The Immoralist/Part 2, 3

The weather was now becoming warmer. As soon as my lectures were over, I took Marceline to La Morinière, the doctor having told me that all immediate danger was past and that nothing would be more likely to complete her cure than a change to purer air. I myself was in great need of rest. The nights I had spent nursing her, almost entirely by myself, the prolonged anxiety, and especially the kind of physical sympathy which had made me at the time of her attack feel the fearful throbbing of her heart in my own breast—all this had exhausted me as much as if I myself had been ill.

I should have preferred to take Marceline to the mountains, but she expressed the strongest desire to return to Normandy, declared that no climate could be better for her and reminded me that I must not neglect the two farms of which I had rather rashly assumed the charge. She insisted that as I had made ​myself responsible for them, it was my business to make them succeed. No sooner had we arrived therefore, than she urged me to visit the estate immediately.… I am not sure that her friendly insistence did not go with a good deal of abnegation; she was afraid perhaps, that as she still required assistance, I might think myself bound to stay with her and not feel as free as I might wish to.… Marceline was better however; the colour had returned to her cheeks, and nothing gave me greater comfort than to feel her smile was less sad; I was able to leave her without uneasiness.

I went then to the farms. The first hay was being made. The scented air, heavy with pollen, at first went to my head like a strong drink. I felt that I had hardly breathed at all since last year, or breathed nothing but dust, so drowned was I in the honied sweetness of the atmosphere. The bank, on which I seated myself in a kind of intoxication, overlooked the house; I saw its blue roofs; I saw the still waters of the moat; all around were fields, some newly mown, others rich with grass; further on, the curve of the brook; further again, the woods where last autumn I had so often gone riding with Charles. A sound of singing, which I had been listening to for the last mo​ment or two, drew near; it was the haymakers going home, with a fork or a rake on their shoulders. I recognized nearly all of them, and the unpleasant recollection came to me that I was not there as an enchanted traveller, but as their master, I went up to them, smiled, spoke to them, enquired after each of them in turn. Bocage that morning had already given me a report of the crops; he had indeed kept me regularly informed by letter of everything that went on in the farms. They were not doing so badly—much better than Bocage had led me to expect. But my arrival was being awaited in order to take some important decisions, and during the next few days I devoted myself to farm business to the best of my ability—not taking much pleasure in it, but hoping by this semblance of work to give some stability to my disintegrated life.

As soon as Marceline was well enough to receive visitors, a few friends came to stay with us. They were affectionate, quiet people and Marceline liked their society, but it had the effect of making me leave the house with more pleasure than usual. I preferred the society of the farm hands; I felt that with them there was more to be learnt—not that I questioned them—no; and I hardly know how to express the kind of rap​ture I felt when I was with them; I seemed to feel things with their senses rather than with my own—and while I knew what our friends were going to say before they opened their mouths, the mere sight of these poor fellows filled me with perpetual amazement.

If at first they appeared as condescending in their answers as I tried to avoid being in my questions, they soon became more tolerant of my presence. I came into closer contact with them. Not content with following them at their work, I wanted to see them at their play; their obtuse thoughts had little interest for me, but I shared their meals, listened to their jokes, fondly watched their pleasures. By a kind of sympathy similar to that which had made my heart throb at the throbs of Marceline's, their alien sensations immediately awoke the echo of my own—no vague echo, but a sharp and precise one. I felt my own arms grow stiff with the mower's stiffness; I was weary with his weariness; the mouthful of cider he drank quenched my thirst; I felt it slip down his throat; one day, one of them, while sharpening his scythe, cut his thumb badly; his pain hurt me to the bone.

And it seemed to me that it was no longer with my sight alone that I became aware of the landscape, but ​that I felt it as well by some sense of touch, which my curious power of sympathy inimitably enlarged.

Bocage's presence was now a nuisance to me; when he came I had to play the master, which I had no longer the least inclination to do. I still gave orders—I had to—still superintended the labourers; but I no longer went on horseback, for fear of looking down on them from too great a height. But notwithstanding the precautions I took to accustom them to my presence and prevent them from feeling ill at ease in it, in theirs I was still filled as before with an evil curiosity. There was a mystery about the existence of each one of them. I always felt that a part of their lives was concealed. What did they do when I was not there? I refused to believe that they had not better ways of amusing themselves. And I credited each of them with a secret which I pertinaciously tried to discover. I went about prowling, following, spying. For preference I fastened on the rudest and roughest among them, as if I expected to find a guiding light shine from their darkness.

