And the Doctor had drawn his hand, so celebrated for its skill and beauty, across his full, pink face, through his long, fine, well-kept beard, and everyone had taken pleasure in imagining their own healthy appearance in the same way that a property owner dwells with satisfaction on the sight of his tenant, still young, tranquil and rich. Now when Honoré looked at himself in the mirror he was alarmed at his “sallow face” and his “lousy appearance”.
And immediately the thought that the Doctor would say for him the same words as for C***, with the same indifference, terrified him. The very same people who would come to him full of pity would turn away quickly enough, as if from an object that was dangerous for them; they would end up obeying the protests of their own good health, their desire for happiness and life.
Then his thoughts returned to Françoise and, his shoulders bent and his head drooping in spite of itself, as if God’s commandment had been hovering there over him, he realized with a boundless and submissive sadness that he would have to renounce her. He felt the sensation of the humility of his body, bowing down in childlike weakness, with all the resignation of a patient, under that immense sorrow, and he felt pity for himself just as, across the intervening distance of his whole life, he had often seen himself as still a small child who aroused his own sympathy, and he felt like weeping.
He heard a knock at the door. The calling cards he had requested were brought in. He knew full well that people would come for news of him, since he was quite aware that his accident was serious, but even so he had not expected there to be so many cards, and he was alarmed to see that so many people had come, people who did not know him well and who would have made the effort only if he was to be married or buried. There was a whole heap of cards and the concierge was carrying it carefully so it would not fall off the big tray: the cards were practically overflowing.
But all of a sudden, once he had these cards all next to him, the heap appeared such a little thing, really quite ridiculously little, much littler than the chair or the fireplace. And he was even more alarmed that it was so little, and he felt so alone that to distract himself he started feverishly to read the names: one card, two cards, three cards, ah! He shuddered, and looked closer: “Count François de Gouvres”. And yet he might well have expected M. de Gouvres to come and enquire after him, but he had not thought of him for a long while, and suddenly the words of Buivres came back to him – “this evening there was someone there who’s had a bit of a fling with her: François de Gouvres; he says she’s pretty hot-blooded; but it appears she hasn’t got much of a figure, and he decided he didn’t want to continue” – and, experiencing all the old suffering rising momentarily from the depths of his consciousness to the surface, he said to himself, “Now I’m only too glad if I am dying. Imagine not dying, being stuck in this situation, maybe for years, and her not with me for part of the day and all of the night – seeing her at another man’s! And now it wouldn’t be my sickly imagination causing me to see her like that, it would be a certain fact. How could she still love me? An amputee!” Suddenly he stopped. “And if I die, after me?”
She was thirty; in a single bound he leapt over the shorter or longer time she would remember him and remain faithful. But a time would come… “He says she’s pretty hot-blooded… I want to love, I want to live and I want to be able to walk, I want to follow her everywhere, I want to be handsome, I want her to love me!”
Just then, he felt afraid; he could hear his wheezy breath; his side hurt, his chest seemed to have caved in to meet his back, he could not breathe the way he wanted, he tried to draw breath but could not. At every second he felt himself breathing and yet not breathing enough. The doctor came. Honoré was simply suffering an attack of nervous asthma. Once the doctor had gone, he felt even sadder; he would have preferred it to be more serious so he could arouse pity. For he felt that even if this was not serious, something else was, and he was slipping away. Now he recalled all the physical sufferings in his life, and was filled with sorrow; those who had most loved him had never pitied him on the pretext that he suffered from nervous disorders.
In the terrible months he had spent after his return home with Buivres, when at seven o’clock he got dressed after walking all through the night, his brother, who would wake up for a quarter of an hour on the nights following over-copious dinners, would tell him:
“You pay too much attention to yourself; there are nights when I can’t sleep either. Anyway, people think they can’t sleep a wink when in fact they always manage to doze off for a bit.”
It was true that he paid himself too much attention; in the background to his life he could always hear death, which had never left him entirely and which, without altogether destroying his life, kept undermining it, now in one place, now in another. Now his asthma was getting worse, he could not draw breath, his whole chest made a painful effort to breathe in. And he sensed the veil which hides life from us, the death which dwells within us, being drawn apart, and he realized what a terrifying thing it is to breathe, to live.
Then he found himself carried forward to the time when she would have found consolation, and then – which man would it be? And his jealousy panicked at the uncertainty of the event and its necessity. He could have prevented it while still living, but he could not live, and so?… She would say she was going to enter a convent, then once he was dead she would have second thoughts. No! He preferred not to be deceived twice over: better to know. Who? – Gouvres, Alériouvre, Buivres, Breyves?
He could see them all and, teeth clenched tight together, he felt the furious rebellion that at that moment was doubtless twisting his face into an indignant grimace. He managed to calm down. “No,” he thought, “it won’t be that, not a libertine – it must be a man who truly loves her. Why don’t I want it to be some libertine? I’m crazy to ask myself the question, it’s so natural.
Because I love her for herself, and want her to be happy. No, it’s not that, I don’t want anyone to arouse her senses, to give her more pleasure than I have given her, or even to give her any pleasure at all. I want someone to give her happiness, or to give her love, but I don’t want anyone to give her pleasure. I am jealous of the other’s pleasure, and of her pleasure. I won’t be jealous of their love. She must get married, she must choose wisely… Even so, it will be sad.”
Then one of the desires he had had as a small child came back to him – the small child he had been at the age of seven, when he went to bed every evening at eight o’clock. When his mother, instead of staying until midnight in her bedroom which was next to Honoré’s, and then going to bed there, had arranged to go out at eleven and passed the time until then getting dressed, he would beg her to get dressed before dinner and to go away somewhere, anywhere, since he could not stand the idea that, while he was trying to go to sleep, people in his home were getting ready to go out for the evening.
And so as to give him pleasure and calm him down, his mother, in the finery of her low-cut evening dress, would come in at eight o’clock to say goodnight before going off to the home of a lady friend to wait until it was time for the ball. And this was the only way on which, on those days – so sad for him – when his mother went to the ball, he could, sorrowful but tranquil, get off to sleep.
Now, the same prayer that he had addressed to his mother rose to his lips, addressed in turn to Françoise. He would like to have asked her to get married straight away, to be all ready and waiting, so that he could finally get off to sleep for ever, heavy at heart but calm and not in the least worried by what would happen after he had gone to sleep.
The following days, he tried to speak to Françoise, who, like the doctor himself, did not think he was dying and refused, with a gentle but inflexible firmness, to agree to
