Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 11

G >> Guy de Maupassant >> Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 11





SUICIDES

To Georges Legrand.

Hardly a day goes by without our reading a news item like the following
in some newspaper:

"On Wednesday night the people living in No. 40 Rue de-----,
were awakened by two successive shots. The explosions seemed to come from
the apartment occupied by M. X----. The door was broken in and
the man was found bathed in his blood, still holding in one hand the
revolver with which he had taken his life.

"M. X----was fifty-seven years of age, enjoying a comfortable
income, and had everything necessary to make him happy. No cause can be
found for his action."

What terrible grief, what unknown suffering, hidden despair, secret
wounds drive these presumably happy persons to suicide? We search, we
imagine tragedies of love, we suspect financial troubles, and, as we
never find anything definite, we apply to these deaths the word
"mystery."

A letter found on the desk of one of these "suicides without cause," and
written during his last night, beside his loaded revolver, has come into
our hands. We deem it rather interesting. It reveals none of those great
catastrophes which we always expect to find behind these acts of despair;
but it shows us the slow succession of the little vexations of life, the
disintegration of a lonely existence, whose dreams have disappeared; it
gives the reason for these tragic ends, which only nervous and high-strung
people can understand.

Here it is:

"It is midnight. When I have finished this letter I shall kill myself.
Why? I shall attempt to give the reasons, not for those who may read
these lines, but for myself, to kindle my waning courage, to impress upon
myself the fatal necessity of this act which can, at best, be only
deferred.

"I was brought up by simple-minded parents who were unquestioning
believers. And I believed as they did.

"My dream lasted a long time. The last veil has just been torn from my
eyes.

"During the last few years a strange change has been taking place within
me. All the events of Life, which formerly had to me the glow of a
beautiful sunset, are now fading away. The true meaning of things has
appeared to me in its brutal reality; and the true reason for love has
bred in me disgust even for this poetic sentiment: 'We are the eternal
toys of foolish and charming illusions, which are always being renewed.'

"On growing older, I had become partly reconciled to the awful mystery of
life, to the uselessness of effort; when the emptiness of everything
appeared to me in a new light, this evening, after dinner.

"Formerly, I was happy! Everything pleased me: the passing women, the
appearance of the streets, the place where I lived; and I even took an
interest in the cut of my clothes. But the repetition of the same sights
has had the result of filling my heart with weariness and disgust, just
as one would feel were one to go every night to the same theatre.

"For the last thirty years I have been rising at the same hour; and, at
the same restaurant, for thirty years, I have been eating at the same
hours the same dishes brought me by different waiters.

"I have tried travel. The loneliness which one feels in strange places
terrified me. I felt so alone, so small on the earth that I quickly
started on my homeward journey.

"But here the unchanging expression of my furniture, which has stood for
thirty years in the same place, the smell of my apartments (for, with
time, each dwelling takes on a particular odor) each night, these and
other things disgust me and make me sick of living thus.

"Everything repeats itself endlessly. The way in which I put my key in
the lock, the place where I always find my matches, the first object
which meets my eye when I enter the room, make me feel like jumping out
of the window and putting an end to those monotonous events from which we
can never escape.

"Each day, when I shave, I feel an inordinate desire to cut my throat;
and my face, which I see in the little mirror, always the same, with soap
on my cheeks, has several times made me weak from sadness.

"Now I even hate to be with people whom I used to meet with pleasure; I
know them so well, I can tell just what they are going to say and what I
am going to answer. Each brain is like a circus, where the same horse
keeps circling around eternally. We must circle round always, around the
same ideas, the same joys, the same pleasures, the same habits, the same
beliefs, the same sensations of disgust.

"The fog was terrible this evening. It enfolded the boulevard, where the
street lights were dimmed and looked like smoking candles. A heavier
weight than usual oppressed me. Perhaps my digestion was bad.

"For good digestion is everything in life. It gives the inspiration to
the artist, amorous desires to young people, clear ideas to thinkers, the
joy of life to everybody, and it also allows one to eat heartily (which
is one of the greatest pleasures). A sick stomach induces scepticism
unbelief, nightmares and the desire for death. I have often noticed this
fact. Perhaps I would not kill myself, if my digestion had been good this
evening.

"When I sat down in the arm-chair where I have been sitting every day for
thirty years, I glanced around me, and just then I was seized by such a
terrible distress that I thought I must go mad.

"I tried to think of what I could do to run away from myself. Every
occupation struck me as being worse even than inaction. Then I bethought
me of putting my papers in order.

"For a long time I have been thinking of clearing out my drawers; for,
for the last thirty years, I have been throwing my letters and bills
pell-mell into the same desk, and this confusion has often caused me
considerable trouble. But I feel such moral and physical laziness at the
sole idea of putting anything in order that I have never had the courage
to begin this tedious business.

"I therefore opened my desk, intending to choose among my old papers and
destroy the majority of them.

"At first I was bewildered by this array of documents, yellowed by age,
then I chose one.

