Then the angel took Bernard into the poor quarters of the town, whose wretchedness Bernard had never suspected. Evening was falling. They wandered for a long time among tall, sordid houses, inhabited by disease, prostitution, shame, crime and hunger. It was only then that Bernard took the angel’s hand, and the angel turned aside to weep.
Bernard did not dine that evening; and when he went back to the pension he did not attempt to join Sarah, as he had done the other evenings, but went straight upstairs to the room he shared with Boris.
Boris was already in bed but not asleep. He was rereading, by the light of his candle, the letter he had received that very morning from Bronja.
“I am afraid,” wrote his friend, “that I shall never see you again. I caught cold when we got back to Poland. I have a cough; and though the doctor hides it from me, I feel I cannot live much longer.”
When he heard Bernard coming up, Boris hid the letter under his pillow, and blew the candle out hurriedly.
Bernard came in in the dark. The angel was with him, but, although the night was not very dark, Boris saw only Bernard.
“Are you asleep?” asked Bernard in a whisper. And as Boris did not answer, he concluded he was sleeping.
“Then, now,” said Bernard to the angel, “we’ll have it out.”
And all that night, until the breaking of the day, they wrestled.
Boris dimly perceived that Bernard was struggling. He thought it was his way of praying and took care not to disturb him. And yet he would have liked to speak to him, for his unhappiness was very great. He got up and knelt down at the foot of his bed. He would have liked to pray, but he could only sob:
“Oh, Bronja! You who can see angels, you who were to have opened my eyes, you are leaving me! Without you, Bronja, what will become of me? What will become of me?”
Bernard and the angel were too busy to hear him. They wrestled together till daybreak. The angel departed without either of them having vanquished the other.
When, a little later, Bernard himself left the room, he met Rachel in the passage.
“I want to speak to you,” she said. Her voice was so sad that Bernard understood at once what it was she had to say to him. He answered nothing, bowed his head, and in his great pity for Rachel suddenly began to hate Sarah and to loathe the pleasure he took with her.
XV
Bernard Visits Edouard
About ten o’clock, Bernard turned up at Edouard’s with a hand bag which was sufficient to contain the few clothes and books that he possessed. He had taken leave of Azaïs and of Madame Vedel, but had not attempted to see Sarah.
Bernard was grave. His struggle with the angel had matured him. He no longer resembled the careless youth who had stolen the suitcase and who thought that all that is needed in this world is to be daring. He was beginning to understand that boldness is often achieved at the expense of other people’s happiness.
“I have come to ask for shelter,” said he to Edouard. “Here I am again without a roof.”
“Why are you leaving the Vedels’?”
“For private reasons … forgive me for not telling you.”
Edouard had observed Bernard and Sarah on the evening of the dinner enough to guess at the meaning of this silence.
“All right,” he said smiling. “The couch in my studio is at your service. But I must first tell you that your father came to see me yesterday.” And he repeated the part of their conversation which he thought likely to touch him. “It is not in my house that you ought to spend the night, but in his. He is expecting you.”
Bernard, however, kept silent.
“I will think about it,” he said at last. “Allow me in the meantime to leave my things here. May I see Olivier?”
“The weather is so fine, that I advised him to go out. I wanted to go with him, for he is still very weak, but he wouldn’t let me. But it’s more than an hour since he left and he will be back soon. You had better wait for him. … But I’ve just thought. … Your examination?”
“I’ve passed; but it’s of no importance; the important thing is to know what I’m to do now. Do you know the chief reason that prevents me from going back to my father’s? It’s because I don’t want to take his money. You’ll think me absurd to fling away such an opportunity; but I made a vow that I would make my way without it. I feel I must prove to myself that I am a man of my word—someone I can count on.”
“It strikes me as pride more than anything else.”
“Call it by any name you please—pride, presumption, conceit … it’s a feeling you won’t succeed in cheapening in my eyes. But at the present moment, what I should like to know is this—is it necessary to fix one’s eyes on a goal in order to guide oneself in life?”
“Explain.”
“I wrestled over it all last night. What am I to do with the strength I feel I possess? To what use am I to put it? How am I to get out of myself the best that’s in me? Is it by aiming at a goal? But how choose such a goal? How know what it is before reaching it?”
“To live without a goal, is to give oneself up to chance.”
“I am afraid you don’t understand. When Columbus discovered America did he know towards what he was sailing? His goal was to go ahead, straight in front of him. Himself was his goal, impelling him to go ahead. …”
“I have often thought,” interrupted Edouard, “that in art, and particularly in literature, the only people who count are those who launch out on to unknown seas. One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to
