The sea has burst its bounds. Who shall turn it back into its bed? Then must a man appeal to a mightier than himself. To Neptune, the God of the tides.

* * * * *

After a fortnight of vain efforts to escape, Christophe returned to Anna. He could not live away from her. He was stifled.

And yet he went on struggling. On the evening of his return, they found excuses for not meeting and not dining together: at night they locked their doors in fear and dread.—But love was stronger than they. In the middle of the night she came creeping barefooted, and knocked at his door. She wept silently. He felt the tears coursing down her cheeks. She tried to control herself, but her anguish was too much for her and she sobbed. Under the frightful burden of her grief Christophe forgot his own: he tried to calm her and gave her tender, comfortable words. She moaned:

"I am so unhappy. I wish I were dead...."

Her plaint pierced his heart. He tried to kiss her. She repulsed him:

"I hate you!... Why did you ever come?"

She wrenched herself away from him. She turned her back on him and shook with rage and grief. She hated him mortally. Christophe lay still, appalled. In the silence Anna heard his choking breathing: she turned suddenly and flung her arms round his neck:

"Poor Christophe!" she said. "I have made you suffer...."

For the first time he heard pity in her voice.

"Forgive me," she said.

He said:

"We must forgive each other." She raised herself as though she found it hard to breathe. She sat there, with bowed back, overwhelmed, and said:

"I am ruined.... It is God's will, He has betrayed me.... What can I do against Him?"

She stayed for a long time like that, then lay down again and did not stir. A faint light proclaimed the dawn. In the half-light he saw her sorrowful face so near his. He murmured:

"The day."

She made no movement.

He said:

"So be it. What does it matter?"

She opened her eyes and left him with an expression of utter weariness. She sat for a moment looking down at the floor. In a dull, colorless voice she said:

"I thought of killing him last night."

He gave a start of terror:

"Anna!" he said.

She was staring gloomily at the window.

"Anna!" he said again. "In God's name!... Not him!... He is the best of us!..."

She echoed;

"Not him. Very well."

They looked at each other.

They had known it for a long time. They had known where the only way out lay. They could not bear to live a lie. And they had never even considered the possibility of eloping together. They knew perfectly well that that would not solve the problem: for the bitterest suffering came not from the external Obstacles that held them apart, but in themselves, in their different souls. It was as impossible for them to live together as to live apart. They were driven into a corner.

From that moment on they never touched each other: the shadow of death was upon them: they were sacred to each other.

But they put off appointing a time for their decision. They kept on saying: "To-morrow, to-morrow..." And they turned their eyes away from their to-morrow, Christophe's mighty soul had Wild spasms Of revolt: he would not consent to his defeat: he despised suicide, and he could not resign himself to such a pitiful and abrupt conclusion of his splendid life. As for Anna, how could she, unless she were forced, accept the idea of a death which must lead to eternal death? But ruthless necessity was at their heels, and the circle was slowly narrowing about them.

* * * * *

That morning, for the first time since the betrayal, Christophe was left alone with Braun. Until then he had succeeded in avoiding him. He found it intolerable to be with him. He had to make an excuse to avoid eating at the same table: the food stuck in his throat. To shake the man's hand, to eat his bread, to give the kiss of Judas!... Most odious for him to think of was not the contempt he had for himself so much as the agony of suffering that Braun must endure if he should come to know.... The idea of it crucified him. He knew, only too well that poor Braun would never avenge himself, that perhaps he would not even have the strength to hate them: but what an utter wreck of all his life!... How would he regard him! Christophe felt that he could not face the reproach in his eyes.—And it was inevitable that sooner or later Braun would be warned. Did he not already suspect something? Seeing him again after his fortnight's absence Christophe was struck by the change in him: Braun was not the same man. His gaiety had disappeared, or there was something forced in it. At meals he would stealthily glance at Anna, who talked not at all, ate not at all, and seemed to be burning away like the oil in a lamp. With timid, touching kindness he tried to look after her: she rejected his attentions harshly: then he bent his head over his plate and relapsed into silence. Anna could bear it no longer, and flung her napkin on the table in the middle of the meal and left the room. The two men finished their dinner in silence, or pretended to do so, for they ate nothing: they dared not raise their eyes. When they had finished, Christophe was on the point of going when Braun suddenly clasped his arm with both hands and said:

"Christophe!"

Christophe looked at him uneasily.

"Christophe," said Braun again—(his voice was shaking),—"do you know what's the matter with her?"

Christophe stood transfixed: for a moment or two he could find nothing to say. Braun stood looking at him timidly: very quickly he begged his pardon:

"You see a good deal of her, she trusts you...."

Christophe was very near taking Braun's hands and kissing them and begging his forgiveness. Braun saw Christophe's downcast expression, and, at once, he was terrified, and refused to see: he cast him a beseeching look and stammered hurriedly and gasped:

"No, no. You know nothing? Nothing?"

Christophe was overwhelmed and said:

"No."

Oh! the bitterness of not being able to lay bare his offense, to humble himself, since to do so would be to break the heart of the man he had wronged! Oh! the bitterness of being unable to tell the truth, when he could see in the eyes of the man asking him for it, that he could not, would not know the truth!...

"Thanks, thank you. I thank you...." said Braun.

He stayed with his hands plucking at Christophe's sleeve as though there was something else he wished to ask, and yet dared not, avoiding his eyes. Then he let go, sighed, and went away.

Christophe was appalled by this new lie. He hastened to Anna. Stammering in his excitement, he told her what had happened. Anna listened gloomily and said:

"Oh, well. He knows. What does it matter?"

"How can you talk like that?" cried Christophe. "It is horrible! I will not have him suffer, whatever it may cost us, whatever it may cost."

Anna grew angry.

"And what if he does suffer? Don't I have to suffer? Let him suffer too!"

They said bitter things to each other. He accused her of loving only herself. She reproached him with thinking more of her husband than of herself.

But a moment later, when he told her that he could not go on living like that, and that he would go and tell the whole story to Braun, then she cried out on him for his selfishness, declaring that she did not care a bit about Christophe's conscience, but was quite determined that Braun should never know.

In spite of her hard words she was thinking as much of Braun as of Christophe. Though she had no real affection for her husband she was fond of him. She had a religious respect for social ties and the duties they involve. Perhaps she did not think that it was the duty of a wife to be kind and to love her husband: but she did think that she was compelled scrupulously to fulfil her household duties and to remain faithful. It seemed to her ignoble to fail in that object as she herself had done.

And even more surely than Christophe she knew that Braun must know everything very soon. It was something to her credit that she concealed the fact from Christophe, either because she did not wish to add to his troubles or more probably because of her pride.

Secluded though the Braun household was, secret though the tragedy might remain that was being enacted there, some hint of it had trickled away to the outer world.

In that town it was impossible for any one to flatter himself that the facts of his life were hidden. This was strangely true. No one ever looked at anybody in the streets: the doors and shutters of the houses were closed. But there were mirrors fastened in the corners of the windows: and as one passed the houses one could hear the faint creaking of the Venetian shutters being pushed open and shut again. Nobody took any notice of anybody else: everything and everybody were apparently ignored: but it was not long before one perceived that not a single word, not a single gesture had been unobserved: whatever one did, whatever one said, whatever one saw, whatever one ate was known at once: even what one thought was known, or, at least, everybody pretended to know. One was surrounded by a universal, mysterious watchfulness. Servants, tradespeople, relations, friends, people who were neither friends nor enemies, passing strangers, all by tacit agreement shared in this instinctive espionage, the scattered elements of which were gathered to a head no one knew how. Not only were one's actions observed, but they probed into one's inmost heart. In that town no man had the right to keep the secrets of his conscience, and everybody had the right to rummage amongst his intimate thoughts, and, if they were offensive to public opinion, to call him to account. The invisible despotism of the collective mind dominated the individual: all his life he remained like a child in a state of tutelage: he could call nothing his own: he belonged to the town.

It was enough for Anna to have stayed away from church two Sundays running to arouse suspicion. As a rule no one seemed to notice her presence at service: she lived outside the life of the place, and the town seemed to have forgotten her existence.—On the evening of the first Sunday when she had stayed away her absence was known to everybody and docketed in their memory. On the following Sunday not one of the pious people following the blessed words in their Bibles or on the minister's lips seemed to be distracted from their solemn attention: not one of them had failed to notice as they entered, and to verify as they left, the fact that Anna's place was empty. Next day Anna began to receive visits from women she had not seen for many months: they came on various pretexts, some fearing that she was ill, others assuming a new interest in her affairs, her husband, her house: some of them showed a singularly intimate knowledge of the doings of her household: not one of them—(with clumsy ingenuity)—made any allusion to her absence from church on two Sundays running. Anna said that she was unwell and declared that she was very busy. Her visitors listened attentively and applauded her: Anna knew that they did not believe a word she said. Their eyes wandered round the room, prying, taking notes, docketing. They did not for a moment drop their cold affability or their noisy affected chatter: but their eyes revealed the indiscreet curiosity which was devouring them. Two or three with exaggerated indifference inquired after M. Krafft.