One in particular attracted me; he was fairly goodlooking, tall, not in the least stupid, but wholly guided by instinct, never acting but on the spur of the moment, blown hither and thither by every pass​ing impulse. He did not belong to the place, and had been taken on by some chance. An excellent worker for two days—and on the third dead drunk. One night I crept furtively down to the barn to see him; he lay sprawling in a heavy, drunken sleep. I stayed looking at him a long time.… One fine day, he went as he had come. How much I should have liked to know along what roads!… I learnt that same evening that Bocage had dismissed him.

I was furious with Bocage and sent for him.

"It seems you have dismissed Pierre," I began. "Will you kindly tell me why?"

He was a little taken aback by my anger, though I tried to moderate it.

"You didn't want to keep a dirty drunkard, did you. Sir? A fellow who led all our best men into mischief!"

"It's my business to know the men I want to keep, not yours."

"A regular waster! No-one knew where he came from. It gave the place a bad name.… If he had set fire to the barn one night, you mightn't have been so pleased. Sir."

"That's my affair, I tell you. It's my farm, isn't it? I mean to manage it in my own way. In future, ​be so good as to give me your reasons before dismissing people."

Bocage, as I have told you, had known me since my childhood. However wounding my tone, he was too much attached to me to be much offended. He did not, in fact, take me sufficiently seriously. The Normandy peasant is too often disinclined to believe anything of which he cannot fathom the motive—that is to say, anything not prompted by interest. Bocage simply considered this quarrel as a piece of absurdity.

I did not want, however, to break off the conversation on a note of blame; feeling I had been too sharp with him, I cast about for something pleasant to add.

"Isn't your son Charles coming back soon?" I ended by asking after a moment's silence.

"I thought you had quite forgotten him, Sir; you seemed to trouble your head about him so little," said Bocage, still rather hurt.

"Forget him, Bocage! How could I, after all we did together last year? I'm counting on him in fact to help me with the farms.…"

"You're very good. Sir. Charles is coming home in a week's time."

​"Well, I'm glad to hear it, Bocage," and I dismissed him.

Bocage was not far wrong; I had not of course forgotten Charles, but I now cared very little about him. How can I explain that after such vehement cameraderie, my feeling for him now should be so flat and spiritless? The fact is my occupations and tastes were no longer the same as last year. My two farms, I must admit, did not interest me so much as the people employed on them; and if I wanted to foregather with them, Charles would be very much in the way. He was far too reasonable and too respectable. So notwithstanding the vivid and delightful memories I kept of him, I looked forward with some apprehension to his return.

He returned. Oh, how right I had been to be apprehensive—and how right Ménalque was to repudiate all memories! There entered the room in Charles's place an absurd individual with a bowler hat. Heavens! how changed he was! Embarrassed and constrained though I felt, I tried not to respond too frigidly to the joy he showed at seeing me again; but even his joy was disagreeable to me; it was awkward, and I thought insincere. I received him in the draw​ing-room, and as it was late and dark, I could hardly distinguish his face; but when the lamp was brought in, I saw with disgust he had let his whiskers grow.

The conversation that evening was more or less dreary; then, as I knew he would be continually at the farms, I avoided going down to them for almost a week, and fell back on my studies and the society of my guests. And as soon as I began to go out again, I was absorbed by a totally new occupation.

Wood-cutters had invaded the woods. Every year a part of the timber on the estate was sold; the woods were marked off into twelve equal lots which were cut in rotation and every year furnished, besides a few fully grown trees, a certain amount of twelve-year-old copse wood for faggots.

This work was done in the winter, and the wood-cutters were obliged by contract to have the ground cleared before spring. But old Heurtevent, the timber-merchant who directed operations, was so slack that sometimes spring came upon the copses while the wood was still lying on the ground; fresh, delicate shoots could then be seen forcing their way upwards through the dead branches, and when at last the wood-cutters cleared the ground, it was not without destroying many of the young saplings.

​That year old Heurtevent's remissness was even greater than we had looked for. In the absence of any other bidder, I had been obliged to let him have the copse wood exceedingly cheap; so that being assured in any case of a handsome profit, he took very little pains to dispose of the timber which had cost him so little. And from week to week he put off the work with various excuses—a lack of labourers, or bad weather, or a sick horse, or an urgent call for work elsewhere, etc. etc.—with the result that as late as the middle of summer, none of it had been removed.

