He seemed to be butting with his head against some obstacle:
“I couldn’t forgive her for deceiving me. Madame de La Pérouse still corresponds with her. When I learnt she was in great poverty, I sent her some money for the child’s sake. But Madame de La Pérouse knows nothing about that. No more does she … she doesn’t know the money came from me.”
“And your grandson?”
A strange smile flitted over his face; he got up.
“Wait a moment. I’ll show you his photograph.” And again he trotted quickly out of the room, poking his head out in front of him. When he came back, his fingers trembled as he looked for the picture in a large letter-case. He held it towards me and, bending forward, whispered in a low voice:
“I took it from Madame de La Pérouse without her noticing. She thinks she has lost it.”
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Thirteen. He looks older, doesn’t he? He is very delicate.”
His eyes filled with tears once more; he held out his hand for the photograph, as if he were anxious to get it back again as quickly as possible. I leant forward to look at it in the dim light of the street lamp; I thought the child was like him; I recognized old La Pérouse’s high, prominent forehead and dreamy eyes. I thought I should please him by saying so; he protested:
“No, no; it’s my brother he’s like—a brother I lost. …”
The child was oddly dressed in a Russian embroidered blouse.
“Where does he live?”
“How can I tell?” cried La Pérouse, in a kind of despair. “They keep everything from me, I tell you.”
He had taken the photograph, and after having looked at it a moment, he put it back in the letter-case, which he slipped into his pocket.
“When his mother comes to Paris, she only sees Madame de La Pérouse; if I question her, she always answers: ‘You had better ask her yourself.’ She says that, but at heart she would hate me to see her. She has always been jealous. She has always tried to take away everything I care for. … Little Boris is being educated in Poland—at Warsaw, I believe. But he often travels with his mother.” Then, in great excitement: “Oh, would you have thought it possible to love someone one has never seen? … Well, this child is what I care for most in the world. … And he doesn’t know!”
His words were broken by great sobs. He rose from his chair and threw himself—fell almost—into my arms. I would have done anything to give him some comfort—but what could I do? I got up, for I felt his poor shrunken form slipping to the ground and I thought he was going to fall on his knees. I held him up, embraced him, rocked him like a child. He mastered himself. Madame de La Pérouse was calling in the next room.
“She’s coming. … You don’t want to see her, do you? … Besides, she’s stone deaf. Go quickly.” And as he saw me out on to the landing:
“Don’t be too long without coming again.” (There was entreaty in his voice.) “Goodbye; goodbye.”
Nov. 9th.—There is a kind of tragedy, it seems to me, which has hitherto almost entirely eluded literature. The novel has dealt with the contrariness of fate, good or evil fortune, social relationships, the conflicts of passions and of characters—but not with the very essence of man’s being.
And yet, the whole effect of Christianity was to transfer the drama on to the moral plane. But properly speaking there are no Christian novels. There are novels whose purpose is edification; but that has nothing to do with what I mean. Moral tragedy—the tragedy, for instance, which gives such terrific meaning to the Gospel text: “If the salt have lost his flavour wherewith shall it be salted?”—that is the tragedy with which I am concerned.
Nov. 10th.—Olivier’s examination is coming on shortly. Pauline wants him to try for the École Normale afterwards. His career is all mapped out. … If only he had no parents, no connections! I would have made him my secretary. But the thought of me never occurs to him; he has not even noticed my interest in him, and I should embarrass him if I showed it. It is because I don’t want to embarrass him that I affect a kind of indifference in his presence, a kind of detachment. It is only when he does not see me that I dare look my full at him. Sometimes I follow him in the street without his knowing it. Yesterday I was walking behind him in this way, when he turned suddenly round before I had time to hide.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” I asked him.
“Oh, nowhere particular. I always seem most in a hurry when I have nothing to do.”
We took a few steps together, but without finding anything to say to each other. He was certainly put out at having been met.
Nov. 12th.—He has parents, an elder brother, school friends. … I keep repeating this to myself all day long—and that there is no room for me. I should no doubt be able to make up anything that might be lacking to him, but nothing is. He needs nothing; and if his sweetness delights me, there is nothing in it that allows me for a moment to deceive myself. … Oh, foolish words, which I write in spite of myself and which discover the duplicity of my heart. … I am leaving for London tomorrow. I have suddenly made up my mind to go away. It is time.
To go away because one is too anxious to stay! … A certain love of the arduous—a horror of indulgence (towards oneself, I mean) is perhaps the part of my Puritan upbringing which I find it hardest to free myself from.
Yesterday, at Smith’s, bought a copybook (English already) in which to continue my diary. I will write nothing more in this one. A new copybook! …
Ah! if