A few days later—(during Christophe's absence),—the minister came himself. He was a handsome, good-natured creature, splendidly healthy, affable, with that imperturbable tranquillity which comes to a man from the consciousness of being in sole possession of the truth, the whole truth. He inquired anxiously after the health of the members of his flock, politely and absently listened to the excuses she gave him, which he had not asked for, accepted a cup of tea, made a mild joke or two, expressed his opinion on the subject of drink that the wine referred to in the Bible was not alcoholic liquor, produced several quotations, told a story, and, as he was leaving, made a dark allusion to the danger of bad company, to certain excursions in the country, to the spirit of impiety, to the impurity of dancing, and the filthy lusts of the flesh. He seemed to be addressing his remarks to the age in general and not to Anna. He stopped for a moment, coughed, got up, bade Anna give his respectful compliments to M. Braun, made a joke in Latin, bowed, and took his leave.—Anna was left frozen by his allusion. Was it an allusion? How could he have known about her excursion with Christophe? They had not met a soul of their acquaintance that day. But was not everything known in the town? The musician with the remarkable face and the young woman in black who had danced at the inn had attracted much attention: their descriptions had been spread abroad; and, as the story was bandied from mouth to mouth, it had reached the town where the watchful malice of the gossips had not failed to recognize Anna. No doubt it amounted as yet to no more than a suspicion, but it was singularly attractive, and it was augmented by information supplied by Anna's maid. Public curiosity had been a-tip-toe, waiting for them to compromise each other, spying on them with a thousand invisible eyes. The silent crafty people of the town were creeping close upon them, like a cat lying in wait for a mouse.

In spite of the danger Anna would in all probability not have given in: perhaps her consciousness of such cowardly hostility would have driven her to some desperate act of provocation if she had not herself been possessed by the Pharisaic spirit of the society which was so antagonistic to her. Her education had subjugated her nature. It was in vain that she condemned the tyranny and meanness of public opinion: she respected it: she subscribed to its decrees even when they were directed against herself: if they had come into conflict with her conscience, she would have sacrificed her conscience. She despised the town: but she could not have borne the town to despise herself.

Now the time was coming when the public scandal would be afforded an opportunity of discharging itself. The carnival was coming on.

* * * * *

In that city, the carnival had preserved up to the time of the events narrated in this history—(it has changed since then)—a character of archaic license and roughness. Faithfully in accordance with its origin, by which it had been a relaxation for the profligacy of the human mind subjugated, wilfully or involuntarily, by reason, it nowhere reached such a pitch of audacity as in the periods and countries in which custom and law, the guardians of reason, weighed most heavily upon the people. The town in which Anna lived was therefore one of its most chosen regions. The more moral stringency paralyzed action and gagged speech, the bolder did action become and speech the more untrammeled during those few days. Everything that was secreted away in the lower depths of the soul, jealousy, secret hate, lewd curiosity, the malicious instincts inherent in the social animal, would burst forth with all the vehemence and joy of revenge. Every man had the right to go out into the streets, and, prudently masked, to nail to the pillory, in full view of the public gaze, the object of his detestation, to lay before all and sundry all that he had found out by a year of patient industry, his whole hoard of scandalous secrets gathered drop by drop. One man would display them on the cars. Another would carry a transparent lantern on which were pasted in writings and drawings the secret history of the town. Another would go so far as to wear a mask in imitation of his enemy, made so easily recognizable that the very gutter-snipes would point him out by name. Slanderous newspapers would appear during the three days. Even the very best people would craftily take part in the game of Pasquino. No control was exercised except over political allusions,—such coarse liberty of speech having on more than one occasion produced fierce conflict between the authorities of the town and the representatives of foreign countries. But there was nothing to protect the citizens against the citizens, and this cloud of public insult, constantly hanging over their heads, did not a little help to maintain the apparently impeccable morality on which the town prided itself.

Anna felt the weight of that dread—which was quite unjustified. She had very little reason to be afraid. She occupied too small a place in the opinion of the town for any one to think of attacking her. But in the absolute isolation in which of her own choice she lived, in her state of exhaustion and nervous excitement brought on by several weeks of sleepless nights and moral suffering, her imagination was apt to welcome the most unreasoning terrors. She exaggerated the animosity of those who did not like her. She told herself that suspicion was on her track: the veriest trifle was enough to ruin her: and there was nothing to assure her that it was not already an accomplished fact. It would mean insult, pitiless exposure, her heart laid bare to the mockery of the passers-by: dishonor so cruel that Anna was near dying of shame at the very thought of it. She called to mind how, a few years before, a girl, who had been the victim of such persecution, had had to fly the country with her family.... And she could do nothing, nothing to defend herself, nothing to prevent it, nothing even to find out if it was going to happen. The suspense was even more maddening than the certainty. Anna looked desperately about her like an animal at bay. In her own house she knew that she was hemmed in.

* * * * *

Anna's servant was a woman of over forty: her name was Babi: she was tall and strong: her face was narrow and bony round her brow and temples, wide and long in the lower part, fleshy under the jaw, roughly pear-shaped: she had a perpetual smile and eyes that pierced like gimlets, sunken, as though they had been sucked in, beneath red eyelids with colorless lashes. She never put off her expression of coquettish gaiety: she was always delighted with her superiors, always of their opinion, worrying about their health with tender interest: smiling when they gave her orders: smiling when they scolded her. Braun believed that she was unshakably devoted. Her gushing manner was strongly in contrast with Anna's coldness. However, she was like her in many things: like her she spoke little and dressed in a severe neat style: like her she was very pious, and went to service with her, scrupulously fulfilling all her religious duties and nicely attending to her household tasks: she was clean, methodical, and her morals and her kitchen were beyond reproach. In a word she was an exemplary servant and the perfect type of domestic foe. Anna's feminine instinct was hardly ever wrong in her divination of the secret thoughts of women, and she had no illusions about her. They detested each other, knew it, and never let it appear.

On the night of Christophe's return, when Anna, torn by her desire and her emotion, went to him once more in spite of her resolve never to see him again, she walked stealthily, groping along the wall in the darkness: just as she reached Christophe's door, instead of the ordinary cold smooth polished floor, she felt a warm dust softly crunching under her bare feet. She stooped, touched it with her hands, and understood: a thin layer of ashes had been spread for the space of a few yards across the passage. Without knowing it Babi had happed on the old device employed in the days of the old Breton songs by Frocin the dwarf to catch Tristan on his way to Yseult: so true it is that a limited number of types, good and bad, serve for all ages. A remarkable piece of evidence in favor of the wise economy of the universe!—Anna did not hesitate; she did not stop or turn, but went on in a sort of contemptuous bravado: she went to Christophe, told him nothing, in spite of her uneasiness: but when she returned she took the stove brush and carefully effaced every trace of her footsteps in the ashes, after she had crossed over them.—When Anna and Babi met next day it was with the usual coldness and the accustomed smile.

Babi used sometimes to receive a visit from a relation who was a little older than herself: he fulfilled the function of beadle of the church: during Gottesdienst (Divine service) he used to stand sentinel at the church door, wearing a white armlet with black stripes and a silver tassel, leaning on a cane with a curved handle. By trade he was an undertaker. His name was Sami Witschi. He was very tall and thin, with a slight stoop, and he had the clean-shaven solemn face of an old peasant. He was very pious and knew better than any one all the tittle-tattle of the parish. Babi and Sami were thinking of getting married: they appreciated each other's serious qualities, and solid faith and malice. But they were in no hurry to make up their minds: they prudently took stock of each other,—Latterly Sami's visits had become more frequent. He would come in unawares. Every time Anna went near the kitchen and looked through the door, she would see Sami sitting near the fire, and Babi a few yards away, sewing. However much they talked, it was impossible to hear a sound. She could see Babi's beaming face and her lips moving: Sami's wide hard mouth would stretch in a grin without opening: not a sound would come up from his throat: the house seemed to be lost in silence. Whenever Anna entered the kitchen, Sami would rise respectfully and remain standing, without a word, until she had gone out again. Whenever Babi heard the door open, she would ostentatiously break off in the middle of a commonplace remark, and turn to Anna with an obsequious smile and wait for her orders. Anna would think they were talking about her: but she despised them too much to play the eavesdropper.

