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Page 15
"What! she was there!"
"Of course she was. She heard us, and, what's more, she could see us. I
made all the signs I could, but you were off!"
I remained somewhat embarrassed. I regretted the harshness of my words;
for, in attacking so violently this young person, I had yielded to the
excitement of controversy much more than to a sentiment of serious
animadversion. In point of fact, she is indifferent to me, but it's a
little too much to hear her praised.
"And now what am I to do?" I said to Madame de Malouet.
She reflected for a moment, and replied with a slight shrug of her
shoulders:
"_Ma foi!_ nothing; that's the best thing you can do."
The least breath causes a full cup to overflow; thus the little
unpleasantness of this scene seems to have intensified this feeling of
ennui which has scarce left me since my advent into this abode of joy.
This continuous gayety, this restless agitation, this racing and dancing
and dining, this ceaseless merry-making, and this eternal round of
festivity importune me to the point of disgust. I regret bitterly the time
I have wasted in reading and investigations which in no wise concern my
official mission and have but little advanced its termination; I regret
the engagements which the kind entreaties of my hosts have extorted from
my weakness; I regret my vale of Tempe; above all, Paul, I regret you.
There are certainly in this little social center a sufficient number of
superior and kindly disposed minds to form the elements of the pleasantest
and even the most elevated relations; but these elements are fairly
submerged in the worldly and vulgar throng, and can only be eliminated
from it with much trouble and difficulty, and never without admixture.
Monsieur and Madame de Malouet, Monsieur de Breuilly even, when his insane
jealously does not deprive him of the use of his faculties, certainly
possess choice minds and hearts; but the mere difference of age opens an
abyss between us. As to the young men and the men of my own age whom I
meet here, they all march with more or less eager step in Madame de
Palme's wake. It is enough that I should decline to follow them in that
path, to cause them to manifest toward me a coolness akin to antipathy. My
pride does not attempt to break that ice, though two or three among them
appear well gifted, and reveal instincts superior to the life they have
adopted.
There is one question I sometimes ask of myself on that subject; are we
any better, you and I, youthful Paul, than this crowd of joyous companions
and pleasant _viveurs_, or are we simply different from them? Like
ourselves, they possess honesty and honor; like ourselves, they have
neither virtue nor religion properly so-called. So far, we are equal. Our
tastes alone and our pleasures differ; all their preoccupations turn to
the lighter ways of the world, to the cares of gallantry and material
activity; ours are almost exclusively given up to the exercise of thought,
to the talents of the mind, to the works, good or evil, of the intellect.
In the light of human truth, and according to common estimation, it is
doubtful whether the difference in this particular is wholly in our favor;
but in a more elevated order, in the moral order, and, so to speak, in the
presence of God, does that superiority hold good? Are we merely yielding,
as they do, to an inclination that leads us rather more to one side than
to another, or are we obeying an imperative duty? What is in the eyes of
God the merit of intellectual life? It seems to me sometimes that we
possess for thought a species of pagan worship to which He attaches no
value, and which perhaps even offends Him. More frequently, however, I
think that He wishes us to make use of thought, were it even to be turned
against Him, and that He accepts as a homage all the quiverings of that
noble instrument of joy and torture which He has placed within us.
Is not sadness, in periods of doubt and anxiety, a species of religion? I
trust so. We are, you and I, somewhat like those poor dreaming sphinxes
who have been asking in vain for so many centuries, from the solitudes of
the desert, the solution of the eternal riddle. Would it be a greater and
more guilty folly than the happy carelessness of the Little Countess? We
shall see. In the meantime, retain, for my sake, that ground-work of
melancholy upon which you weave your own gentle mirth; for, thank God! you
are not a pedant; you can live, you can laugh, and even laugh aloud; but
thy soul is sad unto death, and that is only why I love unto death thy
fraternal soul.
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