“I thought you lived chiefly on what the school brings in.”
“Yes; there’s some truth in that. But that’s not very tactful either—to cut me short in my lyrical flights.”
“And you then? Don’t you believe in anything?” asked Olivier sadly, for he was fond of Armand, and his ugliness pained him.
“Jubes renovare dolorem. … You seem to forget, my dear friend, that my parents wanted to make a pastor of me. They nourished me on pious precepts—fed me up with them, if I may say so. … But finally they were obliged to recognize that I hadn’t the vocation. It’s a pity. I might have made a first-class preacher. But my vocation was to write The Nocturnal Vase.”
“You poor old thing! If you knew how sorry I am for you!”
“You have always had what my father calls ‘a heart of gold’. … I won’t trespass on it any longer.”
He took up his hat. He had almost left the room, when he suddenly turned round:
“You haven’t asked after Sarah?”
“Because you could tell me nothing that I haven’t heard from Bernard.”
“Did he tell you that he had left the pension?”
“He told me that your sister Rachel had requested him to leave.”
Armand had one hand on the door handle; with his walking-stick in the other, he pushed up the portière. The stick went into a hole in the portière and made it bigger.
“Account for it how you will,” said he, and his face became very grave. “Rachel is, I believe, the only person in the world I love and respect. I respect her because she is virtuous. And I always behave in such a way as to offend her virtue. As for Bernard and Sarah, she had no suspicions. It was I who told her the whole thing. … And the oculist said she wasn’t to cry! It’s comic!”
“Am I to think you sincere now?”
“Yes, I think the most sincere thing about me is a horror—a hatred of everything people call ‘Virtue.’ Don’t try to understand. You have no idea what a Puritan bringing-up can do to one. It leaves one with an incurable resentment in one’s heart … to judge by myself,” he added, with a jarring laugh.
He put down his hat and went up to the window. “Just look here; on the inside of my lip?”
He stooped towards Olivier and lifted up his lip with his finger.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Yes, you can; there; in the corner.”
Olivier saw a whitish spot near the corner. A little uneasily: “It’s a gumboil,” he said to reassure Armand.
But Armand shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t talk nonsense—such a serious fellow as you! A gumboil’s soft and it goes away. This is hard and gets larger every week. And it gives me a kind of bad taste in my mouth.”
“Have you had it long?”
“It’s more than a month since I first noticed it. But as the chef d’oeuvre says: ‘Mon mal vient de plus loin. …’ ”
“Well, old boy, if you’re anxious about it, you had better consult a doctor.”
“You don’t suppose I needed your advice for that.”
“What did he say?”
“I didn’t need your advice to say to myself that I ought to consult a doctor. But all the same, I didn’t consult one, because if it’s what I think, I prefer not to know it.”
“It’s idiotic.”
“Isn’t it stupid? But so human, my friend, so human. …”
“The idiotic thing is not to be treated for it.”
“So that when one is treated, one can always say: ‘Too late!’ That’s what Cob-Lafleur expresses so well in one of his poems which you’ll see in the review:
‘Il faut se rendre à l’évidence;
Car, dans ce bas monde, la danse
Précède souvent la chanson.’ ”
“One can make literature out of anything.”
“Just so; out of anything. But, dear friend, it’s not so easy as all that. Well, goodbye. … Oh! there’s one thing more I wanted to tell you. I’ve heard from Alexandre. … Yes, you know—my eldest brother, who ran away to Africa. He began by coming to grief over his business and running through all the money Rachel sent him. He’s settled now on the banks of the Casamance; and he has written to say that things are doing well and that he’ll soon be able to pay everything back.”
“What kind of a business?”
“Heaven knows! Rubber, ivory, Negroes perhaps … a lot of odds and ends. … He has asked me to go out to him.”
“Will you go?”
“I would tomorrow, if it weren’t for my military service. Alexandre is a kind of donkey, something in my style. I think I should get on with him very well. … Here! would you like to see? I’ve got his letter with me.”
He took an envelope out of his pocket, and several sheets of notepaper out of the envelope; he chose one, and held it out to Olivier.
“There’s no need to read it all. Begin here.”
Olivier read:
“For the last fortnight, I have been living in company with a singular individual whom I have taken into my hut. The sun of these parts seems to have touched him in the upper story. I thought at first it was delirium, but there’s no doubt it’s just plain madness. This curious young man is about thirty years old, tall, strong, good-looking, and certainly ‘a gentleman,’ to judge from his manners, his language, and his hands, which are too delicate ever to have done any rough work. The strange thing about him is that he thinks himself possessed by the devil—or rather, as far as I can make out, he thinks he is the devil. He must have had some odd adventure or other, for when he is dreaming or half dozing, a state into which he often falls (and then he talks to himself as if I weren’t there)