The day after Anna had dodged the ingenious trap of the ashes, as she entered the kitchen, the first thing she saw in Sami's hand was the little broom she had used the night before to wipe out the marks of her bare feet. She had taken it out of Christophe's room, and that very minute, she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to take it back again; she had left it in her own room, where Babi's sharp eyes had seen it at once. The two gossips had immediately put two and two together. Anna did not flinch. Babi followed her mistress's eyes, gave an exaggerated smile, and explained:

"The broom was broken: I gave it to Sami to mend."

Anna did not take the trouble to point out the gross falsehood of the excuse: she did not seem even to hear it: she looked at Babi's work, made a few remarks, and went out again impassively. But when the door was closed she lost all her pride: she could not help hiding behind the corner of the passage and listening—(she was humiliated to the very depths of her being at having to stoop to such means: but fear mastered her).—She heard a dry chuckle of laughter. Then whispering, so low that she could not make out what was said. But in her desperation Anna thought she heard: her terror breathed into her ears the words she was afraid of hearing: she imagined that they were speaking of the coming masquerades and a charivari. There was no doubt: they would try to introduce the episode of the ashes. Probably she was wrong: but in her state of morbid excitement, having for a whole fortnight been haunted by the fixed idea of public insult, she did not stop to consider whether the uncertain could be possible: she regarded it as certain.

From that time on her mind was made up.

* * * * *

On the evening of the same day—(it was the Wednesday preceding the carnival)—Braun was called away to a consultation twenty miles out of the town: he would not return until the next morning. Anna did not come down to dinner and stayed in her room. She had chosen that night to carry out the tacit pledge she had made with herself. But she had decided to carry it out alone, and to say nothing to Christophe. She despised him. She thought:

"He promised. But he is a man, he is an egoist and a liar. He has his art. He will soon forget."

And then perhaps there was in her passionate heart that seemed so inaccessible to kindness, room for a feeling of pity for her companion. But she was too harsh and too passionate to admit it to herself.

Babi told Christophe that her mistress had bade her to make her excuses as she was not very well and wished to rest. Christophe dined alone under Babi's supervision, and she bored him with her chatter, tried to make him talk, and protested such an extraordinary devotion to Anna, that, in spite of his readiness to believe in the good faith of men, Christophe became suspicious. He was counting on having a decisive interview with Anna that night. He could no more postpone matters than she. He had not forgotten the pledge they had given each other at the dawn of that sad day. He was ready to keep it if Anna demanded it of him. But he saw the absurdity of their dying together, how it would not solve the problem, and how the sorrow of it and the scandal must fall upon Braun's shoulders. He was inclined to think that the best thing to do was to tear themselves apart and for him to try once more to go right away,—to see at least if he were strong enough to stay away from her: he doubted it after the vain attempt he had made before: but he thought that, in case he could not bear it, he would still have time to turn to the last resort, alone, without anybody knowing.

He hoped that after supper he would be able to escape for a moment to go up to Anna's room. But Babi dogged him. As a rule she used to finish her work early: but that night she seemed never to have done with scrubbing her kitchen: and when Christophe thought he was rid of her, she took it into her head to tidy a cupboard in the passage leading to Anna's room. Christophe found her standing on a stool, and he saw that she had no intention of moving all evening. He felt a furious desire to knock her over with her piles of plates: but he restrained himself and asked her to go and see how her mistress was and if he could say good-night to her. Babi went, returned, and said, as she watched him with a malicious joy, that Madame was better and was asleep and did not want anybody to disturb her. Christophe tried irritably and nervously to read, but could not, and went up to his room. Babi watched his light until it was put out, and then went upstairs to her room, resolving to keep watch: she carefully left her door open so that she could hear every sound in the house. Unfortunately for her, she could not go to bed without at once falling asleep and sleeping so soundly that not thunder, not even her own curiosity, could wake her up before daybreak. Her sound sleep Was no secret. The echo of it resounded through the house even to the lower floor.

As soon as Christophe heard the familiar noise he went to Anna's room. It was imperative that he should speak to her. He was profoundly uneasy. He reached her door, turned the handle: the door was locked. He knocked lightly: no reply. He placed his lips to the keyhole and begged her in a whisper, then more loudly, to open: not a movement, not a sound. Although he told himself that Anna was asleep, he was in agonies. And as, in a vain attempt to hear, he laid his cheek against the door, a smell came to his nostrils which seemed to be issuing from the room: he bent down and recognised it; it was the smell of gas. His blood froze. He shook the door, never thinking that he might wake Babi: the door did not give.... He understood: in her dressing-room, which led out of her room, Anna had a little gas-stove: she had turned it on. He must break open the door: but in his anxiety Christophe kept his senses enough to remember that at all costs Babi must not hear. He leaned against one of the leaves of the door and gave an enormous shove as quietly as he could. The solid, well-fitting door creaked on its hinges, but did not yield. There was another door which led from Anna's room to Braun's dressing-room. He ran to it. That too was locked: but the lock was outside. He started to tug it off. It was not easy. He had to remove the four big screws which were buried deep in the wood. He had only his knife and he could not see: for he dared not light a candle; it would have meant blowing the whole place up. Fumblingly he managed to fit his knife, into the head of a screw, then another, breaking the blades and cutting himself; the screws seemed to be interminably long, and he thought he would never be able to get them out: and, at the same time, in the feverish haste which was making big body break out into a cold sweat, there came to his mind a memory of his childhood: he saw himself, a boy of ten, shut up in a dark room as a punishment: he had taken off the lock and run out of the house.... The last screw came out. The lock gave with a crackling noise like the sawing of wood. Christophe plunged into the room, rushed to the window, and opened it. A flood of cold air swept in. Christophe bumped into the furniture in the dark and came to the bed, groped with his hands, and came on Anna's body, tremblingly felt her legs lying still under the clothes, and moved his hands up to her waist: Anna was sitting up in bed, trembling. She had not had time to feel the first effects of asphyxiation: the room was high: the air came through the chinks in the windows and the doors, Christophe caught her in his arms. She broke away from him angrily, crying:

"Go away!... Ah! What have you done?"

She raised her hands to strike him: but she was worn out with emotion: she fell back on her pillow and sobbed:

"Oh! Oh! We've to go through it all over again!"

Christophe took her hands in his, kissed her, scolded her, spoke to her tenderly and roughly:

"You were going to die, to die, alone, without me!"

"Oh! You!" she said bitterly.

Her tone was as much as to say:

"You want to live."

He spoke harshly to her and tried to break down her will.

"You are mad!" he said. "You might have blown the house to pieces!" "I wanted to," she said angrily.

He tried to play on her religious fears: that was the right note. As soon as he touched on it she began to scream and to beg him to stop. He went on pitilessly, thinking that it was the only means of bringing her back to the desire to live. She said nothing more, but lay sobbing convulsively. When he had done, she said in a tone of intense hatred:

"Are you satisfied now? You've done your work well. You've brought me to despair. And now, what am I to do?"

"Live," he said.

"Live!" she cried. "You don't know how impossible it is! You know nothing! You know nothing!"

He asked:

"What is it?"

She shrugged her shoulders:

"Listen."

In a few brief disconnected sentences she told him all that she had concealed from him: Babi's spying on her, the ashes, the scene with Sami, the carnival, the public insult that was before her. As she told her story she was unable to distinguish between the figments of her fear and what she had any reason to fear. He listened in utter consternation, and was no more capable than she of discerning between the real and the imaginary in her story. Nothing had ever been farther from his mind than to suspect how they were being dogged. He tried to understand: he could find nothing to say: against such enemies he was disarmed. Only he was conscious of a blind fury, a desire to strike and to destroy. He said:

"Why didn't you dismiss Babi?"

She did not deign to reply. Babi dismissed would have been even more venomous than Babi tolerated: and Christophe saw the idiocy of his question. His thoughts were in a whirl: he was trying to discover a way out, some immediate action upon which to engage. He clenched his fists and cried:

"I'll kill them?"

"Who?" she said, despising him for his futile words.

He lost all power of thought or action. He felt that he was lost in such a network of obscure treachery, in which it was impossible to clutch at anything since all were parties to it. He writhed.

"Cowards!" he cried, in sheer despair.

He slipped down on to his knees and buried his face against Anna.—They were silent for a little. She felt a mixture of contempt and pity for the man who could defend neither himself nor her. He felt Anna's limbs trembling with cold against his cheek. The window had been left open, and outside it was freezing: they could see the icy stars shivering in the sky that was smooth and gleaming as a mirror.

