The Immoralist/Prologue

Yes, my dear brother, of course, as you supposed, Michel has confided in us. Here is his story. You asked me to let you have it and I promised to; but now at the last moment I hesitate to send it and the oftener I re-read it the more dreadful it seems. Oh, what, I wonder, will you think of our friend? What, for that matter, do I think of him myself?… Are we simply to reprobate him and deny the possibility of turning to good account, faculties so manifestly cruel? But I fear there are not a few among us today who would be bold enough to recognise their own features in this tale. Will it be possible to invent some way of employing all this intelligence and strength? Or must they be altogether outlawed?

In what way can Michel serve society? I admit I ​cannot guess.… He must have some occupation. Will the position and the power you have so deservedly attained enable you to find one? Make haste. Michel is still capable of devotion. Yes, he is so still. But it will soon be only to himself.

I am writing to you under a sky of flawless blue; during the twelve days that Denis, Daniel and myself have been here, there has not been a single cloud nor the slightest diminution of sunshine. Michel says the weather has been of crystalline clearness for the last two months.

I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills one with a kind of vague excitement and induces a state as far removed from cheerfulness as it is from sorrow; perhaps it is happiness.

We are staying with Michel; we are anxious not to leave him; you will understand why when you have read these pages; so we shall await your reply here, in his house; lose no time about it.

You know what ties of friendship bound Michel, Denis, Daniel and myself together—a friendship which was strong even in our school days, but which every year grew stronger. A kind of pact was concluded between us four—at the first summons of any one of us the other three were to hasten. So when ​I received that mysterious signal of alarm from Michel, I immediately informed Daniel and Denis, and we all three let everything go and set out.

It is three years since we last saw Michel. He had married and gone travelling with his wife, and at the time of his last stay in Paris, Denis was in Greece, Daniel in Russia and I, as you know, looking after our sick father. We were not, however, without news, though the account given of him by Silas and Will, who saw him at that time, was, to say the least, surprising. He was no longer the learned Puritan of old days, whose behaviour was made awkward by his very earnestness, whose clear and simple gaze had so often checked the looseness of our talk. He was … but why forestall what his story will tell you?

Here is his story then, just as Denis, Daniel and I heard it, Michel told it us on his terrace, as we were lying beside him in the dark and the starlight. At the end of his tale we saw day rising over the plain, Michel's house looks down on it and on the village which is not far off. In the hot weather and with all its crops reaped, this plain looks like the desert.

Michel's house, though poor and quaint-looking, is charming. In winter it would be cold, for there is no glass in the windows—or rather, there are no ​windows, but huge holes in the walls. It is so fine that we sleep out of doors on mats.

Let me add that we had a good journey out. We arrived here one evening, gasping with heat, intoxicated with novelty, after having barely stopped on the way, first at Algiers and then at Constantine. At Constantine we took a second train to Sidi B. M., where a little cart was waiting for us. The road comes to an end some way from the village, which is perched on the top of a rock, like certain little hill-towns in Umbria. We climbed up on foot; two mules took our luggage. Approached by the road, Michel's house is the first in the village. It is surrounded by the low walls of a garden—or rather, an enclosure, in which there grow three stunted pomegranate-trees and a superb oleander. A little Kabyle boy ran away at sight of us and scrambled over the wall without more ado.

Michel showed no signs of pleasure as he welcomed us; he was very simple and seemed afraid of any demonstrations of tenderness; but on the threshold, he stopped and kissed each one of us gravely.

Until night came we barely exchanged a dozen words. An almost excessively frugal dinner was laid for us in a drawing room where the decorations were ​so sumptuous that we were astonished by them, though they were afterwards explained by Michel's story. Then he served us coffee, which he made a point of preparing himself; and afterwards we went up on to the terrace, where the view stretched away into infinity, and all three of us, like Job's comforters, sat down and waited, watching and admiring the day's abrupt decline over the incandescent plain.

When it was night Michel said: