beating of her heart. If it was already too late—the thought nearly paralyzed her with horror. If she were a minute too late!

Finally, when on the stairs, she wept. Then she dared ring.

“I have wept,” she thought; “he is saved.” Taught by a long and singular experience, the young girl knew that tears were for her the mysterious and certain sign that her prayer was granted. She rang. A servant-girl, without speaking, led her to a bed, and uttered a single word—“Dead”—and then added: “The funeral will take place in two hours. He threw himself into the Seine from the bridge of Austerlitz.”

“He is not dead,” said Marie.

“The registration of the death has been made,” said the woman.

Without replying, Marie looked fixedly at him, and said to herself:

“He is not dead. I have wept; he is not dead. Paul!” she called. Silence. “Paul!” Silence.

She seized a mirror, and held it to her brother's lips. At the moment she took it in her hand she burst into tears. “You will see that he is saved!” she said.

The woman thought her crazy. Marie still held the mirror before Paul's lips. Dead silence; her own poor heart nearly stopped—the mirror was tarnished!

III.

Seven years afterwards M. le Baron de Brienne was conversing in a numerous and choice circle. It was at a grand dinner. The women were crowned with flowers and sparkling with jewels. The conversation turned upon a great crime which had recently been committed, the details of which filled two columns of every paper. Suddenly the Baron de Brienne became singularly agitated, and then, in a voice which he endeavored to keep calm, but whose trembling was still further shown by the effort to subdue it, said:

“It appears that the police have not yet discovered any trace of the assassin.”

“I don't know,” replied a guest.

“I believe not,” said another.

“Excuse me,” replied a third person; “according to the latest accounts, the police, if not positively sure, had at least great hopes.”

The Baron de Brienne was as white as his napkin. He tried to [pg 702] overcome and conceal his excitement, and attempted to eat; but the effort was too great. He swooned, and fell heavily to the ground.

Every one rose and crowded around him. Water was thrown in his face, salts were held for him to inhale. The hostess neglected none of the ceremonies usual in such cases. Fortunately, there was a physician among the guests. Every attention was lavished upon M. le Baron. His carriage was called, and he was taken home.

The next day he was better; at the end of three days he was well. He made them bring any quantity of papers, and read them to him. Mme. la Baronne, who was the reader, suddenly paused, and said:

“Here is more of the horrid crime of which we were all talking when you were taken ill.”

“Well?” said the baron in a singular tone.

“Well,” continued the baroness, “the murderer has been arrested. But what a strange interest you take in the affair!”

“I?” replied the baron. “Oh! not at all; I can very truly say that. Why do you think otherwise?”

“Because you are so strangely excited whenever the subject is mentioned.”

“What do you mean, talking about my excitement?” he replied. “Can you possibly imagine, like those stupid people at dinner the other evening, that this affair interests me in the slightest degree? They were all there looking at me, looking at me ... with eyes ... with eyes.... Are you, too, going to stare at me now with those eyes ... with those eyes....”

Mme. la Baronne rose, and wrote two lines: “Dear doctor, come instantly.”

“Carry that to the telegraph office,” she said to the servant.

“She did not count the words,” muttered the man in astonishment, as he withdrew. “It must be something very serious.”

IV.

Three months had elapsed, and the baron had resumed his ordinary life, when one evening, in a salon in the faubourg Saint-Honoré, a gentleman remarked, in the course of conversation, that it was astonishing the number of crimes one daily heard of. And he related the last murder that the daily paper had brought under his eyes.

Said the baron: “Why do you make such an assertion? Never were crimes so rare as to-day; manners and customs are so much softened, we can almost say there are no longer any criminals. None can be found in the higher class of society; and when we speak of the aristocracy, it means the entire nation. Indeed, to speak the truth, I believe very little in the wonderful crimes with which the daily journals fill their columns when there is a dearth of political news.”

“You are very incredulous, M. le Baron,” replied the Comte de Sartigny. “Probably it is from kindness to the editors that the police seek the criminals, and the courts judge them.”

“You say,” answered the baron, “that the police seek the criminals. It is false, M. le Comte. In the first place, only one is guilty, and the police are not hunting him up; he is already found, and he has no accomplice. He has been found, I tell you, he has been found; and the man has no accomplice. Perhaps I don't know it. Ha! ha!”