The year before, this would have irritated me to the highest degree; this year it left me fairly calm; I saw well enough the damage Heurtevent was causing me; but the devastated woods were beautiful; it gave me pleasure to wander in them, tracking and watching the game, startling the vipers, and sometimes sitting by the hour together on one of the fallen trunks which still seemed to be living on, with green shoots springing from its wounds.

Then suddenly, about the middle of the last fortnight in August, Heurtevent made up his mind to send his men. Six of them came with orders to finish the work in ten days. The part of the woods that had been cut was that bordering on La Valterie; it was ​arranged that the wood-cutters should have their food brought them from the farm, in order to expedite the work. The labourer chosen for this task was a curious young rascal called Bute; he had just come back from a term of military service which had utterly demoralized him; but physically, he was in admirable condition; he was one of the farm hands I most enjoyed talking to. By this arrangement I was able to see him without going down to the farm. For it was just at that time that I began going out again. For a few days I hardly left the woods except for my meals at La Morinière, and I was very often late for them. I pretended I had to superintend the work, though in reality, I only went to see the workers.

Sometimes two of Heurtevent's sons joined the batch of six men; one was about twenty, the other about fifteen years old, long-limbed, wiry, hard-featured young fellows. They had a foreign look about them, and I learnt later that their mother was actually a Spanish woman. I was astonished at first that she should have travelled to such distant parts, but Heurtevent had been a rolling stone in his youth and had, it appears, married her in Spain. For this reason he was rather looked askance at in the neighbourhood. The first time I saw the younger of the ​sons was, I remember, on a rainy day; he was alone, sitting on a very high cart, on the top of a great pile of faggots. He was lolling back among the branches, and singing, or rather shouting, a kind of extraordinary song, which was like nothing I had ever heard in our parts. The cart-horses knew the road and followed it without any guidance from him. I cannot tell you the effect this song had on me; for I had never heard its like except in Africa.… The boy looked excited—drunk; when I passed, he did not even glance at me. The next day, I learnt he was a son of Heurtevent's. It was in order to see him, or rather in the hopes of seeing him, that I spent so much time in the copse. The men by now had very nearly finished clearing it. The young Heurtevents came only three times. They seemed proud and I could not get a word out of them.

Bute, on the other hand, liked talking; I soon managed to make him understand that there was nothing it was not safe to say to me. Upon this he let himself go and soon stripped the countryside of every rag of respectability. I lapped up his mysterious secrets with avidity. They surpassed my expectation and yet at the same time failed to satisfy me. Was this what was really grumbling below the surface of appear​ances or was it merely another kind of hypocrisy? No matter! I questioned Bute as I had questioned the uncouth chronicles of the Goths. Fumes of the abyss rose darkly from his stories and as I breathed them uneasily and fearfully, my head began to turn. He told me to begin with that Heurtevent had relations with his daughter. I was afraid if I showed the slightest disapprobation I should put an end to his confidences; curiosity spurred me on.

"And the mother? Doesn't she object?"

"The mother! She has been dead full twelve years.… He used to beat her."

'How many are there in the family?"

"Five children. You've seen the eldest son and the youngest. There's another of sixteen who's delicate and wants to turn priest. And then the eldest daughter has already had two children by the father."

And little by little, I learnt a good deal more, so that do what I would, my imagination began to circle round the lurid attractions of Heurtevent's house like a blow-fly round a putrid piece of meat. One night the eldest son had tried to rape a young servant girl, and as she struggled, the father had intervened to help his son and had held her with his huge hands; while the second son went piously on with his pray​ers on the floor above, and the youngest looked on at the drama as an amused spectator. As far as the rape is concerned, I imagine it was not very difficult, for Bute went on to say that not long after, the servant girl, having acquired a taste for this sort of thing, had tried to seduce the young priest.

"And hasn't she succeeded?" I asked.

"He hasn't given in so far, but he's a bit wobbly," answered Bute.

"Didn't you say there was another daughter?"

"Yes; she picks up as many fellows as she can lay hold of. And all for nothing too. When she's set on it, she wouldn't mind paying herself. But you mustn't carry on at her father's. He would give you what for. He says you can do as you like in your own house, but don't let other people come nosing round! Pierre the farm hand you sent away, got a nasty knock on the head one night, though he held his tongue about it. Since then, she has her chaps in the home woods."