When she had fully tasted the bitter joy of seeing him as broken as herself, she said in a hard, weary voice:

"Light the candle."

He did so. Anna's teeth were chattering, she was sitting huddled up, with her arms tight folded across her chest and her knees up to her chin. He closed the window. Then he sat on the bed. He laid his hands on Anna's feet: they were cold as ice, and he warmed them with his hands and lips. She was softened.

"Christophe!" she said.

Her eyes were pitiful to see.

"Anna!" said he.

"What are we going to do?"

He looked at her and replied:

"Die."

She gave a cry of joy.

"Oh! You will? You will?... I shall not be alone!"

She kissed him.

"Did you think I was going to let you?"

She replied in a whisper:

"Yes."

A few moments later he questioned her with his eyes. She understood.

"In the bureau," she said. "On the right. The bottom drawer."

He went and looked. At the back of the drawer he found a revolver. Braun had bought it as a student. He had never made use of it. In an open box Christophe found some cartridges. He took them to the bed. Anna looked at them, and at once turned her eyes away to the wall.

Christophe waited, and then asked:

"You don't want to...?"

Anna turned abruptly:

"I will.... Quick!"

She thought:

"Nothing can save me now from the everlasting pit. A little more or less, it will be just the same."

Christophe awkwardly loaded the revolver.

"Anna," he said, and his voice trembled. "One of us will see the other die."

She wrenched the pistol out of his hands and said selfishly:

"I shall be the first."

They looked at each other once more.... Alas! At the very moment when they were to die for each other they felt so far apart!... Each was thinking in terror:

"What am I doing? What am I doing?"

And each was reading the other's eyes. The absurdity of the thing was what struck Christophe most. All his life gone for nothing: vain his struggles: vain his suffering: vain his hopes: all botched, flung to the winds: one foolish act was to wipe all away.... In his normal state he would have wrenched the revolver away from Anna and flung it out of the window and cried:

"No, no! I will not."

But eight months of suffering, of doubt and torturing grief, and on top of that the whirlwind of their crazy passion, had wasted his strength and broken his will: he felt that he could do nothing now, that he was no longer master of himself.... Ah! what did it matter, after all?

Anna, feeling certain that she was doomed to everlasting death, stretched every nerve to catch and hold the last minute of her life: Christophe's sorrowful face lit by the flickering candle, the shadows on the wall, a footstep in the street, the cold contact of the steel in her hand.... She clung to these sensations, as a shipwrecked man clings to the spar that sinks beneath his weight. Afterwards all was terror. Why not prolong the time of waiting? But she said to herself:

"I must...."

She said good-by to Christophe, with no tenderness, with the haste of a hurried traveler fearful of losing the train: she bared her bosom, felt for her heart, and laid the mouth of the revolver against it. Christophe hid his face. Just as she was about to fire she laid her left hand on Christophe's. It was the gesture of a child dreading to walk in the darkness....

Then a few frightful seconds passed.... Anna did not fire. Christophe wanted to raise his head, to take her in his arms: and he was afraid that his very movement might bring her to the point of firing. He heard nothing more: he lost consciousness.... A groan from Anna pierced his heart. He got up. He saw Anna with her face distorted in terror. The revolver had fallen down on to the bed. She kept on saying plaintively;

"Christophe!... It has missed fire!..."

He took the pistol: it had lain long forgotten and had grown rusty: but the trigger was in working order. Perhaps the cartridges had gone bad with exposure to the air.—Anna held out her hand for the revolver.

"Enough! Enough!" he implored her.

She commanded him:

"The cartridges!"

He gave them to her. She examined them, took one, loaded the pistol, trembling, put the pistol to her breast, and fired.—Once more it missed fire.

Anna flung the revolver out into the room.

"Oh! It is horrible, horrible!" she cried. "He will not let me die!"

She writhed and sobbed: she was like a madwoman. He tried to touch her: she beat him off, screaming. Finally she had a nervous attack. Christophe stayed with her until morning. At last she was pacified: but she lay still and breathless, with her eyes closed and the livid skin stretched tight over the bones of her forehead and cheeks: she looked like one dead.

Christophe repaired the disorder of her bed, picked up the revolver, fastened on the lock he had wrenched away, tidied up the whole room., and went away: for it was seven o'clock and Babi might come at any moment.

* * * * *

When Braun returned next morning he found Anna in the same prostrate condition. He saw that something extraordinary had happened: but he could glean nothing either from Babi or Christophe. All day long Anna did not stir: she did not open her eyes: her pulse was so weak that he could hardly feel it: every now and then it would stop, and, for a moment, Braun would be in a state of agony, thinking that her heart had stopped. His affection made him doubt his own knowledge: he ran and fetched a colleague. The two men examined Anna and could not make up their minds whether it was the beginning of a fever, or a case of nervous hysteria: they had to keep the patient under observation. Braun never left Anna's bedside. He refused to eat. Towards evening Anna's pulse gave no signs of fever, but was extremely weak. Braun tried to force a few spoonfuls of milk between her lips: she brought it back at once. Her body lay limp in her husband's arms like a broken doll. Braun spent the night with her, getting up every moment to listen to her breathing. Babi, who was hardly at all put out by Anna's illness, played the devoted servant and refused to go to bed and sat up with Braun.

On the Friday Anna opened her eyes. Braun spoke to her: she took no notice of him. She lay quite still with her eyes staring at a mark on the wall. About midday Braun saw great tears trickling down her thin cheeks: he dried them gently: one by one the tears went on trickling down. Once more Braun tried to make her take some food. She took it passively. In the evening she began to talk: loose snatches of sentences. She talked about the Rhine: she had tried to drown herself, but there was not enough water. In her dreams she persisted in attempting suicide, imagining all sorts of strange forms of death; always death was at the back of her thoughts. Sometimes she was arguing with some one, and then her face would take on an expression of fear and anger: she addressed herself to God, and tried obstinately to prove that it was all His fault. Or the flame of desire would kindle in her eyes, and she would say shameless things which it seemed impossible that she should know. Once she saw Babi, and gave precise orders for the morrow's washing. At night she dozed. Suddenly she got up: Braun ran to her. She looked at him strangely, and babbled impatient formless words. He asked her:

"My dear Anna, what do you want?"

She said harshly:

"Go and bring him."

"Who?" he asked.

She looked at him once more with the same expression and suddenly burst out laughing: then she drew her hands over her forehead and moaned:

"Oh! my God! Let me forget!..."

Sleep overcame her. She was at peace until day. About dawn she moved a little: Braun raised her head to give her to drink: she gulped down a few mouthfuls, and, stooping to Braun's hands, she kissed them. Once more she dozed off.

On the Saturday morning she woke up about nine o'clock. Without saying a word, she began to slip out of bed. Braun went quickly to her and tried to make her lie down again. She insisted. He asked her what she wanted to do. She replied:

"Go to church."

He tried to argue with her and to remind her that it was not Sunday and the church was closed. She relapsed into silence: but she sat in a chair near the bed, and began to put on her clothes with trembling fingers. Braun's doctor-friend came in. He joined Braun in his entreaties: then, seeing that she would not give in, he examined her, and finally consented. He took Braun aside, and told him that his wife's illness seemed to be altogether moral, and that for the time being he must avoid opposing her wishes, and that he could see no danger in her going out, so long as Braun went with her. Braun told Anna that he would go with her. She refused, and insisted on going alone. But she stumbled as soon as she tried to walk across the room. Then, without a word, she took Braun's arm, and they went out. She was very weak, and kept stopping. Several times he asked her if she wanted to go home. She began to walk on. When they reached the church, as he had told her, they found the doors closed. Anna sat down on a bench near the door, and stayed, shivering, until the clock struck twelve. Then she took Braun's arm again, and they came home in silence. But in the evening she wanted to go to church again. Braun's entreaties were useless. He had to go out with her once more.

Christophe had spent the two days alone. Braun was too anxious to think about him. Only once, on the Saturday morning, when he was trying to divert Anna's mind from her fixed idea of going out, he had asked her if she would like to see Christophe. She had looked at him with such an expression of fear and loathing that he could not but remark it: and he never pronounced Christophe's name again.

Christophe had shut himself up in his room. Anxiety, love, remorse, a very chaos of sorrow was whirling in him. He blamed himself for everything. He was overwhelmed by self-disgust. More than once he had got up to go and confess the whole story to Braun—and each time he had immediately been arrested by the thought of bringing wretchedness to yet another human being by his self-accusation. At the same time he was spared nothing of his passion. He prowled about in the passage outside Anna's room; and when he heard footsteps inside coming to the door he rushed away to his own room.