"Oh! if you cherish life, never disturb the burial place of old letters!

"And if, perchance, you should, take the contents by the handful, close
your eyes that you may not read a word, so that you may not recognize
some forgotten handwriting which may plunge you suddenly into a sea of
memories; carry these papers to the fire; and when they are in ashes,
crush them to an invisible powder, or otherwise you are lost--just
as I have been lost for an hour.

"The first letters which I read did not interest me greatly. They were
recent, and came from living men whom I still meet quite often, and whose
presence does not move me to any great extent. But all at once one
envelope made me start. My name was traced on it in a large, bold
handwriting; and suddenly tears came to my eyes. That letter was from my
dearest friend, the companion of my youth, the confidant of my hopes; and
he appeared before me so clearly, with his pleasant smile and his hand
outstretched, that a cold shiver ran down my back. Yes, yes, the dead
come back, for I saw him! Our memory is a more perfect world than the
universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

"With trembling hand and dimmed eyes I reread everything that he told me,
and in my poor sobbing heart I felt a wound so painful that I began to
groan as a man whose bones are slowly being crushed.

"Then I travelled over my whole life, just as one travels along a river.
I recognized people, so long forgotten that I no longer knew their names.
Their faces alone lived in me. In my mother's letters I saw again the old
servants, the shape of our house and the little insignificant odds and
ends which cling to our minds.

"Yes, I suddenly saw again all my mother's old gowns, the different
styles which she adopted and the several ways in which she dressed her
hair. She haunted me especially in a silk dress, trimmed with old lace;
and I remembered something she said one day when she was wearing this
dress. She said: 'Robert, my child, if you do not stand up straight you
will be round-shouldered all your life.'

"Then, opening another drawer, I found myself face to face with memories
of tender passions: a dancing-pump, a torn handkerchief, even a garter,
locks of hair and dried flowers. Then the sweet romances of my life,
whose living heroines are now white-haired, plunged me into the deep
melancholy of things. Oh, the young brows where blond locks curl, the
caress of the hands, the glance which speaks, the hearts which beat, that
smile which promises the lips, those lips which promise the embrace! And
the first kiss-that endless kiss which makes you close your eyes, which
drowns all thought in the immeasurable joy of approaching possession!

"Taking these old pledges of former love in both my hands, I covered them
with furious caresses, and in my soul, torn by these memories, I saw them
each again at the hour of surrender; and I suffered a torture more cruel
than all the tortures invented in all the fables about hell.

"One last letter remained. It was written by me and dictated fifty years
ago by my writing teacher. Here it is:

"'MY DEAR LITTLE MAMMA:

"'I am seven years old to-day. It is the age of reason. I take
advantage of it to thank you for having brought me into this world.

"'Your little son, who loves you

"'ROBERT.'

"It is all over. I had gone back to the beginning, and suddenly I turned
my glance on what remained to me of life. I saw hideous and lonely old
age, and approaching infirmities, and everything over and gone. And
nobody near me!

"My revolver is here, on the table. I am loading it . . . . Never reread
your old letters!"

And that is how many men come to kill themselves; and we search in vain
to discover some great sorrow in their lives.




AN ARTIFICE

The old doctor sat by the fireside, talking to his fair patient who was
lying on the lounge. There was nothing much the matter with her, except
that she had one of those little feminine ailments from which pretty
women frequently suffer--slight anaemia, a nervous attack, etc.

"No, doctor," she said; "I shall never be able to understand a woman
deceiving her husband. Even allowing that she does not love him, that she
pays no heed to her vows and promises, how can she give herself to
another man? How can she conceal the intrigue from other people's eyes?
How can it be possible to love amid lies and treason?"

The doctor smiled, and replied: "It is perfectly easy, and I can assure
you that a woman does not think of all those little subtle details when
she has made up her mind to go astray.

"As for dissimulation, all women have plenty of it on hand for such
occasions, and the simplest of them are wonderful, and extricate
themselves from the greatest dilemmas in a remarkable manner."

The young woman, however, seemed incredulous.

"No, doctor," she said; "one never thinks until after it has happened of
what one ought to have done in a critical situation, and women are
certainly more liable than men to lose their head on such occasions:"

The doctor raised his hands. "After it has happened, you say! Now I will
tell you something that happened to one of my female patients, whom I
always considered an immaculate woman.

"It happened in a provincial town, and one night when I was asleep, in
that deep first sleep from which it is so difficult to rouse us, it
seemed to me, in my dreams, as if the bells in the town were sounding a
fire alarm, and I woke up with a start. It was my own bell, which was
ringing wildly, and as my footman did not seem to be answering the door,
I, in turn, pulled the bell at the head of my bed, and soon I heard a
banging, and steps in the silent house, and Jean came into my room, and
handed me a letter which said: 'Madame Lelievre begs Dr. Simeon to come
to her immediately.'

