The Immoralist/Part 1, 1

My dear friends, I knew you were faithful. You have answered my summons as quickly as I should have answered yours. And yet three years have gone by without your seeing me. May your friendship, which has been so proof against absence, be equally proof against the story I am going to tell you. For it was solely to see you, solely that you might listen to me, that I called upon you so suddenly and made you take this journey to my distant abode. The only help I wish for is this—to talk to you. For I have reached a point in my life beyond which I cannot go. Not from weariness though. But I can no longer understand things. I want … I want to talk, I tell you. To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom. Let me speak of myself; I am going to tell you my life simply, without modesty and without pride, more simply than if I were talking to myself. Listen:

​The last time we saw each other, I remember, was in the neighbourhood of Angers, in the little country church in which I was married. There were very few people at my wedding and the presence of real friends turned this commonplace function into something touching. I felt that others were moved and that in itself was enough to move me. After we left the church you joined us at my bride's house for a short meal, at which there was neither noise nor laughter; then, she and I drove away in a hired carriage, according to the custom by which we always have to associate the idea of a wedding with the vision of a railway station.

I knew my wife very little and thought, without being much distressed by it, that she knew me no better. I had married her without being in love, greatly in order to please my father who, as he lay dying, felt anxious at leaving me alone. I loved my father dearly; engrossed by his last illness, I had thought of nothing else all through that melancholy time but how to make his end easier; and so I pledged my life before I knew what the possibilities of life were. Our betrothal took place at my dying father's bedside, without laughter but not without a certain grave joy, so great was the peace it brought him. If, as I say, I ​did not love my betrothed, at any rate I had never loved any other woman. This seemed to me sufficient to secure our happiness; and I thought I was giving her the whole of myself, without having any knowledge of what that self was. She was an orphan as I was, and lived with her two brothers. Her name was Marceline; she was barely twenty; I was four years older.

I have said I did not love her—at any rate, I felt for her nothing of what is generally known as love, but I loved her, if that word may cover a feeling of tenderness, a sort of pity, and a considerable measure of esteem. She was a Catholic and I a Protestant … but, thought I, so little of a Protestant! The priest accepted me; I accepted the priest; it all went off without a hitch.

My father was what is called an 'atheist'—at least, I suppose so, for a kind of invincible shyness, which I imagine he shared, had always made it impossible for me to talk to him about his beliefs. The grave Huguenot teaching which my mother had given me had slowly faded from my mind together with the image of her beauty; you know I was young when I lost her. I did not then suspect how great a hold the early moral lessons of our childhood ​take of one, nor what marks they leave upon the mind. That kind of austerity, a taste for which had been left me by my mother's bringing up, I now applied wholly to my studies. I was fifteen when I lost her; my father took me in hand, looked after me and instructed me himself with passionate eagerness. I already knew Latin and Greek well; under him I quickly learnt Hebrew, Sanskrit, and finally Persian and Arabic. When I was about twenty I had been so intensively forced that he actually made me his collaborator. It amused him to claim me as his equal and he wanted to show me he was right. The Essay on Phrygian Cults which appeared under his name was in reality my work; he scarcely read it over; nothing he had written ever brought him so much praise. He was delighted. As for me I was a little abashed by the success of this deception. But my reputation was made. The most learned scholars treated me as their colleague. I smile now at all the honours that were paid me.… And so I reached the age of twenty-five, having barely cast a glance at anything but books and ruins, and knowing nothing of life; I spent all my fervour in my work. I loved a few friends (you were among them), but it was not so much my friends I loved as friendship—​it was a craving for high-mindedness that made my devotion to them so great; I cherished in myself each and all of my fine feelings. For the rest, I knew my friend's as little as I knew myself. The idea that I might have lived a different existence or that anyone could possibly live differently never for a moment crossed my mind.

