He thought:
“Why is it not she who is dead, and the other who is alive?”
He thought:
“She is alive: she loves me: she can tell me that today, tomorrow, all my life: and the other, the woman I love, she is dead and never told me that she loved me: I never have told her that I loved her: I shall never hear her say it: she will never know it. …”
And suddenly he remembered that last evening: he remembered that they were just going to talk when Rosa came and prevented it. And he hated Rosa. …
The door of the woodshed was opened. Rosa called Christophe softly, and groped towards him. She took his hand. He felt an aversion in her near presence: in vain did he reproach himself for it: it was stronger than himself.
Rosa was silent: her great pity had taught her silence. Christophe was grateful to her for not breaking in upon his grief with useless words. And yet he wished to know … she was the only creature who could talk to him of her. He asked in a whisper:
“When did she …”
(He dared not say: die.)
She replied:
“Last Saturday week.”
Dimly he remembered. He said:
“At night?”
Rosa looked at him in astonishment and said:
“Yes. At night. Between two and three.”
The sorrowful melody came back to him. He asked, trembling:
“Did she suffer much?”
“No, no. God be thanked, dear Christophe: she hardly suffered at all. She was so weak. She did not struggle against it. Suddenly they saw that she was lost. …”
“And she … did she know it?”
“I don’t know. I think …”
“Did she say anything?”
“No. Nothing. She was sorry for herself like a child.”
“You were there?”
“Yes. For the first two days I was there alone, before her brother came.”
He pressed her hand in gratitude.
“Thank you.”
She felt the blood rush to her heart.
After a silence he said, he murmured the question which was choking him:
“Did she say anything … for me?”
Rosa shook her head sadly. She would have given much to be able to let him have the answer he expected: she was almost sorry that she could not lie about it. She tried to console him:
“She was not conscious.”
“But she did speak?”
“One could not make out what she said. It was in a very low voice.”
“Where is the child?”
“Her brother took her away with him to the country.”
“And she?”
“She is there too. She was taken away last Monday week.”
They began to weep again.
Frau Vogel’s voice called Rosa once more. Christophe, left alone again, lived through those days of death. A week, already a week ago. … O God! What had become of her? How it had rained that week! … And all that time he was laughing, he was happy!
In his pocket he felt a little parcel wrapped up in soft paper: they were silver buckles that he had brought her for her shoes. He remembered the evening when he had placed his hand on the little stockinged foot. Her little feet: where were they now? How cold they must be! … He thought the memory of that warm contact was the only one that he had of the beloved creature. He had never dared to touch her, to take her in his arms, to hold her to his breast. She was gone forever, and he had never known her. He knew nothing of her, neither soul nor body. He had no memory of her body, of her life, of her love. … Her love? … What proof had he of that? … He had not even a letter, a token—nothing. Where could he seek to hold her, in himself, or outside himself? … Oh! Nothing! There was nothing left him but the love he had for her, nothing left him but himself.—And in spite of all, his desperate desire to snatch her from destruction, his need of denying death, made him cling to the last piece of wreckage, in an act of blind faith:
“… he son gia morto: e ben, c’albergo cangi resto in te vivo. C’or mi vedi e piangi, se l’un nell’ altro amante si trasforma.”
“… I am not dead: I have changed my dwelling. I live still in thee who art faithful to me. The soul of the beloved is merged in the soul of the lover.”
He had never read these sublime words: but they were in him. Each one of us in turn climbs the Calvary of the age. Each one of us finds anew the agony, each one of us finds anew the desperate hope and folly of the ages. Each one of us follows in the footsteps of those who were, of those before us who struggled with death, denied death—and are dead.
He shut himself up in his room. His shutters were closed all day so as not to see the windows of the house opposite. He avoided the Vogels: they were odious to his sight. He had nothing to reproach them with: they were too honest, and too pious not to have thrust back their feelings in the face of death. They knew Christophe’s grief and respected it, whatever they might think of it: they never uttered Sabine’s name in his presence. But they had been her enemies when she was alive: that was enough to make him their enemy now that she was dead.
Besides they had not altered their noisy habits: and in spite of the sincere though passing pity that they had felt, it was obvious that at bottom they were untouched by the misfortune—(it was too natural)—perhaps even they were secretly relieved by it. Christophe imagined so at least. Now that the Vogels’ intentions with regard to himself were made plain he exaggerated them in his own mind. In reality they attached little importance to him: he set too great store by himself. But he had no doubt that the death of Sabine, by removing the greatest obstacle in the way of his landlords’ plans, did seem to them to leave the field clear for Rosa. So
