She can no longer see him, can no longer recall his features or his silhouette, and has almost forgotten his eyes. And yet this image is all she has of him. She panics at the thought that she might lose this image, and that her desire – which admittedly tortures her, but which is now part and parcel of her, since she has entirely taken refuge in it, having fled from everything else, and to which she clings as one clings to one’s own self-preservation, to life itself whether good or bad – might evaporate and that the only thing left would be a feeling of dreamlike malaise and suffering, of which she would no longer know the objective cause, would not even see him in her thoughts and would no longer be able to cherish him there. But all at once the image of M. de Laléande has returned, after that momentary disturbance in her inner vision. Her grief can resume its course – and this is almost an occasion for joy.
How will Mme de Breyves be able to tolerate going back to Paris, where he will not be returning until January? What will she do in the meantime? What will she do, what will he do afterwards?
Twenty times over I have been ready to leave for Biarritz and bring back M. de Laléande. The consequences might well be dreadful; but there is no point asking her, she will not permit it. But I am so saddened to see her delicate forehead being beaten from within and almost broken by the merciless blows of that inexplicable love. It gives her whole life an anguished rhythm. Often she imagines that he is about to arrive in Trouville, and will come up to her and tell her he loves her.
She can see him: his eyes are shining. He talks to her with that expressionless, dreamlike voice that forbids us to believe while at the same time forcing us to listen. It is him. He is saying to her those words that make us delirious, even though we never hear them except in a dream, when we see shining in them, so heart-meltingly, the divine and trustful smile of destinies that are conjoined. Whereupon, the feeling that the two worlds, that of reality and that of her desire, run in parallel, and that it is just as impossible for them to meet as it is impossible for a shadow to coincide with the body that has cast it, awakens her.
Then, remembering that minute near the cloakroom when his elbow brushed against hers, when he offered her that body which she could now be holding tight to hers if she had only wanted to, if she had only known, and which is now for ever distant, she feels cries of despair and rebellion resounding through her entire body like those one hears on sinking ships.
If, when out walking on the beach or in the woods, she allows herself gently to yield to the pleasure of contemplation or reverie, no, not even that – to a sweet smell, or a song brought to her indistinctly by the breeze, making her forget for a moment her pain, then she suddenly feels, striking deep into her heart, an agonizing wound, and above the waves or the leaves, in the uncertain distance of the sylvan or marine horizon, she perceives the evanescent image of her invisible and ever-present victor who, his eyes shining through the clouds as on the day he offered himself to her, takes flight, bearing the quiver from which he has just sent yet one more arrow winging its way towards her.
– July 1893
The end