"Have you had a go yourself?" I asked with an encouraging look.

He dropped his eyes for form's sake and said, chuckling:

"Every now and then." Then, raising his eyes quickly, "So has old Bocage's boy," he added.

​"What boy is that?"

"Alcide, the one who sleeps in the farm. Surely you know him. Sir?"

I was simply astounded to hear Bocage had another son.

"It is true," went on Bute, "that last year he was still at his uncle's. But it's very odd you've never met him in the woods. Sir; he poaches in them nearly every night."

Bute said these last words in a lower voice. He looked at me and I saw it was essential to smile. Then Bute seemed satisfied and went on:

"Good Lord, Sir, of course you know your woods are poached. They're so big it doesn't do much harm to anyone."

I looked so far from being displeased that Bute was emboldened to go on, and I think now he was glad to do Bocage an ill turn. He pointed out one or two hollows in the ground in which Alcide had set his snares, and then showed me a place in the hedge where I should be almost certain of catching him. It was a boundary hedge and ran along the top of a bank; there was a narrow opening in it through which Alcide was in the habit of coming about six o'clock in the evening. At this place Bute and I amused our​selves by stretching a copper wire which we very neatly concealed. Then, having made me swear not to give him away, Bute departed.

For three evenings I waited in vain. I began to think Bute had played me a trick.… At last on the fourth evening, I heard a light step approaching. My heart began to beat and I had a sudden revelation of the horrible allurement of the poacher's life.… The snare was so well set that Alcide walked straight into it. I saw him suddenly fall flat, with his ankle caught in the wire. He tried to save himself, fell down again, and began struggling like a trapped rabbit. But I had hold of him in an instant. He was a wicked looking youngster, with green eyes, tow-coloured hair and a ferrety expression. He started kicking; then, as I held him so tight that he was unable to move, he tried to bite; and when that failed, he spat out the most extraordinary volley of abuse I have ever heard. In the end I could resist no longer and burst out laughing. At this, he stopped abruptly, looked at me, and went on in a lower tone:

"You brute, you! You've hurt me something horrible."

"Show me where."

He slipped his stocking down over his boot and ​showed me his ankle, where a slight pink mark was just visible.

"It's nothing at all."

He smiled a little; then, "I shall tell Father," he said in a cunning voice, "that it's you who set snares."

"Why, good Heavens, it's one of your own!"

"Sure enough, you never set that one."

"Why do you say that?"

"You would never know how to set them as well as that. Just show me how you did it."

"Give me a lesson.…"

That evening I came in very late for dinner; no-one knew where I was and Marceline had been anxious. But I did not tell her I had set six snares and so far from scolding Alcide had given him ten sous.

The next evening when I went with him to visit the snares, much to my entertainment I found two rabbits caught in them. Of course I let him take them. The shooting season had not yet begun. I wondered what became of the game, as it was impossible to dispose of it openly without the risk of getting into trouble. Alcide refused to tell me. Finally, I learnt, through Bute again, that Heurtevent was the receiver and his youngest son the go-between between ​Alcide and him. Was this going to give me an opportunity of a deeper insight into the secrets of that mysterious, unapproachable family? With what passionate eagerness I set about poaching!

I met Alcide every evening; we caught great numbers of rabbits and once even a young roe-deer which still showed some faint signs of life; I cannot recall without horror the delight Alcide took in killing it. We put the deer in a place of safety from which young Heurtevent could take it away at night.

From that moment I no longer cared for going out in the day, when there was so little to attract me in the emptied woods. I even tried to work—melancholy, purposeless work, for I had resigned my temporary lectureship—thankless, dreary work, from which I would be suddenly distracted by the slightest song, the slightest sound coming from the country outside; in every passing cry I heard an invitation. How often I have leapt from my reading and run to the window to see—nothing pass by! How often I have hurried out of doors.… The only attention I found possible was that of my five senses.

But when night fell—and it was the season now when night falls early—that was our hour. I had never before guessed its beauty; and I stole out of ​doors as a thief steals in. I had trained my eyes to be like a night-bird's. I wondered to see the grass taller and more easily stirred, the trees denser. The dark gave everything fresh dimensions, made the ground look distant, lent every surface the quality of depth. The smoothest path looked dangerous. Everywhere one felt the awakening of creatures that lead a life of darkness.

