In the meantime my father, squatted behind some thick shrub, musket in hand, was watching a cat or bombarding some vocalizing warbler hidden in the branches. In the evening, by way of consolation he would gently say to mother, “Well, dearie, your health is not always good. You see, what you need is some bitters, take some bitters. A glass in the morning, a glass in the evening. … That’s all that’s needed.” He did not complain of anything, he never got excited over anything. Seating himself at his desk, he would go over the papers which were brought to him by the city clerk during the day and sign them rapidly with an air of disdain. “Here!” he would exclaim, “it is just like this corrupt administration; it would do a whole lot better if it occupied itself with the farmer instead of pestering us with these small matters. … Here is some more silly stuff!” … Then he would go to bed, repeating in a calm voice: “Bitters, take some bitters.”
This resignation hurt my mother like a reproach. Although my father’s education was rather limited and though she did not find in him any trace of that masculine tenderness or fanciful romanticism of which she had dreamed, she nevertheless could not deny his physical energy and a sort of moral vigor which she envied in him, despising as she did its application to things which she considered petty and sordid. She felt guilty toward herself, guilty toward life so uselessly wasted in tears. Not only did she not meddle in the affairs of her husband, but little by little she lost her interest even in household duties, leaving them to the whims of the servants. She took so little care of herself that her chambermaid, good old Marie, who was present at her birth, often had to nurse and feed her, while scolding her affectionately, as one does a little infant in the cradle. In her desire for isolation she came to a point where she could no longer stand the presence of her parents, of her friends who, discomfited and repelled by her countenance more and more morose, by this mouth whence no word ever came, by this forced smile which was immediately shrivelled by an involuntary trembling of her lips—called, less and less frequently and ended by forgetting altogether the path leading to the Priory. Religion, like everything else, became a burden to her. She no longer put in an appearance in the church, did not pray anymore, and two Easters passed without anyone seeing her approach the holy table.
Then my mother began to lock herself up in her room, the shutters of which she closed, and drew the curtains together, deepening the darkness about her. She used to spend entire days there, sometimes stretched out on a lounge, sometimes kneeling in a corner, her head touching the wall. And she was annoyed by the least noise from outside; the slamming of the door, the creaking of old shoes along the corridor, the neighing of a horse in the court came to disturb her novitiate of nonexistence. Alas! What could be done about it! For a long time she had struggled against an unknown disease, and the disease, stronger than she was, had felled her to the ground. Now her willpower was paralyzed. She was no longer free to rise or act. Some mysterious force held her in chains, rendering her arms inert, her brain muddled, her heart vacillating like a little smoky flame beaten by the wind; and far from resisting, she looked for added opportunities to plunge deeper into suffering, relishing with a sort of perverted exultation the frightful delights of her self-annihilation.
Dissatisfied with the management of his domestic affairs, my father at length decided to take an interest in the progress of my mother’s illness, which passed his understanding. He had the hardest time in the world to make mother accept the idea of going to Paris to consult the “princes of science” as he put it. It was a sorry trip. Of the three celebrated physicians to whom he took her, the first declared that my mother was anaemic and prescribed a strengthening diet; the second diagnosed that she was affected with nervous rheumatism and prescribed a debilitating regimen; the third one found that “it was nothing” and recommended mental tranquility.
No one saw clearly into her soul. She herself did not know it. Obsessed with the cruel memory to which she attributed all her misfortunes, she could not unravel with clearness all that stirred obscurely in the innermost depths of her being, nor understand the vague passions, the imprisoned aspirations, the captive dreams which had accumulated in her since childhood. She was like a nestling bird that, without realizing the obscure and nostalgic forces which drew it toward heaven of which it has no knowledge, crushes its head and maims its
