was a great fool.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly that evening; I went and dined at a restaurant; afterward I went to the theatre, and then started home. But as I got near the house I was seized by a strange feeling of uneasiness once more; I was afraid of seeing him again. I was not afraid of him, not afraid of his presence, in which I did not believe; but I was afraid of being deceived again; I was afraid of some fresh hallucination, afraid lest fear should take possession of me.
For more than an hour I wandered up and down the pavement; then I thought that I was really too foolish, and returned home. I panted so that I could scarcely get upstairs, and remained standing on the landing outside my door for more than ten minutes; then suddenly I took courage and pulled myself together. I inserted my key into the lock, and went in with a candle in my hand. I kicked open my half-open bedroom door, and gave a frightened look toward the fireplace; there was nothing there. A‑h!
What a relief and what a delight! What a deliverance! I walked up and down briskly and boldly, but I was not altogether reassured, and kept turning round with a jump; the very shadows in the corners disquieted me.
I slept badly, and was constantly disturbed by imaginary noises, but I did not see him; no, that was all over.
Since that time I have been afraid of being alone at night. I feel that the spectre is there, close to me, around me; but it has not appeared to me again. And supposing it did, what would it matter, since I do not believe in it and know that it is nothing?
It still worries me, however, because I am constantly thinking of it: his right arm hanging down and his head inclined to the left like a man who was asleep—Enough of that, in Heaven’s name! I don’t want to think about it!
Why, however, am I so persistently possessed with this idea? His feet were close to the fire!
He haunts me; it is very stupid, but so it is. Who and what is he? I know that he does not exist except in my cowardly imagination, in my fears, and in my anguish! There—enough of that!
Yes, it is all very well for me to reason with myself, to brace myself up; I cannot remain alone at home, because I know he is there. I know I shall not see him again; he will not show himself again; that is all over. But he is there all the same in my thoughts. He remains invisible, but that does not prevent his being there. He is behind the doors, in the closed wardrobe, under the bed, in every dark corner. If I open the door or the wardrobe, if I take the candle to look under the bed and throw a light on the dark places, he is there no longer, but I feel that he is behind me. I turn round, certain that I shall not see him, that I shall never see him again; but he is, none the less, behind me.
It is very stupid, it is dreadful; but what am I to do? I cannot help it.
But if there were two of us in the place, I feel certain that he would not be there any longer, for he is there just because I am alone, simply and solely because I am alone!
The Window
I made the acquaintance of Mme. de Jadelle at Paris this winter. She pleased me exceedingly at once. But you know her as well as I … no … pardon … almost as well as I. … You know her to be at once whimsical and romantic. Frank in manner and emotionally impressionable, wilful, unconventional, fearless, adventurous, audacious, contemptuous of all prejudice, and, in spite of that, sentimental, fastidious, easily offended, sensitive and modest.
She was a widow. I adore widows, because I am indolent. I was thinking of marrying her, and I paid court to her. The better I knew her, the better she pleased me; and I decided that the moment had come to venture my request. I was in love with her, and I was on the verge of being too much in love. When a man marries, he ought not to be too much in love with his wife, because that makes a blundering fool of him: he loses his self-possession, and becomes both stupid and crude. He must hold on to his self-control. If he loses his head the first night, he runs a great risk of having it antlered a year later.
So one day I presented myself at her house in a pair of light gloves and said to her:
“Madame, I am so happy as to love you, and I come to ask you whether I may hope to please you—to do which I will use all my best endeavours—and to give you my name.”
She answered placidly:
“As you like! I really don’t know whether you will please me sooner or later, but I ask nothing better than to put it to the test. As a man, I rather like you. It remains to discover what you are like in disposition and character, what sort of habits you have. Most marriages become stormy or immoral, because parties thereto did not know each other well enough when they married. The merest trifle, a deep-rooted obsession, a tenacious opinion on some point of ethics, religion or anything else, an annoying gesture, a bad habit, the least fault or even a disagreeable trait, is enough to make two irreconcilable enemies, implacably bitter and chained together until death, of the tenderest and most passionate lovers.
“I shall never marry unless I know intimately, in every crack and cranny of his nature, the man whose life I am about to share. I want to study him at leisure, and at close quarters, for months.
“This is what I