When Braun and Anna went out in the afternoon, he looked out for them from behind his window-curtains. He saw Anna. She who had been so erect and proud walked now with bowed back, lowered head, yellow complexion: she was an old woman bending under the weight of the cloak and shawl her husband had thrown about her: she was ugly. But Christophe did not see her ugliness: he saw only her misery; and his heart ached with pity and love. He longed to run to her, to prostrate himself in the mud, to kiss her feet: her dear body so broken and destroyed by passion, and to implore her forgiveness. And he thought as he looked after her:

"My work.... That is what I have done!"

But when he looked into the mirror and saw his own face, he was shown the same devastation in his eyes, in all his features: he saw the marks of death upon himself, as upon her, and he thought:

"My work? No. It is the work of the cruel Master who drives us mad and destroys us."

The house was empty. Babi had gone out to tell the neighbors of the day's events. Time was passing. The clock struck five. Christophe was filled with terror as he thought of Anna's return and the coming of the night. He felt that he could not bear to stay under the same roof with her for another night. He felt his reason breaking beneath the weight of passion. He did not know what to do, he did not know what he wanted, except that he wanted Anna at all costs. He thought of the wretched face he had just seen going past his window, and he said to himself:

"I must save her from myself!..."

His will stirred into life.

He gathered together the litter of papers on the table, tied them up, took his hat and cloak, and went out. In the passage, near the door of Anna's room, he hurried forward in a spasm of fear. Downstairs he glanced for the last time into the empty garden. He crept away like a thief in the night. An icy mist pricked his face and hands. Christophe skirted the walls of the houses, dreading a meeting with any one he knew. He went to the station, and got into a train which was just starting for Lucerne. At the first stopping-place he wrote to Braun. He said that he had been called away from the town on urgent business for a few days, and that he was very sorry to have to leave him at such a time: he begged him to send him news, and gave him an address. At Lucerne he took the St. Gothard train. Late at night he got out at a little station between Altorf and Goeschenen. He did not know the name, never knew it. He went into the nearest inn by the station. The road was filled with pools of water. It was raining in torrents: it rained all night and all next day. The water was rushing and roaring like a cataract from a broken gutter. Sky and earth were drowned, seemingly dissolved and melted like his own mind. He went to bed between damp sheets which smelt of railway smoke. He could not lie still. The idea of the danger hanging over Anna was too much in his mind for him to feel his own suffering as yet. Somehow he must avert public malignity from her, somehow turn it aside upon another track. In his feverish condition a queer idea came to him: he decided to write to one of the few musicians with whom he had been acquainted in the little town, Krebs, the confectioner-organist. He gave him to understand that he was off to Italy upon an affair of the heart, that he had been possessed by the passion when he first took up his abode with the Brauns, and that he had tried to shake free of it, but it had been too strong for him. He put the whole thing clearly enough for Krebs to understand, and yet so veiled as to enable him to improve on it as he liked. Christophe implored Krebs to keep his secret. He knew that the good little man simply could not keep anything to himself, and—quite rightly—he reckoned on Krebs hastening to spread the news as soon as it came into his hands. To make sure of hoodwinking the gossips of the town Christophe closed his letter with a few cold remarks about Braun and about Anna's illness.

He spent the rest of the night and the next day absorbed by his fixed Idea.... Anna.... Anna.... He lived through the last few months with her, day by day: he did not see her as she was, but enveloped her with a passionate atmosphere of illusion. From the very beginning he had created her in the image of his own desire, and given her a moral grandeur, a tragic consciousness which he needed to heighten his love for her. These lies of passion gained in intensity of conviction now that they were beyond the control of Anna's presence. He saw in her a healthy free nature, oppressed, struggling to shake off its fetters, reaching upwards to a wider life of liberty in the open air of the soul, and then, fearful of it, struggling against her dreams, wrestling with them, because they could not be brought into line with her destiny, and made it only the more sorrowful and wretched. She cried to him: "Help me." He saw once more her beautiful body, clasped it to him. His memories tortured him: he took a savage delight in mortifying the wounds they dealt him. As the day crept on, the feeling of all that he had lost became so frightful that he could not breathe.

Without knowing what he was doing, he got up, went out, paid his bill, and took the first train back to the town in which Anna lived. He arrived in the middle of the night: he went straight to the house. There was a wall between the alley and the garden next to Braun's. Christophe climbed the wall, jumped down into the next-door garden, and then into Braun's. He stood outside the house. It was in darkness save for a night-light which cast a yellow glow upon a window—the window of Anna's room. Anna was there. She was suffering. He had only to make one stride to enter. He laid his hand on the handle of the door. Then he looked at his hand, the door, the garden: suddenly he realized what he was doing: and, breaking free of the hallucination which had been upon him for the last seven or eight hours, he groaned, wrenched free of the inertia which held him riveted to the ground whereon he stood, ran to the wall, scaled it, and fled.

That same night he left the town for the second time: and next day he went and buried himself in a mountain village, hidden from the world by driving blizzards.—There he would bury his heart, stupefy his thoughts, and forget, and forget!...

—"_Epero leva su, vinci l'ambascia Con l'animo che vinea ogni battaglia, Se col suo grave corpo non s'accascia.

"Leva'mi allor, mostrandomi fornito Meglio di lena ch'io non mi sentia; E dissi: 'Va, ch'io son forte edardito._'"

INF. XXIV.

Oh! God, what have I done to Thee? Why dost Thou overwhelm me? Since I was a little child Thou hast appointed misery and conflict to be my lot. I have struggled without complaint. I have loved my misery. I have tried to preserve the purity of the soul Thou gavest me, to defend the fire which Thou hast kindled in me.... Lord, it is Thou, it is Thou who art so furious to destroy what Thou hast created. Thou hast put out the fire, Thou hast besmirched my soul. Thou hast despoiled me of all that gave me life. I had but two treasurable things in the world: my friend and my soul. Now I have nothing, for Thou hast taken everything from me. One only creature was mine in the wilderness of the world: Thou hast taken him from me. Our hearts were one. Thou hast torn them asunder: Thou hast made us know the sweetness of being together only to make us know the horror of being lost to each other. Thou hast created emptiness all about me. Thou hast created emptiness within me. I was broken and sick, unarmed and robbed of my will. Thou hast chosen that hour to strike me down. Thou hast come stealthily with silent feet from behind treacherously, and Thou hast stabbed me: Thou hast let loose upon me Thy fierce dogs of passion; I was weak, and Thou knewest it, and I could not struggle: passion has laid me low, and thrown me into confusion, and befouled me, and destroyed all that I had.... I am left only in self-disgust. If I could only cry aloud my grief and my shame! or forget them in the rushing stream of creative force! But my strength is broken, and my creative power is withered up. I am like a dead tree.... Would I were dead! O God, deliver me, break my body and my soul, tear me from this earth, leave me not to struggle blindly in the pit, leave me not in this endless agony! I cry for mercy.... Lord, make an end!

* * * * *

So in his sorrow Christophe cried upon a God in whom his reason did not believe.

* * * * *

He had taken refuge in a lonely farm in the Swiss Jura Mountains. The house was built in the woods tucked away in the folds of a high humpy plateau. It was protected from the north winds by crags and boulders. In front of it lay a wide stretch of fields, and long wooded slopes: the rock suddenly came to an end in a sheer precipice: twisted pines hung on the edge of it; behind were wide-spreading beeches. The sky was blotted out. There was no sign of life. A wide stretch of country with all its lines erased. The whole place lay sleeping under the snow. Only at night in the forest foxes barked. It was the end of the winter. Slow dragging winter. Interminable winter. When it seemed like to break up, snow would fall once more, and it would begin again.

However, for a week now the old slumbering earth had felt its heart slow beating to new birth. The first deceptive breath of spring crept into the air and beneath the frozen crust. From the branches of the beech-trees, stretched out like soaring wings, the snow melted. Already through the white cloak of the fields there peered a few thin blades of grass of tender green: around their sharp needles, through the gaps in the snow, like so many little mouths, the dank black earth was breathing. For a few hours every day the voice of the waters, sleeping beneath their robe of ice, murmured. In the skeleton woods a few birds piped their shrill clear song.

Christophe noticed nothing. All things were the same to him. He paced up and down, up and down his room. Or be would walk outside. He could not keep still. His soul was torn in pieces by inward demons. They fell upon and rent each other. His suppressed passion never left off beating furiously against the walls of the house of its captivity. His disgust with passion was no less furiously in revolt: passion and disgust flew at each other's throats, and, in their conflict, they lacerated his heart. And at the same time he was delivered up to the memory of Olivier, despair at his death, the hunger to create which nothing could satisfy, and pride rearing on the edge of the abyss of nothingness. He was a prey to all devils. He had no moment of respite. Or, if there came a seeming calm, if the rushing waves did fall back for a moment, it was only that he might find himself alone, and nothing in himself: thought, love, will, all had been done to death.