"Where does your father think you are now?"

"In the stables looking after the cattle."

Alcide slept there, I knew, close to the pigeons and the hens; as he was locked in at night, he used to creep out by a hole in the roof. There still hung about his clothes a steamy odour of fowls.

Then, as soon as the game had been collected, he would disappear abruptly into the dark, as if down a trap-door—without a sign of farewell, without a word of tomorrow's rendezvous. I knew that before returning to the farm, where the dogs recognized him and kept silent, he used to meet the Heurtevent boy and deliver his goods. But where? Try as I might, I was never able to find out; threats, bribes, cunning—all failed; the Heurtevents remained inaccessible. I cannot say where my folly showed more triumphantly. Was it in this pursuit of ​a trivial mystery, which constantly eluded me—or had I even invented the mystery by the mere force of my curiosity? But what did Alcide do when he left me? Did he really sleep at the farm? Or did he simply make the farmer think so? My compromising myself was utterly useless; I merely succeeded in lessening his respect without increasing his confidence—and it both infuriated and distressed me.

After he had disappeared, I suddenly felt myself horribly alone; I went back across the fields, through the dew-drenched grass, my head reeling with darkness, with lawlessness, with anarchy; dripping, muddy, covered with leaves. In the distance there shone from the sleeping house, guiding me like a peaceful beacon, the lamp I had left alight in my study, where Marceline thought I was working, or the lamp of Marceline's own bedroom. I had persuaded her that I should not have been able to sleep without first going out in this way. It was true; I had taken a loathing to my bed. How greatly I should have preferred the barn!

Game was plentiful that year; rabbits, hares, pheasants succeeded each other. After three evenings, ​Bute, seeing that everything was going so well, took it into his head to join us.

On the sixth of our poaching expeditions, we found only two of the twelve snares we had set; somebody had made a clearance during the daytime. Bute asked me for five francs to buy some more copper wire, as ordinary wire was no use.

The next morning I had the gratification of seeing my ten snares at Bocage's house and I was obliged to compliment him on his zeal. What annoyed me most was that the year before I had foolishly offered fifty centimes for every snare that was brought in; I had therefore to give Bocage five francs. In the meantime Bute had bought some more wire with the five francs I had given him. Four days later, the same story! Ten fresh snares were brought in; another five francs to Bute; another five francs to Bocage. And as I congratulated him:

"It's not me you must congratulate. Sir, it's Alcide," he said.

"No, really?" said I. Too much astonishment might have given me away. I controlled myself.

"Yes," went on Bocage; "it can't be helped. Sir, I'm growing old. The lad looks around the woods instead of me; he knows them very well; he can tell ​better than I can where to look out for the snares."

"I'm sure he can, Bocage."

"So out of the fifty centimes you give me, I let him have twenty-five."

"He certainly deserves it. What! Twenty snares in five days! Excellent work! The poachers had better be careful. I wager they'll lie low now."

"Oh, no. Sir. The more one takes, the more one finds. Game is very dear this year, and for the few pence it costs them …"

I had been so completely diddled that I felt almost inclined to suspect old Bocage himself of having a hand in the game. And what specially vexed me in the business was not so much Alcide's threefold traffic as his deceitfulness. And then what did he and Bute do with the money? I didn't know. I should never know anything about creatures like them. They would always lie; they would go on deceiving me for the sake of deceiving. That evening I gave Bute ten francs instead of five and warned him it was for the last time, that if the snares were taken again, so much the worse, but I should not go on.

The next day up came Bocage; he looked embarrassed—which at once made me feel even more so. What had happened? Bocage told me that Bute had ​been out all night and had only come in at cockcrow. The fellow was as drunk as a fiddler; at Bocage's first words, he had grossly insulted him and then flown at him and struck him.…

"And I've come to ask. Sir," said Bocage, "whether you authorize me," (he accented the word a little) "whether you authorize me to dismiss him?"

"I'll think about it, Bocage. I'm extremely sorry he should have been disrespectful. I'll see … Let me reflect a little and come again in two hours' time."

Bocage went out.

To keep Bute was to be painfully lacking in consideration for Bocage; to dismiss Bute was to ask for trouble. Well! there was nothing to be done about it. Let come what come might! I had only myself to blame.… And as soon as Bocage came back:

"You can tell Bute we have no further use for him here," I said.

