“For a month I had been wandering over this magnificent island, feeling as though I were at the end of the world. There are no inns, no taverns, no roads. Mule paths lead to the villages that cling to the flanks of the mountains and overlook the twisting gulfs from whose depths the heavy, muffled, deep roar of the torrent rises ceaselessly in the silence of evening. The traveller knocks at the house doors and asks for shelter for the night and food until next day. He sits down at the humble table and sleeps beneath the humble roof, and in the morning shakes the outstretched hand of his host, who leads him to the edge of the village.
“One evening, after walking for ten hours, I came to a little house standing by itself in the depths of a narrow valley that fell into the sea a league farther on. The two steep slopes of the hillside, covered with thickets, boulders, and tall trees, were like two gloomy walls enclosing this unutterably mournful abyss.
“Round the hovel were a few vines, a small garden, and, further on, some large chestnut-trees; enough, actually, for a bare existence, a fortune in that poor country.
“The woman who opened the door was old, hard-featured, and clean, which was unusual. The man, seated on a cane chair, got up to greet me and then sat down without saying a word.
“ ‘Please excuse him,’ said his wife to me. ‘He’s deaf now. He’s eighty-two.’
“She spoke perfect French. I was surprised.
“ ‘You are not Corsicans?’ I asked her.
“ ‘No,’ she replied, ‘we come from the mainland. But we have lived here for fifty years.’
“A feeling of anguish and terror overwhelmed me at the thought of the fifty years that had rolled by in this dark hole, so far from towns and the life of men. An old shepherd came in, and we began to eat the only course of the dinner, a thick soup in which potatoes, bacon, and cabbage were all boiled together.
“When the short meal was over, I went out and sat before the door, my heart oppressed with the melancholy of that sombre landscape, in the grip of that feeling of wretchedness which sometimes lays hold on the traveller, on sad evenings, in desolate places. It seems as though all things were coming to an end, life itself, and the universe. The dreadful misery of life is revealed in one blinding flash, and the isolation of all things, the nothingness of all things, and the black loneliness of our hearts which soothe and deceive themselves with dreams until the coming of death itself.
“The old woman joined me, and tormented by the curiosity which lives on in the hearts of even the most resigned of mortals, said to me:
“ ‘So you come from France?’
“ ‘Yes, I am travelling for pleasure.’
“ ‘You are from Paris, perhaps?’
“ ‘No, I come from Nancy.’
“At that it seemed to me that an extraordinary excitement was agitating her. How I saw this, or rather felt it, I do not know.
“ ‘You are from Nancy?’ she repeated slowly.
“The husband appeared in the doorway, impassive, as are all deaf people.
“ ‘It does not matter,’ she continued. ‘He cannot hear.’
“Then, after a few seconds:
“ ‘Then you know people in Nancy?’
“ ‘Why, yes, almost everybody.’
“ ‘The Sainte-Allaize family?’
“ ‘Yes, very well; they were friends of my father’s.’
“ ‘What is your name?’
“ ‘I told her. She stared intently at me, then said in that soft voice evoked by wakening memories:
“ ‘Yes, yes, I remember quite well. And the Brisenaves, what has become of them?’
“ ‘They are all dead.’
“ ‘Ah! And the Sirmonts, do you know them?’
“ ‘Yes, the youngest is a general.’
“At that she replied, shaking with excitement, with anguish, with I know not what confused powerful and intimate emotion, with I know not how pressing a need to confess, to tell everything, to speak of things she had until this moment kept locked in the secret places of her heart, and of the people whose name troubled the very depths of her soul:
“ ‘Yes, Henri de Sirmont. I know him well. He is my brother.’
“I lifted my eyes to her, quite dumbfounded with surprise. And suddenly I remembered.
“It had been a great scandal, long ago, in aristocratic Lorraine. As a young girl, beautiful, wealthy, Suzanne de Sirmont had run off with a noncommissioned officer in the hussar regiment of which her father was commander.
“He was a handsome lad; his parents were peasants, but he wore the blue dolman with a gallant air, this soldier who seduced his colonel’s daughter. Doubtless she had seen him, noticed him, fallen in love with him as she watched the squadrons march past. But how had she spoken to him, how had they been able to meet and come to an understanding? How had she dared to make him realise that she loved him? This no one ever knew.
“Nothing had been guessed or foreseen. One evening, when the soldier had just completed his term of service, he disappeared with her. A search was made, but they were not found. No news of them was heard, and she was thought of as dead.
“And thus I had found her in this sinister valley.
“Then in my turn I answered:
“ ‘Yes, I remember well. You are Mademoiselle Suzanne.’
“She nodded ‘yes.’ Tears poured from her eyes. Then, glancing towards the old man, standing motionless on the threshold of his dwelling, she said to me:
“ ‘That is he.’
“And I realised that she still loved him, still saw him with eyes blinded by love.
“ ‘But at least you have been happy?’ I asked.
“She answered, in a voice that came from her heart:
“ ‘Oh, yes, very happy. He has made me very happy. I have never had any regrets.’
“I gazed at her, a little sad, surprised, marvelling at