To create! That was the only loophole. To abandon the wreck of his life to the mercy of the waves! To save himself by swimming in the dreams of art!... To create! He tried.... He could not.

Christophe had never had any method of working. When he was strong and well he had always rather suffered from his superabundance than been disturbed at seeing it diminish: he followed his whim: he used to work first as the fancy took him, as circumstances chanced, with no fixed rule. As a matter of fact, he was always working everywhere: his brain was always busy. Often and often Olivier, who was less richly endowed and more reflective, had warned him:

"Take care. You are trusting too much to your force. It is a mountain torrent. Full to-day, perhaps dry to-morrow. An artist must coax his genius: he must not let it scatter itself at random. Turn your force into a channel. Train yourself in habits of mind and a healthy system of daily work, at fixed hours. They are as necessary to the artist as the practice of military movements and steps to a man who is to go into battle. When moments of crisis come—(and they always do come)—the bracing of steel prevents the soul from destruction. I know. It is just that that has saved me from death."

But Christophe used to laugh and say:

"That's all right for you, my boy I There's no danger of my losing my taste for life. My appetite's too good."

Olivier would shrug his shoulders:

"Too much ends in too little. There are no worse invalids than the men who have always had too much health."

And now Olivier's words had come true. After the death of his friend the source of his inward life had not all at once dried up: but it had become strangely intermittent: it flowed in sudden gushes, then stopped, then disappeared under the earth. Christophe had paid no heed to it: what did it matter to him? His grief and his budding passion had absorbed his mind.—But after the storm had passed, when once more he, turned to the fountain to drink, he could find no trace of it. All was barren. Not a trickle of water. His soul was dried up. In vain did he try to dig down into the sand, and force the water up from the subterranean wells, and create at all costs: the machine of his mind refused to obey. He could not invoke the aid of habit, the faithful ally, which, when we have lost every reason for living, alone, constant and firmly loyal, stays with us, and speaks no word, and makes no sign, but with eyes fixed, and silent lips, with its sure unwavering hand leads us by the hand through the dangerous chasm until the light of day and the joy of life return. Christophe was helpless: and his hand could find no guiding hand in the darkness. He could not find his way back to the light of day.

It was the supreme test. Then he felt that he was on the verge of madness. Sometimes he would wage an absurd and crazy battle with his own brain, maniacal obsessions, a nightmare of numbers: he would count the boards on the floor, the trees in the forest: figures and chords, the choice of which was beyond his reason. Sometimes he would lie in a state of prostration, like one dead.

Nobody worried about him. He lived apart in one wing of the house. He tidied his own room—or left it undone, every day. His meals were laid for him downstairs: he never saw a human face. His host, an old peasant, a taciturn, selfish creature, took no interest in him. Whether Christophe ate or did not eat was his affair. He hardly ever noticed whether Christophe came in at night. Once he was lost in the forest, buried up to his hips in the snow: he was very near never returning. He tried to wear himself out to keep himself from thinking. He could not succeed. Only now and then could he snatch a few hours of troubled sleep.

Only one living creature seemed to take any notice of his existence: this was an old St. Bernard, who used to come and lay his big head with its mournful eyes on Christophe's knees when Christophe was sitting on the seat in front of the house. They would look long at each other. Christophe would not drive him away. Unlike the sick Goethe, the dog's eyes had no uneasiness for him. Unlike him, he had no desire to cry:

"Go away!... Thou goblin, thou shalt not catch me, whatever thou doest!"

He asked nothing better than to be engrossed by the dog's suppliant sleepy eyes and to help the beast: he felt that there must be behind them an imprisoned soul imploring his aid.

In those hours when he was weak with suffering, torn alive away from life, devoid of human egoism, he saw the victims of men, the field of battle in which man triumphed in the bloody slaughter of all other creatures: and his heart was filled with pity and horror. Even in the days when he had been happy he had always loved the beasts: he had never been able to bear cruelty towards them: he had always had a detestation of sport, which he had never dared to express for fear of ridicule: perhaps even he had never dared to admit it to himself: but his feeling of repulsion had been the secret cause of the apparently inexplicable feeling of dislike he had had for certain men: he had never been able to admit to his friendship a man who could kill an animal for pleasure. It was not sentimentality: no one knew better than he that life is based on suffering and infinite cruelty: no man can live without making others suffer. It is no use closing our eyes and fobbing ourselves off with words. It is no use either coming to the conclusion that we must renounce life and sniveling like children. No. We must kill to live, if, at the time, there is no other means of living. But the man who kills for the sake of killing is a miscreant. An unconscious miscreant, I know. But, all the same, a miscreant. The continual endeavor of man should be to lessen the sum of suffering and cruelty: that is the first duty of humanity.

In ordinary life those ideas remained buried in Christophe's inmost heart. He refused to think of them. What was the good? What could he do? He had to be Christophe, he had to accomplish his work, live at all costs, live at the cost of the weak.... It was not he who had made the universe.... Better not think of it, better not think of it.... But when unhappiness had dragged him down, him, too, to the level of the vanquished, he had to think of these things Only a little while ago he had blamed Olivier for plunging into futile remorse and vain compassion for all the wretchedness that men suffer and inflict. Now he went even farther: with all the vehemence of his mighty nature he probed to the depths of the tragedy of the universe: he suffered all the sufferings of the world, and was left raw and bleeding. He could not think of the animals without shuddering in anguish. He looked into the eyes of the beasts and saw there a soul like his own, a soul which could not speak; but the eyes cried for it:

"What have I done to you? Why do you hurt me?"

He could not bear to see the most ordinary sights that he had seen hundreds of times—a calf crying in a wicker pen, with its big, protruding eyes, with their bluish whites and pink lids, and white lashes, its curly white tufts on its forehead, its purple snout, its knock-kneed legs:—a lamb being carried by a peasant with its four legs tied together, hanging head down, trying to hold its head up, moaning like a child, bleating and lolling its gray tongue:—fowls huddled together in a basket:—the distant squeals of a pig being bled to death:—a fish being cleaned on the kitchen-table.... The nameless tortures which men inflict on such innocent creatures made his heart ache. Grant animals a ray of reason, imagine what a frightful nightmare the world is to them: a dream of cold-blooded men, blind and deaf, cutting their throats, slitting them open, gutting them, cutting them into pieces, cooking them alive, sometimes laughing at them and their contortions as they writhe in agony. Is there anything more atrocious among the cannibals of Africa? To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of men. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous.—And that is the unpardonable crime. That alone is the justification of all that men may suffer. It cries vengeance upon all the human race. If God exists and tolerates it, it cries vengeance upon God. If there exists a good God, then even the most humble of living things must be saved. If God is good only to the strong, if there is no justice for the weak and lowly, for the poor creatures who are offered up as a sacrifice to humanity, then there is no such thing as goodness, no such thing as justice....

Alas! The slaughter accomplished by man is so small a thing of itself in the carnage of the universe! The animals devour each other. The peaceful plants, the silent trees, are ferocious beasts one to another. The serenity of the forests is only a commonplace of easy rhetoric for the literary men who only know Nature through their books!... In the forest hard by, a few yards away from the house, there were frightful struggles always toward. The murderous beeches flung themselves upon the pines with their lovely pinkish stems, hemmed in their slenderness with antique columns, and stifled them. They rushed down upon the oaks and smashed them, and made themselves crutches of them. The beeches were like Briareus with his hundred arms, ten trees in one tree! They dealt death all about them. And when, failing foes, they came together, they became entangled, piercing, cleaving, twining round each other like antediluvian monsters. Lower down, in the forest, the acacias had left the outskirts and plunged into the thick of it and attacked the pinewoods, strangling and tearing up the roots of their foes, poisoning them with their secretions. It was a struggle to the death in which the victors at once took possession of the room and the spoils of the vanquished. Then the smaller monsters would finish the work of the great. Fungi, growing between the roots, would suck at the sick tree, and gradually empty it of its vitality. Black ants would grind exceeding small the rotting wood. Millions of invisible insects were gnawing, boring, reducing to dust what had once been life.... And the silence of the struggle!... Oh! the peace of Nature, the tragic mask that covers the sorrowful and cruel face of Life! Christophe was going down and down. But he was not the kind of man to let himself drown without a struggle, with his arms held close to his sides. In vain did he wish to die: he did everything in his power to remain alive. He was one of those men of whom Mozart said: "They must act until at last they have no means of action." He felt that he was sinking, and in his fall he cast about, striking out with his arms to right and left, for some support to which to cling. It seemed to him that he had found it. He had just remembered Olivier's little boy. At once he turned on him all his desire for life: he clung to him desperately. Yes: he must go and find him, claim him, bring him up, love him, take the place of his father, bring Olivier to life again in his son. Why had he not thought of it in the selfishness of his sorrow? He wrote to Cecile, who had charge of the boy. He waited feverishly for her reply. His whole being was bent upon the one thought. He forced himself to be calm: he still had reason for hope. He was quite confident about it: he knew how kind Cecile was.

