The Confession
The entire population of Véziers-le-Réthel had followed Monsieur Badon-Leremincé to his grave; in every memory lingered still the last words of the prefect’s funeral oration: “At least he was a man of unquestioned honesty.”
Honest he had been in every notable action throughout his life, honest in his speech, in the example he set, in his appearance, in his bearing, in his gait, in the cut of his beard and the shape of his hats. He had never spoken a word which did not contain a precept, never given alms without adding a piece of advice, never held out his hand without the air of bestowing a benediction.
He left two children, a son and a daughter; his son was on the town council, and his daughter, who had married a solicitor, Monsieur Poirel de la Voulte, moved in the best circles in Véziers.
They were inconsolable at their father’s death, for they loved him sincerely.
As soon as the ceremony was over, they returned to the house of death. All three, son, daughter, and son-in-law, shut themselves up in a room and opened the will, which was to be unsealed by them alone, and only after the coffin had been deposited in its resting-place. This request was conveyed to them by a brief note on the envelope.
Monsieur Poirel de la Voulte opened the envelope, in his capacity as a lawyer accustomed to such proceedings. After adjusting his spectacles, he read it out to them in a dry voice fitted for the recital of legal details.
“My children, my dear children, I could not rest quietly in my last sleep did I not make this confession to you from beyond the grave. It is the confession of a crime which I have regretted with a bitterness that has poisoned my life. Yes, I am guilty of a crime, a frightful, appalling crime.
“I was twenty-six years old at the time, and had just been called to the bar in Paris. There I lived like any other young provincial stranded in the city without acquaintances, friends, or relatives.
“I took a mistress. How many people there are whom the word ‘mistress’ revolts! Yet there are people who cannot live alone. I am one of them. Solitude fills me with a frightful agony, solitude at night, at home by the fireside. At such times I feel as though I were alone on earth, terribly alone, but surrounded with vague dangers, strange fearful perils. The thin wall which separates me from my neighbour, the neighbour I do not know, keeps me as far from him as from the stars I see from my window. I am overcome with a sort of fever, a fever of impatience and fear, and the silent walls terrify me. It is so deep and so sad, the silence of a room in which one lives alone. It is not only a silence round about the body, but a silence about the soul, and when a piece of furniture creaks, a shiver runs through the heart, for in this sorrowful place any sound comes as a surprise.
“More than once, unnerved and distracted by this mute and terrifying silence, I have begun to speak, to babble words without sense or reason, just for the sake of making a noise. At these times my voice sounded so strange that I was afraid of it too. Is there anything more terrifying than talking to oneself in an empty house? One’s voice seems to be another’s, an unknown voice speaking, without cause, speaking to nobody, in the hollow air, with no human ear to hear. For one knows, even before they escape into the solitude of the room, the words which are about to come from one’s mouth, and when they resound mournfully in the silence, they sound no more than an echo, the strange echo of words murmured in an undertone by the brain.
“I took a mistress, a young girl just like all the young girls who work in Paris at a profession too poorly paid to keep them. She was a sweet, good little thing; her parents lived at Poissy. Occasionally she would go to spend a few days with them.
“For a year I lived uneventfully with her, fully intending to leave her as soon as I should find a girl attractive enough for me to marry. I proposed to leave her a small income, for among people of our class it is commonly acknowledged that a woman’s love must be paid for, in cash when she is poor, in presents when she is rich.
“But one day she informed me that she was going to have a child. I was aghast; in a flash I foresaw the ruin of my whole life. I saw the chain I was doomed to drag with me till the day of my death, everywhere I went, in my future family life, in my old age, forever: the chain of the woman bound to my life by the child, the chain of this child which must be brought up, watched, protected, while all the time the secret must be kept from it and from the world. I was utterly cast down by the news, and a vague desire—a desire I never expressed, but felt in my heart ready to leap