While the baron, pale as death, [pg 703] spoke these words, with terror imprinted on his face, the count looked steadily at him, and said:

“You say that I have spoken falsely, M. le Baron? Will you repeat that remark? I think those were your words, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

“I only say one thing,” replied the baron, “which is, that the criminal has been found and arrested.”

“But a moment ago you denied the reality of the crime.”

“I only say one thing, M. le Comte: that there is no doubt about the name of the assassin.”

The master of the house took the count by the arm, and led him to the recess of a window....

“Ah! very well, very well; I did not know it,” said the count, as he left the room.

While they were conversing together, the baron made several vain efforts to rise. He experienced the supreme anguish of a man who, while still in the possession of his faculties, feels they are leaving him—of a man who has not fainted, but who is about to faint, and who feels on his brow the first drops of cold sweat.

The baroness made her excuses for leaving so early, and, when alone with her husband, asked anxiously:

“What can be the matter with you?”

“And you too, you too,” he replied, pushing her from him, as he raised his blood-shot eyes.

V.

“We must,” said the doctor, “enter into his mania, so as to endeavor to discover the cause. We must make him talk without questioning him. Do you know, madame, in the life of M. le Baron, of any fact that may have left a disagreeable remembrance?”

“Doctor, do you mean a guilty remembrance?”

“No, madame; something terrifying.”

The baroness thought a long while.

“No,” said she, “not one. Our life has always passed most tranquilly. You know how people of the world live; well, so we live, and have always lived. My husband is a quiet man, who has never had a quarrel in his life with any one, and has never done an injury that I know of.”

“You have never seen in the baron any anxiety of conscience?”

“Any anxiety of conscience? He? Why should he have any? He has never in his life done anything to reproach himself with.”

“The baron,” replied the doctor, “has the reputation of being benevolent and kind-hearted. I don't think he is naturally very imaginative; do you, madame?”

“Not at all, doctor. I think he is just the contrary. I can even say he has very little faith.”

“But when and where did you first perceive the commencement of this mania?”

“It was one day when nothing strange had happened. Some one had been speaking of a young sculptor, who now is very famous. A friend told us that he owed his success to a rich banker, who had discovered his talents by some happy accident, and had aided him with his fortune and influence. When our guests had left, and we were alone, I thought he would kill himself; as now, without the slightest reason.”

“In his daily life does he show any eccentricity of which I am yet ignorant?”

[pg 704]

“Not precisely eccentricity,” said Mme. de Brienne. “His tastes have changed very much, but that cannot be called eccentricity. He formerly spent quite a fortune in purchasing pictures, of which he has a very fine collection, that he admired extravagantly; now he never looks at them. But he has always been rather fickle.”

“Does he talk in his sleep?”

“No; but one morning (now that you make me think of it) he awoke terribly frightened at a dream. ‘Ah! what a dream I have had,’ he said to me. His face looked worn and haggard, and, as I begged him to relate it, he turned away his eyes, and refused peremptorily. I insisted, but he kept silent, and I have never been able to make him relate it.”

The doctor reflected.

“Perhaps that is the whole secret,” said he. “But if we were to ask him about it now, probably to-morrow we would be obliged to confine him.”

“Confine him?” cried the baroness. “Do you think him so seriously affected?”

“Very seriously, madame, and more so as he is perfectly sane in relation to other affairs. His mania is confined to one point, and is what we call hallucination. My duty compels me to tell you, madame, that it is a case where science up to the present time has been very unsuccessful.”

“But, doctor, never was there a man less crazy. As for the pictures, which was the only passion I ever knew him to have, he prided himself on never having done a foolish thing; he only bought pictures of known value, with the signatures of the artists fully guaranteed. I, for instance, who am speaking to you, would have sometimes acted more unwisely than he. I remember once he even refused....”

“Nevertheless,” interrupted the doctor, “the case is very serious.”

The baron was alone in his room. His wife listened attentively at the door, and watched him through the key-hole. He raised the curtains, shook the cushions on the sofa, searched around, and, when convinced that he was alone, spoke in a low voice; but his wife caught his words.