My father and I were satisfied with simple things; we both of us spent so little that I reached the age of twenty-five without knowing that we were rich. I imagined, without giving it much thought, that we had just enough to live on. And the habits of economy I had acquired with my father were so great that I felt almost uncomfortable when I learnt we had a great deal more. I was so careless about such matters that even after my father's death, though I was his sole heir, I failed to realize the extent of my fortune; I did so only when our marriage settlements were being drawn up and at the same time I learnt that Marceline brought me next to nothing.

And another thing I was ignorant of—even more important perhaps—was that I had very delicate health. How should I have known this, when I had never put it to the test? I had colds from time to time and neglected them. The excessive tranquillity of ​the life I led weakened, while at the same time it protected me. Marceline, on the contrary, seemed strong—that she was stronger than I we were very soon to learn.

On our wedding-day, we went straight to Paris and slept in my apartment where two rooms had been got ready for us. We stayed in Paris only just long enough to do some necessary shopping, then took the train to Marseilles and embarked at once for Tunis.

So many urgent things to be done, so many bewildering events following each other in too rapid succession, the unavoidable agitation of my wedding coming so soon after the more genuine emotion caused by my father's death—all of this had left me exhausted. It was only on the boat that I was able to realize how tired I was. Up till then, every occupation, while increasing my fatigue, had distracted me from feeling it. The enforced leisure on board ship at last enabled me to reflect. For the first time, so it seemed to me.

It was for the first time too that I had consented to forgo my work for any length of time. Up till then I had only allowed myself short holidays. A journey to Spain with my father shortly after my mother's ​death had, it is true, lasted over a month; another to Germany, six weeks; there were others too, but they had all been student's journeys; my father was never to be distracted from his own particular researches; when I was not accompanying him, I used to read. And yet, we had hardly left Marseilles, when memories came back to me of Granada and Seville, of a purer sky, of franker shadows, of dances, of laughter, of songs. That is what we are going to find, I thought. I went up on to the deck and watched Marseilles disappearing in the distance.

Then, suddenly, it occurred to me that I was leaving Marceline a little too much to herself.

She was sitting in the bows; I drew near, and for the first time really looked at her.

Marceline was very pretty. You saw her, so you know. I reproached myself for not having noticed it sooner. I had known her too long to see her with any freshness of vision; our families had been friends for ages; I had seen her grow up; I was accustomed to her grace.… For the first time now I was struck with astonishment, it seemed to me so great.

She wore a big veil, floating from a simple black straw hat; she was fair, but did not look delicate. Her bodice and skirt were made of the same material​—a Scotch plaid which we had chosen together. I had not wanted the gloom of my mourning to overshadow her.

She felt I was looking at her and turned towards me … up till then I had only paid her the necessary official attentions; I replaced love as best I could by a kind of frigid gallantry, which I saw well enough she found rather tiresome; perhaps at that moment Marceline felt I was looking at her for the first time in a different way. She, in her turn looked fixedly at me; then, very tenderly, smiled. I sat down beside her without speaking. I had lived up till then for myself alone, or at any rate in my own fashion; I had married without imagining I should find in my wife anything different from a comrade, without thinking at all definitely that my life might be changed by our union. And now at last I realized that the monologue had come to an end.

We were alone on deck. She held up her face and I gently pressed her to me; she raised her eyes; I kissed her on the eyelids and suddenly felt as I kissed her an unfamiliar kind of pity, which took hold of me so violently that I could not restrain my tears.

"What is it, dear?" said Marceline.

We began to talk. What she said was so charming ​that it delighted me. I had picked up in one way or another a few ideas on women's silliness. That evening, in her presence, it was myself I thought awkward and stupid.

So the being to whom I had attached my life had a real and individual life of her own! The importance of this thought woke me up several times during the night; several times I sat up in my berth in order to look at Marceline, my wife, asleep in the berth below.

The next morning the sky was splendid; the sea almost perfectly calm. A few leisurely talks lessened our shyness still more. Marriage was really beginning. On the morning of the last day of October we landed in Tunis.