Then I waited. What would Bocage do? What would Bute say? It was not till evening that I heard rumours of scandal. Bute had spoken. I guessed it at first from the shrieks I heard coming from Bocage's house; it was Alcide being beaten. Bocage would soon be coming up to see me; here he was; I heard his old footstep approaching and my heart ​beat even faster than when I was poaching. It was an intolerable moment. I should have to trot out a lot of fine sentiments. I should be obliged to take him seriously. What could I invent to explain things? How badly I should act! I would have given anything to throw up my part! Bocage came in. I understood absolutely nothing of what he was saying. It was absurd; I had to make him begin all over again. In the end, this is what I made out. He thought that Bute was the only guilty party; the inconceivable truth had escaped him—that I could have given Bute ten francs! What for? He was too much of a Normandy peasant to admit the possibility of such a thing. Bute must have stolen those ten francs. Not a doubt of it! When he said I had given them to him. he was merely adding a lie to a theft; it was a mere invention to explain away his theft; Bocage wasn't the man to believe a trumped up story like that.… There was no more talk of poaching. If Bocage had beaten Alcide, it was only because the boy had spent the night out.

So then, I am saved! In Bocage's eyes, at any rate, everything is all right. What a fool that fellow Bute is! This evening, I must say, I don't feel much inclined to go out poaching.

​I thought that everything was all over, when an hour later in came Charles. He looked far from amiable; the bare sight of him was enough; he struck me as even more tedious than his father. To think that last year!…

"Well, Charles! I haven't seen you for ever so long!"

"If you had wanted to see me, Sir, you had only to come down to the farm. You won't find me gallivanting about the woods at nights."

"Oh, your father has told you …"

"My father has told me nothing, because my father knows nothing. What's the use of telling him at his age that his master is making a fool of him?"

"Take care, Charles, you're going too far.…"

"Oh, all right! You're the master—you can do as you please."

"Charles, you know perfectly well I've made a fool of no-one, and if I do as I please, it's because it does no-one any harm but myself."

He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"How can one defend your interests when you attack them yourself? You can't protect both the keeper and the poacher at the same time."

"Why not?"

​"Because … Oh, you're a bit too clever for me, Sir. I just don't like to see my master joining up with rogues and undoing the work that other people do for him."

Charles spoke with more and more confidence as he went on. He held himself almost with dignity. I noticed he had cut off his whiskers. For that matter, what he said was sensible enough, and as I kept silence (what could I have said?), he went on:

"You taught me last year, Sir, that one has duties to one's possessions. One ought to take one's duties seriously and not play with them … or else one doesn't deserve to have possessions."

Silence.

"Is that all you have to say?"

"For this evening, yes, Sir; but if you ask me some other time, Sir, I may perhaps tell you that my father and I are leaving La Morinière."

And he went out, bowing very low. I hardly took time to reflect:

"Charles!… He's right, by Jove!… Oh, if that's what's meant by possessions … Charles!…" And I ran after him, caught him up in the dark and called out hastily, as if in a hurry to clinch my sudden determination:

​"You can tell your father that I am putting La Morinière up for sale."

Charles bowed again gravely and went away without a word.

The whole thing is absurd! Absurd!

That evening, Marceline was not able to come down to dinner and sent word to say she was unwell. Full of anxiety, I hurried up to her room. She reassured me quickly. "It's nothing but a cold," she said. She thought she had caught a chill.

"Couldn't you have put on something warmer?"

"I put my shawl on the first moment I felt a shiver."

"You should have put it on before you felt a shiver, not after."

She looked at me and tried to smile.… Oh, perhaps it was because the day had begun so badly that I felt so anguished. If she had said aloud, "Do you really care whether I live or not?" I should not have heard the words more clearly.

"Oh," I thought, "without a doubt, everything in my life is falling to pieces. Nothing that my hand grasps, can my hand hold."

I sprang to Marceline and covered her pale face ​with kisses. At that, she broke down and fell sobbing on my shoulder.…

"Oh, Marceline! Marceline! Let us go away. Anywhere else but here I shall love you as I did at Sorrento. … You have thought me changed, perhaps? But anywhere else, you will feel that there is nothing altered in our love."

I had not cured her unhappiness, but how eagerly she clutched at hope!…

It was not late in the year, but the weather was cold and damp, and the last rosebuds were rotting unopened on the bushes. Our guests had long since left us. Marceline was not too unwell to see to the shutting up of the house, and five days later we left.