Her answer came. Cecile said that three months after Olivier's death, a lady in black had come to her house and said:

"Give me back my child!"

It was Jacqueline, who had deserted her child and Olivier,—Jacqueline, but so changed that she had hardly recognized her. Her mad love affair had not lasted. She had wearied of her lover more quickly than her lover had done of her. She had come back broken, disgusted, aged. The too flagrant scandal of her adventure had closed many doors to her. The least scrupulous had not been the least severe. Even her mother had been so offensive and so contemptuous that Jacqueline had found it impossible to stay with her. She had seen through and through the world's hypocrisy. Olivier's death had been the last blow. She seemed so utterly sorrowful that Cecile had not thought it right to refuse to let her have her boy. It was hard for her to have to give up the little creature, whom she had grown so used to regarding as her own. But how could she make things even harder for a woman who had more right than herself, a woman who was further more unhappy? She had wanted to write to Christophe to ask his advice. But Christophe had never answered the letters she had written him, she did not know his address, she did not even know whether he was alive or dead.... Joy comes and goes. What could she do? Only resign herself to the inevitable. The main thing was for the child to be happy and to be loved....

The letter reached him in the evening. A belated gust of winter brought back the snow. It fell all night. In the forest, where already the young leaves had appeared, the trees cracked and split beneath the weight of it. They went off like a battery of artillery. Alone in his room, without a light, surrounded only by the phosphorescent darkness, Christophe sat listening to the tragic sounds of the forest, and started at every crack: and he was like one of the trees bending beneath its load and snapping. He said to himself:

"Now the end has come."

Night passed. Day came. The tree was not broken. All through the new day and the following night the tree went on bending and cracking: but it did not break. Christophe had no reason for living left: and he went on living. He had no motive for struggling; and he struggled, body to body, foot to foot, with the invisible enemy who was bending his back. He was like Jacob with the angel. He expected nothing from the fight, he expected nothing now but the end, rest; and he went on fighting. And he cried aloud:

"Break me and have done! Why dost thou not throw me down?"

* * * * *

Days passed. Christophe issued from the fight, utterly lifeless. Yet he would not lie down, and insisted on going out and walking. Happy are those men who are sustained by the fortitude of their race in the hours of eclipse of their lives! Though the body of the son was near breaking-point, the strength of the father and the grandfather held him up: the energy and impetus of his robust ancestors sustained his broken soul, like a dead knight being carried along by his horse.

* * * * *

Along a precipitous road he went with a ravine on either hand: he went down the narrow path, thick with sharp stones, among which coiled the gnarled roots of the little stunted oaks: he did not know where he was going, and yet he was more surefooted than if he had been moving under the lucid direction of his will. He had not slept, he had hardly eaten anything for several days. He saw a mist in front of his eyes. He walked down towards the valley.—It was Easter-week. A cloudy day. The last assault of winter had been overcome. The warmth of spring was brooding. From the villages far down the sound of bells came up: first from a village nestling in a hollow at the foot of the mountain, with its dappled thatched roofs, dark and light in patches, covered with thick, velvety moss. Then from another, out of sight, on the other slope of the hill. Then, others down on the plain beyond the river. And the distant hum of a town seen hazily in the mist. Christophe stopped. His heart almost stopped beating. Their voices seemed to be saying:

"Come with us. Here is peace. Here sorrow is dead. Dead, and thought is dead too. We croon so sweetly to the soul that it sleeps in our arms, Come, and rest, and thou shalt not wake again."

He felt so worn out! He was so fain to sleep! But he shook his head and said:

"It is not peace that I seek, but life."

He went on his way. He walked for miles without noticing it. In his state of weakness and hallucination the simplest sensations came to him with unexpected resonance. Over earth and air his mind cast fantastic lights. A shadow, with nothing to cause it that he could see, going before him on the white and sunless road, made him tremble.

As he emerged from a wood he found himself near a village. He turned back: the sight of men hurt him. However, he could not avoid passing by a lonely house above the hamlet: it was built on the side of the mountain, and looked like a sanatorium: it was surrounded by a large garden open to the sun; a few men were wandering with faltering footsteps along the gravel paths. Christophe did not look at it particularly: but at a turn of the path he came face to face with a man with pale eyes and a fat, yellow face, staring blankly, who had sunk down on a seat at the foot of two poplar trees. Another man was sitting by his side: they were both silent. Christophe walked past them. But, a few yards on, he stopped: the man's eyes had seemed familiar to him. He turned. The man had not stirred: he was still staring fixedly at something in front of him. But his companion looked at Christophe, who beckoned to him. He came up.

"Who is he?" asked Christophe.

"A patient in the asylum," said the man, pointing to the house.

"I think I know him," said Christophe.

"Possibly," replied the man. "He was a well-known writer in Germany."

Christophe mentioned a name.—Yes. That was the name.—He had met him once in the days when he was writing for Mannheim's review. Then, they were enemies: Christophe was only just beginning, and the other was already famous. He had been a man of considerable power, very self-confident, very contemptuous of other men's work, a novelist whose realistic and sensual writings had stood out above the mediocrity of the productions of his day. Christophe, who detested the man, could not help admiring the perfection of his materialistic art, which was sincere, though limited.

"He went mad a year ago," said the keeper. "He was treated, regarded as cured, and sent home. Then he went mad again. One evening he threw himself out of the window. At first, when he came here, he used to fling himself about and shout. But now he is quite quiet. He spends his days sitting there, as you see."

"What is he looking at?" asked Christophe.

He went up to the seat, and looked pitifully at the pale face of the madman, with his heavy eyelids drooping over his eyes: one of them seemed to be almost shut. The madman seemed to be unaware of Christophe's presence. Christophe spoke to him by name and took his hand—a soft, clammy hand, which lay limp in his like a dead thing: he had not the courage to keep it in his: the man raised his glazing eyes to Christophe for a moment, then went on staring straight in front of him with his besotted smile. Christophe asked:

"What are you looking at?"

The man said, without moving, in a whisper:

"I am waiting."

"What for?"

"The Resurrection."

Christophe started back. He walked hurriedly away. The word had burnt into his very soul.

He plunged into the forest, and climbed up the hillside in the direction of his own house. In his confusion he missed his way, and found himself in the middle of an immense pine-wood. Darkness and silence. A few patches of sunlight of a pale, ruddy gold, come it was impossible to tell whence, fell aslant the dense shadows. Christophe was hypnotized by these patches of light. Round him everything seemed to be in darkness. He walked along over the carpet of pine-needles, tripping over the roots which stood out like swollen veins. At the foot of the trees were neither plants nor moss. In the branches was never the song of a bird. The lower branches were dead. All the life of the place had fled upwards to meet the sun. Soon even the life overhead would be gone. Christophe passed into a part of the wood which was visited by some mysterious pestilence. A kind of long, delicate lichen, like spiders' webs, had fastened upon the branches of the red pines, and wrapped them about with its meshes, binding them from hand to foot, passing from tree to tree, choking the life out of the forest. It was like the deep-sea alga with its subtle tentacles. There was in the place the silence of the depths of the ocean. High overhead hung the pale sun. Mists which had crept insidiously through the forest encompassed Christophe. Everything disappeared: there was nothing to be seen. For half an hour Christophe wandered at random in the web of the white mist, which grew slowly thicker, black, and crept down into his throat: he thought he was going straight: but he was walking in a circle beneath the gigantic spiders' webs hanging from the stifled pines: the mist, passing through them, left them enriched with shivering drops of water. At last the meshes were rent asunder, a hole was made, and Christophe managed to make his way out of the submarine forest. He came to living woods and the silent conflict of the pines and the beeches. But everywhere there was the same stillness. The silence, which had been brooding for hours, was agonizing. Christophe stopped to listen....

Suddenly, in the distance, there came a storm. A premonitory gust of wind blew up from the depths of the forest. Like a galloping horse it rushed over the swaying tree-tops. It was like the God of Michael Angelo passing in a water-spout. It passed over Christophe's head. The forest rustled, and Christophe's heart quivered. It was the Annunciation....