I intended to stay there only a few days. I will confess my folly; in so new a country nothing attracted me except Carthage and a few Roman ruins—Timgad, about which Octave had spoken to me, the mosaics of Sousse, and above all the amphitheatre of El Djem, which I decided we must visit without delay. We had first to get to Sousse, and from Sousse take the mail diligence; between this and then I was determined to think nothing worth my attention.

​And yet Tunis surprised me greatly. At the touch of new sensations, certain portions of me awoke—certain sleeping faculties, which, from not having as yet been used, had kept all their mysterious freshness. But I was more astonished, more bewildered than amused, and what pleased me most was Marceline's delight.

My fatigue in the meantime was growing greater every day; but I should have thought it shameful to give in to it. I had a bad cough and a curious feeling of discomfort in the upper part of my chest. We are going towards the South, I thought; the heat will put me to rights again.

The Sfax diligence leaves Sousse at eight o'clock in the evening and passes through El Djem at one o'clock in the morning. We had engaged coupé places; I expected to find an uncomfortable shanderydan; the seats, however, were fairly commodious. But oh, the cold!… We were both lightly clad and, with a kind of childish confidence in the warmth of southern climes, had taken no wrap with us but a single shawl. As soon as we were out of Sousse and the shelter of its hills, the wind began to blow. It leapt over the plain in great bounds, howling, whistling, coming in by every chink of the door and ​windows—impossible to protect oneself from it! We were both chilled to the bone when we arrived and I exhausted as well by the jolting of the carriage and by my horrible cough which shook me even worse. What a night! When we got to El Djem, there was no inn, nothing but a frightful native bordj. What was to be done? The diligence was going on; the village was asleep; the lugubrious mass of the ruins lowered dimly through the dark immensity of the night; dogs were howling. We went into a room whose walls and floor were made of mud and in which stood two wretched beds. Marceline was shivering with cold, but here at any rate, we were out of the wind.

The next day was a dismal one. We were surprised on going out to see a sky that was one unrelieved grey. The wind was still blowing, but less violently than the night before. The diligence only passed through again in the evening.… It was a dismal day, I tell you. I went over the amphitheatre in a few minutes and found it disappointing; I thought it actually ugly under that dreary sky. Perhaps my fatigue added to my feeling of tedium. Towards the middle of the day, as I had nothing else to do, I went back to the ruins and searched in vain for inscriptions ​on the stones. Marceline found a place that was sheltered from the wind and sat reading an English book, which by good luck she had brought with her. I went and sat beside her.

"What a melancholy day!" I said. "Aren't you bored?"

"Not particularly. I am reading."

"What made us come to such a place? I hope you are not cold, are you?"

"Not so very. And you? Oh, you must be. How pale you are!"

"No, oh no!"

At night, the wind began again as violently as ever.… At last the diligence arrived. We started.

No sooner did the jolting begin than I felt shattered. Marceline, who was very tired, had gone to sleep almost at once on my shoulder. My cough will wake her, I thought, and freeing myself very, very gently, I propped her head against the side of the carriage. In the mean time I had stopped coughing; yes; I had begun to spit instead; this was something new; I brought it up without an effort; it came in little jerks at regular intervals; the sensation was so odd that at first it almost amused me, but I was soon disgusted by the peculiar taste it left in my mouth. ​My handkerchief was very soon used up. My fingers were covered with it. Should I wake up Marceline?… Fortunately I thought of a large silk foulard she was wearing tucked into her belt. I took possession of it quietly. The spitting, which I no longer tried to keep back, came more abundantly and I was extraordinarily relieved by it. It is the end of my cold, I thought. Then, there suddenly came over me a feeling of extreme weakness; everything began to spin round and I thought I was going to faint. Should I wake her up?… No, shame!… (My puritanical childhood has left me, I think, a hatred of any surrender to bodily weakness—cowardice, I call it.) I controlled myself, made a desperate effort and finally conquered my giddiness.… I felt as if I were at sea again, and the noise of the wheels turned into the sound of the waves.… But I had stopped spitting.