“No one suspects me. No one, not even she; and yet everything should warn them, everything.... The circumstances that accompanied the act are reproduced every instant. For example, the clouds in the sky have nearly always the same form as at that moment.... The clouds do it purposely; they have assumed since that day certain positions always the same. What do they resemble? What I do not wish to say, but I know well since my dream. Oh! that dream.... I am cold, frozen. Why is it no one ever speaks to me of that dream; that no one in this house remembers it? And yet they were all there ... in the dream.... My wife was there, and the other one also,” he added, lowering his voice.

And after a silence, occasionally broken by unintelligible words, and joined to a strange pantomime, he continued:

“It was frightful. How that man struggled for his life!”

And speaking always lower and lower, the baron gasped out:

“He clung to me, and, when I pushed him into the water, an expression passed over his face such as was never seen but then in this world. It was near the bridge of Austerlitz. How he glared at me [pg 705] as he disappeared the last time! How is it that in the street the passers-by do not say on seeing me, ‘There is the man, there he is—the man who had the dream’? But was it a dream or reality? Men often pass me quickly in the street. Who knows but that they know or see something?”

The baron walked around the room, greatly excited, and then, pausing, he sighed, and said in a mournful tone:

“How do other men act—those who are not followed? They can take a step without hearing behind them another step that goes quicker or slower, according as they walk. Then there are men who do not hear steps behind them as they walk. Yet I always seek the noisiest places; but no noise ever deadens the sound of that step, so faint but so invincible. The noise of carriages, the roar of cannon—I have tried everything.... If possible I would live amidst thunder; but the lightning might fall near me, and cover me with ruins; still should I hear that faint, almost imperceptible noise, a foot that just touches the ground. I am cold! How cold it is! Fire no longer warms me! How lightly that foot touches the ground. It does not press heavily like ours. No, decidedly not; it was no dream—it was reality. That foot never is tired; but when I stop, it stops. It has a certain manner of stopping that makes me always feel that it is there, and that it will resume its walk when I do mine. Sometimes I would rather hear it, and I walk to make it walk; when it is silent, its menace is to me more terrible than the sound of the step.... If it would only change place!... But, no; always at an equal distance from me. Ah! how cruel. If I could but see some one, I think the most horrible spectacle would be less terrifying than this dreary void. To hear and not see!”

Here the baron rapidly jumped backwards, and put out his hand as though to grasp something in the air, then exclaimed:

“Gone! He has escaped—escaped, as ever!”

VI.

The course of the baron's ordinary life flowed on as smoothly as ever. Nothing was changed, and those who were not much with him perceived no difference; to them he was the same as heretofore.

The following summer he wished to go to the sea-shore.

They left for Brittany. They spoke of the pleasant walks and drives, and the baron, in an absent manner, asked on which part of the coast was the most sand. He would not hear of the cliffs; he wanted sand—only sand. Gâvre was recommended by a gentleman who was seated near them at the table d'hôte.

The baron instantly decided upon going to Gâvre.

“At what hour shall we leave?” asked the baroness.

The we evidently displeased the baron. He wished to go alone. He gave a thousand pretexts to prevent his wife accompanying him. As she would not admit them, he said, contrary to his usual custom, “I will” ... “I wish to go alone,” said he. “Am I in prison? Do you take me for a criminal?”

The baron left Port Louis in the steamboat. His wife followed him, without being seen, on another boat, and watched his movements through a spy-glass, as he paced up and down the shore at Gâvre.

[pg 706]

First, according to his usual custom, he assured himself that he was alone. Then he would take several steps, and return quickly, seeing nothing; he searched in the sand, and, finding his own footsteps, he sought a little further on the trace of the other one. All in vain. Disappointed, he went to another spot, and recommenced his weary walk, always seeing his own footprints, never the other. He had hoped in the sand; the sand had proved false, as everything else.

VII.

Meanwhile, the doctor was in Paris, and one evening in a salon in the faubourg Saint Germain. The conversation was on madness; and the doctor, who was a celebrated alieniste, was asked many questions as to the causes of insanity.

“The causes of insanity,” said he, “are so profound and mysterious that to know them one must make the tour of the invisible world.”

“I have known,” said one gentleman, “insane persons who thought themselves guilty of crimes which they had never committed—innocent men, intelligent and good, incapable of harming a bird, and who thought themselves assassins.”