Silence came again. In a state of holy terror Christophe walked quickly home, with his legs giving way beneath him. At the door of the house he glanced fearfully behind him, like a hunted man. All Nature seemed dead. The forests which covered the sides of the mountain were sleeping, lying heavy beneath a weight of sadness. The still air was magically clear and transparent. There was never a sound. Only the melancholy music of a stream—water eating away the rock—sounded the knell of the earth, Christophe went to bed in a fever. It the stable hard by the beasts stirred as restlessly and uneasily as he....

Night. He had dozed off. In the silence the distant storm arose once more. The wind returned, like a hurricane now,—the foehn of the spring, with its burning breath warming the still sleeping, chilly earth, the foehn which melts the ice and gathers fruitful rains. It rumbled like thunder in the forests on the other side of the ravine. It came nearer, swelled, charged up the slopes: the whole mountain roared. In the stable a horse neighed and the cows lowed. Christophe's hair stood on end, he sat up in bed and listened. The squall came up screaming, set the shutters banging, the weather-cocks squeaking, made the slates of the roof go crashing down, and the whole house shake. A flower-pot fell and was smashed. Christophe's window was insecurely fastened, and was burst open with a bang, and the warm wind rushed in. Christophe received its blast full in his face and on his naked chest. He jumped out of bed gaping, gasping, choking. It was as though the living God were rushing into his empty soul. The Resurrection!... The air poured down his throat, the flood of new life swelled through him and penetrated to his very marrow. He felt like to burst, he wanted to shout, to shout for joy and sorrow: and there would only come inarticulate sounds from his mouth. He reeled, he beat on the walls with his arms, while all around him were sheets of paper flying on the wind. He fell down in the middle of the room and cried:

"O Thou, Thou! Thou art come back to me at last!"

"Thou art come back to me, Thou art come back to me! O Thou, whom I had lost!... Why didst Thou abandon me?"

"To fulfil My task, that thou didst abandon."

"What task?"

"My fight."

"What need hast Thou to fight? Art Thou not master of all?"

"I am not the master."

"Art Thou not All that Is?"

"I am not all that is. I am Life fighting Nothingness. I am not Nothingness, I am the Fire which burns in the Night. I am not the Night. I am the eternal Light; I am not an eternal destiny soaring above the fight. I am free Will which struggles eternally. Struggle and burn with Me."

"I am conquered. I am good for nothing."

"Thou art conquered? All seems lost to thee? Others will be conquerors. Think not of thyself, think of My army."

"I am alone. I have none but myself. I belong to no army."

"Thou art not alone, and thou dost not belong to thyself. Thou art one of My voices, thou art one of My arms. Speak and strike for Me. But if the arm be broken, or the voice be weary, then still I hold My ground: I fight with other voices, other arms than thine. Though thou art conquered, yet art thou of the army which is never vanquished. Remember that and thou wilt fight even unto death."

"Lord, I have suffered much!"

"Thinkest thou that I do not suffer also? For ages death has hunted Me and nothingness has lain in wait for Me. It is only by victory in the fight that I can make My way. The river of life is red with My blood."

"Fighting, always fighting?"

"We must always fight. God is a fighter, even He Himself. God is a conqueror. He is a devouring lion. Nothingness hems Him in and He hurls it down. And the rhythm of the fight is the supreme harmony. Such harmony is not for thy mortal ears. It is enough for thee to know that it exists. Do thy duty in peace and leave the rest to the Gods."

"I have no strength left."

"Sing for those who are strong."

"My voice is gone."

"Pray."

"My heart is foul."

"Pluck it out. Take Mine."

"Lord, it is easy to forget myself, to cast away my dead soul. But how can I cast out the dead? how can I forget those whom I have loved?"

"Abandon the dead with thy dead soul. Thou wilt find them alive with My living soul."

"Thou hast left me once: wilt Thou leave me again?"

"I shall leave thee again. Never doubt that. It is for thee never to leave Me more."

"But if the flame of my life dies down?"

"Then do thou kindle others."

"And if death is in me?"

"Life is otherwhere. Go, open thy gates to life. Thou insensate man, to shut thyself up in thy ruined house! Quit thyself. There are other mansions."

"O Life, O Life! I see ... I sought thee in myself, in my own empty shut-in soul. My soul is broken: the sweet air pours in through the windows of my wounds: I breathe again, I have found Thee once more, O Life!..."

"I have found thee again.... Hold thy peace, and listen."

* * * * *

And like the murmuring of a spring, Christophe heard the song of life bubbling up in him. Leaning out of his window, he saw the forest, which yesterday had been dead, seething with life under the sun and the wind, heaving like the Ocean. Along the stems of the trees, like thrills of joy, the waves of the wind passed: and the yielding branches held their arms in ecstasy up to the brilliant sky. And the torrent rang out merrily as a bell. The countryside had risen from the grave in which yesterday it had been entombed: life had entered it at the time when love passed into Christophe's heart. Oh! the miracle of the soul touched by grace, awaking to new life! Then everything comes to life again all round it. The heart begins to beat once more. The eye of the spirit is opened. The dried-up fountains begin once more to flow.

And Christophe returned to the Divine conflict.... How his own fight, how all the conflicts of men were lost in that gigantic battle, wherein the suns rain down like flakes of snow tossing on the wind!... He had laid bare his soul. And, just as in those dreams in which one hovers in space, he felt that he was soaring above himself, he saw himself from above, in the general plan of the world; and the meaning of his efforts, the price of his suffering, were revealed to him at a glance. His struggles were a part of the great fight of the worlds. His overthrow was a momentary episode, immediately repaired. Just as he fought for all, so all fought for him. They shared his trials, he shared their glory.

* * * * *

"Companions, enemies, walk over me, crush me, let me feel the cannons which shall win victory pass over my body! I do not think of the iron which cuts deep into my flesh, I do not think of the foot that tramples down my head, I think of my Avenger, the Master, the Leader of the countless army. My blood shall cement the victory of the future...."

God was not to him the impassive Creator, a Nero from his tower of brass watching the burning of the City to which he himself has set fire. God was fighting. God was suffering. Fighting and suffering with all who fight and for all who suffer. For God was Life, the drop of light fallen into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night. But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease: and none can know how it will end. It was a heroic symphony wherein the very discords clashed together and mingled and grew into a serene whole! Just as the beech-forest in silence furiously wages war, so Life carries war into the eternal peace.

The wars and the peace rang echoing through Christophe. He was like a shell wherein the ocean roars. Epic shouts passed, and trumpet calls, and tempestuous sounds borne upon sovereign rhythms. For in that sonorous soul everything took shape in sound. It sang of light. It sang of darkness, sang of life and death. It sang for those who were victorious in battle. It sang for himself who was conquered and laid low. It sang. All was song. It was nothing but song.

It was so drunk with it that it could not hear its own song. Like the spring rains, the torrents of music disappeared into the earth that was cracked by the winter. Shame, grief, bitterness now revealed their mysterious mission: they had decomposed the earth and they had fertilized it. The share of sorrow, breaking the heart, had opened up new sources of life. The waste land had once more burst into flower. But they were not the old spring flowers. A new soul had been born.

Every moment it was springing into birth. For it was not yet shaped and hardened, like the souls that have come to the end of their belief, the souls which are at the point of death. It was not the finished statue. It was molten metal. Every second made a new universe of it. Christophe had no thought of setting bounds upon himself. He gave himself up to the joy of a man leaving behind him the burden of his past and setting out on a long voyage, with youth in his blood, freedom in his heart, to breathe the sea air, and think that the voyage will never come to an end. Now that he was caught up again by the creative force which flows through the world, he was amazed to the point of ecstasy at the world's wealth. He loved, he was, his neighbor as himself. And all things were "neighbors" to him, from the grass beneath his feet to the man whose hand he clasped. A fine tree, the shadow of a cloud on the mountain, the breath of the fields borne upward on the wind, and, at night, the hive of heaven buzzing with the swarming suns ... his blood raced through him ... he had no desire to speak or to think, he desired only to laugh and to cry, and to melt away into the living marvel of it all. Write? Why should he write? Can a man write the inexpressible?... But whether it were possible or no, he had to write. It was his law. Ideas would come to him in flashes, wherever he might be, most often when he was out walking. He could not wait. Then he would write with anything, on anything that came to hand: and very often he could not have told the meaning of the phrases which came rushing forth from him with irresistible impetuosity: and, as he wrote, more ideas would come, more and more: and he would write and write, on his shirt cuffs, in the lining of his hat. Quickly though he wrote, yet his thoughts would leap ahead, and he had to use a sort of shorthand.