They were so much in the habit of telling each other the truth that each of them even told truths that might hurt the other, as if deep down in both of them, in their highly strung and sensitive nature, whose susceptibilities they had to treat with kid gloves, they had sensed the presence of a God, superior and indifferent to all these precautions that are fit only for children; a God who demanded the truth and owed the truth to them.
And both of them had – Honoré towards this God deep within Françoise, and Françoise towards this God deep within Honoré – always sensed that they had duties before which the desire not to be pained and not to be offended was forced to yield, and the most sincere lies of tenderness and pity had to give way.
So when Françoise told Honoré he was going to live, he felt clearly that she believed what she was saying, and he persuaded himself little by little to believe it too.
“If I have to die, I won’t be jealous when I’m dead; but what about until I’m dead? As long as my body lives, yes! But since it is only the pleasure I’m jealous of, since it’s my body which is jealous, since what I’m jealous of isn’t her heart, isn’t her happiness, which I wish her to have with whoever is most capable of giving it to her; when my body is effaced, when the soul wins out from it, when I am gradually detached from material things as I was one evening when I was really ill, then I won’t be consumed by such a mad desire for the body and I will love the soul all the more: I won’t be jealous. And then I will truly love.
I can’t conceive what it will be, now that my body is still full of life and rebelliousness, but I can imagine it to some extent, as at those times when I was holding hands with Françoise and found in a boundless tenderness, free of desire, an appeasement for my sufferings and my jealousy.
I will feel great sorrow on leaving her, but the sorrow will be that which in previous days brought me closer to myself, that which an angel came to console within me, the sorrow which revealed to me the mysterious friend of my days of unhappiness, namely my soul – that calm sorrow, thanks to which I will feel more presentable to God, and not the horrible illness which has caused me such pain for so long without elevating my heart, like a throbbing physical pain which degrades and diminishes us.
Together with my body, with the desire for her body, I will be delivered from that. Yes, but until then, what will become of me? Weaker, more incapable of resisting her than ever, cut down on my two broken legs, when I want to rush over to her to see that she isn’t where I dreamt she might be, I’ll stay put, unable to move, sniggered at by all those who’ll be able to have a fling with her as much as they like, in front of me, a sick man whom they will no longer fear.”
On the night of Sunday to Monday, he dreamt he was suffocating, and felt a huge weight on his chest. He begged for mercy, no longer had the strength to shift this great weight; the feeling that it had all been weighing down on him like this for a long, long time was inexplicable to him, he could not tolerate it a second longer, he was choking. Suddenly, he felt himself miraculously relieved of the whole burden which moved farther and farther away, having delivered him for ever. And he said to himself, “I am dead!”
And, above him, he saw rising up everything that had weighed down for so long on him, suffocating him; he thought at first that it was the image of Gouvres, and then merely his suspicions, then his desires, then that expectant longing that had started as soon as day broke, crying out for the time when he would see Françoise, then the thought of Françoise.
At every minute it changed shape, like a cloud, growing bigger, ever bigger, and now he could no longer understand how this thing which he had thought to be as immense as the world had managed to weigh on him, on the little body of a feeble man like himself, on the poor heart of an ailing man like himself, without him being crushed by it. And he also realized that he had been crushed and that it had been the life of a crushed man that he had led. And this immense thing that had weighed down on his chest with all the force in the world was, he realized, his love.
Then he repeated to himself, “The life of a crushed man!” and he remembered that when the horse had knocked him down, he had said to himself, “I’m going to be crushed”; he remembered his walk, how that morning he had arranged to go and have lunch with Françoise, and then, via that detour, the thought of his love came back to him. And he said to himself, “Was it my love that was weighing down on me? What could it be if not my love? My character, perhaps? Me? Or else life?” Then he thought, “No, when I die, I will not be delivered from my love, but from my carnal desires, my carnal longings, my jealousy.” Then he said, “My God, let that hour come, let it come quickly, my God, let me know perfect love.”
On Sunday evening, peritonitis had set in; on the Monday morning, at around ten, he became feverish, wanted Françoise, called out for her, his eyes burning. “I want your eyes to shine too, I want to give you pleasure like I’ve never given you before… I want to give you… so much that it’ll hurt you!” Then all of a sudden he went pale with fury.
“I can see perfectly well why you don’t want to, I know perfectly well what you had done to you this morning, and where it was and who did it, and I know he wanted someone to come and fetch me and conceal me behind the door so I could see you, without being able to fling myself on you, since I’ve lost my legs, and wouldn’t be able to stop you, since you’d have felt even more pleasure on seeing me there all the way through; he knows so very well everything that needs to be done to give you pleasure, but I’ll kill you first, first I’ll kill you, and first of all I’ll kill myself! See! I have killed myself!” And he fell back on the pillow, exhausted.
He gradually calmed down and continued to reflect on whom she might marry after his death, but it was always the images he tried to brush away, that of François de Gouvres, that of Buivres, the images that tortured him, that kept coming back.
At midday he had received the sacraments. The doctor had said he would not last until the evening. He was losing his strength extremely rapidly, could no longer absorb food, had almost lost his hearing. He remained clear-headed and did not speak, so as not to cause pain to Françoise, who, he could see, was grief-stricken; he tried to imagine how she would be once he was no more, and he would know nothing of her, and she would no longer be able to love him.
The names he had said mechanically, that very morning, the names of those who would perhaps possess her, started again to stream through his head while his eyes followed a fly that was approaching his finger as if it wanted to touch him, then flew off and kept coming back, though without actually touching him; and when, arousing his attention again after it had drifted off for a while, the name of François de Gouvres came back, and he said that, yes, perhaps he would possess her, while thinking at the same time, “Perhaps the fly is going to touch the sheet? No, not yet,” he suddenly came out of his reverie and thought, “What?
The one thing doesn’t seem to me any more important than the other! Will Gouvres possess Françoise? Will the fly touch the sheet? Oh, possessing Françoise is rather more important.” But the precision with which he could see the difference separating these two events showed him that neither of them particularly touched him more than did the other. And he said to himself, “So – they are both matters of such indifference? How sad!” Then he realized that he was only saying “How sad” out of habit, and that having completely changed, he was no longer sad to have changed. A vague smile parted his clenched lips. “There it is,” he reflected, “my pure love for Françoise. I’m not jealous, so I must be very close to death; but it hardly matters – it was necessary for me to feel true love for Françoise at last.”
But then, looking up, he saw Françoise, in the midst of the servants, the doctor and his two elderly women relatives, who were all there, praying right nearby. And he realized how that love, pure of all egotism and all sensuality – the love he wanted to be so gentle, so vast and so divine within him – cherished the elderly relatives, the servants and the doctor himself as much as it