Then I sank, overpowered, into a sort of sleep.

When I emerged from it, the sky was already filling with dawn. Marceline was still asleep. We were just getting to Sousse. The foulard I was holding in my hand was dark-coloured, so that at first I saw nothing; but when I took out my handkerchief, I saw with stupefaction that it was soaked with blood.

​My first thought was to hide the blood from Marceline. But how? I was covered with it; it seemed to be everywhere; on my fingers especially.… My nose might perhaps have been bleeding.… That's it! If she asks me, I shall say my nose has been bleeding.

Marceline was still asleep. We drew up at the Sousse hotel. She had to get down first and saw nothing. Our two rooms had been kept for us. I was able to dart into mine and wash away every trace of blood. Marceline had seen nothing.

I was feeling very weak, however, and ordered some tea to be brought. And as she was pouring it out, a little pale herself, but very calm and smiling, a kind of irritation seized me to think she had not had the sense to see anything. I felt indeed I was being unjust, and said to myself that she only saw nothing, because I had hidden it from her so cleverly; but I couldn't help it—the feeling grew in me like an instinct, filled me … and at last it became too strong; I could contain myself no longer; the words slipped out, as though absent-mindedly:

"I spat blood last night."

She did not utter a sound; she simply turned much ​paler, tottered, tried to save herself and fell heavily to the ground.

I sprang to her in a sort of fury: "Marceline! Marceline!" What on earth had I done? Wasn't it enough for me to be ill? But, as I have said, I was very weak; I was on the point of fainting myself. I managed, however, to open the door and call. Someone hurried to our help.

I remembered I had a letter of introduction to an officer in the town, and on the strength of this I sent for the regimental doctor.

Marceline in the meantime had recovered herself and settled down at my bedside, where I lay, shivering with fever. The doctor came and examined us both; there was nothing the matter with Marceline, he declared, and she had not been hurt by her fall; I was seriously ill; he refused to give a definite opinion and promised to come back before evening.

He came back, smiled at me, talked to me and prescribed various remedies. I realized that he gave me up for lost. Shall I confess that I felt not the least shock? I was very tired, I simply let myself go. 'After all, what had life to offer? I had worked faithfully to the end, resolutely and passionately done ​my duty. The rest … oh! what did it matter?' thought I, with a certain admiration of my own stoicism. What really pained me was the ugliness of my surroundings. 'This hotel room is frightful,' I thought and looked at it. Suddenly it occurred to me that in a like room next door was my wife, Marceline; and I heard her speaking. The doctor had hot gone; he was talking to her; he was studiously lowering his voice. A little time went by—I must have slept.…

When I woke up, Marceline was there. I could see she had been crying. I did not care for life enough to pity myself; but the ugliness of the place vexed me; my eyes rested on her with a pleasure that was almost voluptuous.

She was sitting by me writing. I thought she looked very pretty. I saw her fasten up several letters. Then she got up, drew near my bed and took my hand tenderly.

"How are you feeling now?" she asked. I smiled and said sadly:

"Shall I get better?" But she answered at once, "You shall get better" with such passionate conviction that it almost brought conviction to me too, and there came over me a kind of confused feeling of all ​that life might mean, of Marceline's own love—a vague vision of such pathetic beauties that the tears started from my eyes and I wept long and helplessly without trying or wanting to stop.

With what loving violence she managed to get me away from Sousse! How charmingly she protected me, helped me, nursed me! From Sousse to Tunis, from Tunis to Constantine, Marceline was admirable. It was at Biskra I was to get well. Her confidence was perfect; never for a single moment did her zeal slacken. She settled everything, arranged the starts, engaged the rooms. It was not in her power, alas! to make the journey less horrible. Several times I thought I should have to stop and give up. I sweated mortally; I gasped for breath; at times I lost consciousness. At the end of the third day, I arrived at Biskra more dead than alive.