Among the guests that evening was a famous artist, M. Paul Bayard, whose most admired works, The First Glance, and Cain after his Crime, ranked with the chefs-d'œuvre of the greatest masters of the day.

Said M. Bayard: “I have not studied, like you, doctor, from life. I don't know any insane persons, and what I am going to tell you is not founded on fact. But this is what I think about this strange remorse felt by innocent people: who knows if they may not have committed spiritually the crime of which they think themselves guilty materially? In this hypothesis they have completely forgotten the real and spiritual crime, which they committed really and spiritually; they did not even know or feel it at the instant they committed it. But this crime real, spiritual, and forgotten is transformed, by virtue of madness, into a material crime, of which they are innocent, but of which they believe themselves guilty. Perhaps a man has betrayed his friend; instead of accusing himself of this treason, he accuses himself of another fault which resembles that one, as the body resembles the soul. I repeat, I cannot cite an example. It is purely hypothetical; but something which I cannot define makes me think it possible, nay, even probable. The guilty person deceived his conscience; conscience in turn deceives him. To make a child understand, we give examples of sensible things. Perhaps justice thus acts with these men, and, finding them insensible in the sphere of the mind, transports their crime into the sphere of the body.

“Perhaps it is a real crime, but too subtle to be understood by them, that descends to their level, and pursues them under the appearance of an external and sensible crime, the only one which they can understand. There are whimsical scruples which resemble madness, as exaggeration resembles falsehood. Who knows if these scruples are not the wanderings, or, if you prefer it, the transpositions of remorse? I say remorse. I do not say repentance, for repentance enlightens, and remorse blinds. Between repentance and remorse there is an abyss: the first gives peace, the second destroys [pg 707] it. Perhaps conscience, not being able to make itself felt by the guilty person on its own ground, speaks to him, by way of revenge, in language as coarse as himself, on his own domain. Through a terrible justice, it makes him reproach himself with what appears unjust on the surface, but which is a thousand times just at the bottom. Conscience, which spoke in vain at the moment of the crime, now arms itself against the criminal as a phantom. We are men here to-night, as we appear to each other; but who knows if we are not for some one somewhere, at this moment, phantoms?”

The doctor rose, and, taking the artist's hand, said: “I do not know how much truth there may be in your theory. I only know one thing: that you are a man of genius, and, if I had doubted it before, I am now convinced of it. I will reflect on your words; they open to me a new horizon.”

“I have always been pursued by the thought,” said the artist, “that there is a moment when a man understands for the first time what he has seen since his infancy. It is the day when the eyes of the mind open. It is this I have attempted to show in my picture—The First Glance. But as the horizon is constantly enlarging, I endeavor to throw upon everything, each time, a look which I may call The First Glance. In the other composition, Cain after his Crime, I wished to show in Cain, not the melodramatic assassin, but a vulgar, common man. The stigmata of anger, of which he received the visible mark, opens to him the eyes of the soul. He throws upon his crime a first glance. There are spiritual Cains whose arms are innocent. Perhaps there may be some among the insane, of whom we have spoken; and in that case there is more truth in their madness than in their previous security. Their insanity only deceives them about the nature of the crime; their security deceived them about the crime itself.”

The doctor was thoughtful. He took the artist aside, and in a low tone said: “Shall we leave together?” And they left.

After their departure the conversation turned on what had just been said.

“Were you always a materialist?” asked one person of his neighbor.

“It is scarcely fair or generous to choose this moment for such a question,” was the reply.

“As for me,” said a young lady, “I don't like to hear M. Bayard talk. He is a great artist—that I admit; but when he commences in that style, he worries me!”

“Would it be indiscreet, madame, to ask you why?” timidly inquired a young man with a badly-tied cravat.

“Because I am afraid he is right in his opinions. I wish to pass gaily through life; and if we believe what he says, life would be such a serious affair, we should have to think. Really, to hear him, we can imagine ourselves surrounded with mysteries.”

VIII.

“I wish to see and study your picture of Cain. I was going to say your portrait of Cain,” said the doctor to the painter; “for it seems to me that you must have known him personally, from the manner in which you have spoken to me of him.”

“Perhaps I have known him,” [pg 708] said Paul. “At any rate, come!” And they entered the studio.

Arrived before the picture, the doctor started back in surprise.

