at her, tormented by a burning curiosity, a curiosity that became positively painful. She really must have been pretty, with her quiet eyes, so big, so untroubled, so wide that you’d have thought they were never closed as ordinary eyes are. Her dress was a little absurd, a real old maid’s dress, that hid her real charm but could not make her look graceless.
I thought that I could see into her mind as I had just seen into the mind of Monsieur Chantal, that I could see every hidden corner of this simple humble life, spent in the service of others; but I felt a sudden impulse to speak, an aching persistent impulse to question her, to find out if she too had loved, if she had loved him; if like him she had endured the same long bitter secret sorrow, unseen, unknown, unguessed of all, indulged only at night in the solitude and darkness of her room. I looked at her, I saw her heart beating under her high-necked frock, and I wondered if night after night this gentle wide-eyed creature had stifled her moans in the depths of a pillow wet with her tears, sobbing, her body torn with long shudders, lying there in the fevered solitude of a burning bed.
And like a child breaking a plaything to see inside it, I whispered to her: “If you had seen Monsieur Chantal crying just now, you would have been sorry for him.”
She trembled: “What, has he been crying?”
“Yes, he’s been crying.”
“Why?”
She was very agitated. I answered:
“About you.”
“About me?”
“Yes. He told me how he loved you years ago, and what it had cost him to marry his wife instead of you.”
Her pale face seemed to grow a little longer; her wide quiet eyes shut suddenly, so swiftly that they seemed closed never to open again. She slipped from her chair to the floor and sank slowly, softly, across it, like a falling scarf.
“Help, quick, quick, help!” I cried. “Mademoiselle Pearl is ill.”
Madame Chantal and her daughters rushed to help her, and while they were bringing water, a napkin, vinegar, I sought my hat and hurried away.
I walked away with great strides, sick at heart and my mind full of remorse and regret. And at the same time I was almost happy; it seemed to me that I had done a praiseworthy and necessary action.
Was I wrong or right? I asked myself. They had hidden their secret knowledge in their hearts like a bullet in a healed wound. Wouldn’t they be happier now? It was too late for their grief to torture them again, and soon enough for them to recall it with a tender pitying emotion.
And perhaps some evening in the coming spring, stirred by moonlight falling through the branches across the grass under their feet, they will draw close to one another and clasp each other’s hands, remembering all their cruel hidden suffering. And perhaps, too, the brief embrace will wake in their blood a faint thrill of the ecstasy they have never known, and in the hearts of these two dead that for one moment are alive, it will stir the swift divine madness, the wild joy that turns the least trembling of true lovers into a deeper happiness than other men can ever know in all their life.
The Hermit
Together with some friends, we had been to see the old hermit living on an ancient tumulus, covered with great trees, in the midst of the vast plain that stretches from Cannes to La Napoule.
On the way back, we talked about these strange solitary layman, once so numerous, whose kind have now almost disappeared from the earth. We sought for the moral motives, and made an effort to realise what could be the nature of the sorrows that formerly drove men into solitary places.
One of our companions said abruptly:
“I’ve known two recluses, a man and a woman. The woman must be still living. For five years she lived at the summit of an absolutely deserted hill on the Corsican coast, fifteen or twenty miles from any other house. She lived there with a nurse; I went to see her. She must undoubtedly have been a well-known woman of the world. She received us with courtesy, even with pleasure, but I knew nothing about her, and I discovered nothing.
“The man, now, well, I’ll tell you his unfortunate fate.
“Turn round. Away over there, you see the peaked and wooded hill that stands out behind La Napoule, thrust up by itself in front of the peaks of the Esterel; its local name is the Hill of Serpents. That’s where my recluse lived for about twelve years, within the walls of a small ancient temple.
“When I heard of him, I decided to make his acquaintance, and one March morning I set out for Cannes on horseback. I left my mount at the Napoule inn, and began to climb this strange conical hill on foot; it is perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards high and covered with aromatic plants, mostly cytisus, whose scent is so strong and pungent that it is quite overpowering and makes you feel positively ill. The ground is stony and you often see long vipers slithering over the stones and disappearing in the grass. That’s what gives the place its well-merited nickname of the Hill of Serpents. There are some days when the ground under your feet seems to give birth to these reptiles as you climb the bare, sun-scorched slope. They are so numberless that you daren’t walk any farther; you are conscious of a strange uneasiness, not fear, for the creatures are harmless, but a kind of mystic terror. Several times I have had an odd sense that I was climbing a hill sacred of old, a fantastic hill, scented, mysterious, covered with and peopled by serpents and crowned with a temple.
“The temple is still there. At least, I am told that it was a temple. And I have refrained