The portrait of Cain was that of the baron, horrible in the resemblance.

There was on that face the coldness of the criminal and the horror of the cursed. The coldness did not impair the horror, nor the horror the coldness; and from the mouth of Cain the spectator might expect to hear the words that S. Bridget heard from the mouth of Satan when he said to God:

“O Judge! I am coldness itself.”

Indifference and despair were in those eyes, on those lips, and on that brow. But the despair was not heartrending, for repentance was wanting, and this despair even appeared expiatory, like justice eating its bread.

The doctor remained a long while motionless. The horizon opened before his eyes. His science sought new depths. He did not precisely reflect, but he remembered, and, perhaps for the first time in his life, passed an hour in profound contemplation.

“So you know him?” said he at last to Paul.

“Whom do you mean?”

“Why, my patient!”

“I don't know any of your patients.”

Professional discretion arrested the name before it passed the doctor's lips.

“But, really,” said he, “this head is a portrait. You could not have drawn it by chance.”

“Neither one nor the other,” replied Paul. “No one sat for me, and I did not draw it by chance. It appears to me, when I work, certain faces are offered to me without forcing themselves upon me. I perceive them interiorly; for my eyes are closed and I see nothing. Perceive is not the proper word, for the sense of sight is not needed. If I perceive them, it is with an unknown sense which is not that of sight, and in a peculiar condition, in comparison with which wakefulness is profound sleep. I think these perceptions correspond with some reality, either distant or future, whose photographic likeness at that moment passes before the eyes of the mind.

“This faculty, which may be called natural inspiration, has never abandoned me. The aptitude to surmise what I do not know is the highest form of the activity of my mind, and not only do I surmise what I do not know, but very often I do it, I realize it, without intention and without knowledge. It is as though I were an actor in a drama of which I was ignorant. I recite a part in a play that I do not know, and whose title and plot are equally unknown.

“Yet I feel myself free, and the profound sentiment of my liberty bursts forth, above all, in the remembrance of my faults. I wished to die, but death did not want me. I have sometimes asked myself if, having wished to lose my life, I might not lose inspiration, which would be for me a subtle and cruel manner of death. It has seemed to me that the question has been agitated somewhere, and that inspiration, which has compassion on the weak, came back to me gratuitously. If I had been criminal from malice, it would have abandoned me, perhaps, or have become in me the auxiliary of a future crime. It might have refused to help me, or have assisted me in doing wrong.”

[pg 709]

IX.

Shortly after this interview the baron returned to Paris, apparently calmer than usual.

“He is much better,” said Mme. la Baronne. “The doctor alarmed me terribly; but I knew very well in reality there was no danger. My husband is a cold man, and I have nothing to fear for his reason.”

The following night the baron waited until the house was quiet, and then went on tiptoe, as though afraid of being surprised or disturbed. Once safely in his picture gallery, he cut each of the pictures with a penknife, and then one by one burst them open by placing his knee against the canvas; and, that accomplished, left the house toward morning. The porter saw him pass, but did not recognize him.

“Who is that old man,” said he to his wife, “who passed the night in the house?”

The baron's hair, black the night before, was white as snow.

They waited for him at breakfast, they waited for him at dinner; he did not return. In searching his papers his wife found a note containing these words:

“This time I will not escape; the police are on my track.”

Said madame: “I always feared some misfortune would happen to me.”

The next day the baron's body was found in the Seine under the bridge of Austerlitz.

“I am much distressed, but not astonished,” said the doctor to madame. “I always thought his madness absolutely incurable.”

“Ah! doctor, he destroyed all the pictures. I have not even his portrait.”

“You shall have it, madame,” said the doctor.

Eight days afterwards the doctor kept his promise. He brought the baroness a photograph.

Madame de Brienne was profoundly agitated, and nearly fainted.

“Oh! what a resemblance,” she gasped, “what a resemblance! Doctor, how was it done? This is not natural. It is not his portrait, it is himself. He is going to speak. I am afraid!”

There was horror in the astonishment of the poor woman. She threw upon her husband and herself a first glance.

“But tell me, doctor, where did you find it?”

“Allow me to keep the secret, madame.”

In reality, the thing was very simple: they had only photographed the picture of the great artist—Cain after his Crime.

[pg 710]