"I thought for a few moments, and then I said to myself: 'A nervous
attack, vapors; nonsense, I am too tired.' And so I replied: 'As Dr.
Simeon is not at all well, he must beg Madame Lelievre to be kind enough
to call in his colleague, Monsieur Bonnet.' I put the note into an
envelope and went to sleep again, but about half an hour later the street
bell rang again, and Jean came to me and said: 'There is somebody
downstairs; I do not quite know whether it is a man or a woman, as the
individual is so wrapped up, but they wish to speak to you immediately.
They say it is a matter of life and death for two people.' Whereupon I
sat up in bed and told him to show the person in.

"A kind of black phantom appeared and raised her veil as soon as Jean had
left the room. It was Madame Berthe Lelievre, quite a young woman, who
had been married for three years to a large a merchant in the town, who
was said to have married the prettiest girl in the neighborhood.

"She was terribly pale, her face was contracted as the faces of insane
people are, occasionally, and her hands trembled violently. Twice she
tried to speak without being able to utter a sound, but at last she
stammered out: 'Come--quick--quick, doctor. Come--my--friend has just
died in my bedroom.' She stopped, half suffocated with emotion, and then
went on: 'My husband will be coming home from the club very soon.'

"I jumped out of bed without even considering that I was only in my
nightshirt, and dressed myself in a few moments, and then I said: 'Did
you come a short time ago?' 'No,' she said, standing like a statue
petrified with horror. 'It was my servant--she knows.' And then,
after a short silence, she went on: 'I was there--by his side.' And
she uttered a sort of cry of horror, and after a fit of choking, which
made her gasp, she wept violently, and shook with spasmodic sobs for a
minute: or two. Then her tears suddenly ceased, as if by an internal
fire, and with an air of tragic calmness, she said: 'Let us make haste.'

"I was ready, but exclaimed: 'I quite forgot to order my carriage.' 'I
have one,' she said; 'it is his, which was waiting for him!' She wrapped
herself up, so as to completely conceal her face, and we started.

"When she was by my side in the carriage she suddenly seized my hand, and
crushing it in her delicate fingers, she said, with a shaking voice, that
proceeded from a distracted heart: 'Oh! if you only knew, if you only
knew what I am suffering! I loved him, I have loved him distractedly,
like a madwoman, for the last six months.' 'Is anyone up in your house?'
I asked. 'No, nobody except those, who knows everything.'

"We stopped at the door, and evidently everybody was asleep. We went in
without making any noise, by means of her latch-key, and walked upstairs
on tiptoe. The frightened servant was sitting on the top of the stairs
with a lighted candle by her side, as she was afraid to remain with the
dead man, and I went into the room, which was in great disorder. Wet
towels, with which they had bathed the young man's temples, were lying on
the floor, by the side of a washbasin and a glass, while a strong smell
of vinegar pervaded the room.

"The dead man's body was lying at full length in the middle of the room,
and I went up to it, looked at it, and touched it. I opened the eyes and
felt the hands, and then, turning to the two women, who were shaking as
if they were freezing, I said to them: 'Help me to lift him on to the
bed.' When we had laid him gently on it, I listened to his heart and put
a looking-glass to his lips, and then said: 'It is all over.' It was a
terrible sight!

"I looked at the man, and said: 'You ought to arrange his hair a little.'
The girl went and brought her mistress' comb and brush, but as she was
trembling, and pulling out his long, matted hair in doing it, Madame
Lelievre took the comb out of her hand, and arranged his hair as if she
were caressing him. She parted it, brushed his beard, rolled his
mustaches gently round her fingers, then, suddenly, letting go of his
hair, she took the dead man's inert head in her hands and looked for a
long time in despair at the dead face, which no longer could smile at
her, and then, throwing herself on him, she clasped him in her arms and
kissed him ardently. Her kisses fell like blows on his closed mouth and
eyes, his forehead and temples; and then, putting her lips to his ear, as
if he could still hear her, and as if she were about to whisper something
to him, she said several times, in a heartrending voice:

"'Good-by, my darling!'

"Just then the clock struck twelve, and I started up. 'Twelve o'clock!' I
exclaimed. 'That is the time when the club closes. Come, madame, we have
not a moment to lose!' She started up, and I said:

"'We must carry him into the drawing-room.' And when we had done this, I
placed him on a sofa, and lit the chandeliers, and just then the front
door was opened and shut noisily. 'Rose, bring me the basin and the
towels, and make the room look tidy. Make haste, for Heaven's sake!
Monsieur Lelievre is coming in.'

"I heard his steps on the stairs, and then his hands feeling along the
walls. 'Come here, my dear fellow,' I said; 'we have had an accident.'

"And the astonished husband appeared in the door with a cigar in his
mouth, and said: 'What is the matter? What is the meaning of this?' 'My
dear friend,' I said, going up to him, 'you find us in great
embarrassment. I had remained late, chatting with your wife and our
friend, who had brought me in his carriage, when he suddenly fainted, and
in spite of all we have done, he has remained unconscious for two hours.
I did not like to call in strangers, and if you will now help me
downstairs with him, I shall be able to attend to him better at his own
house.'

"The husband, who was surprised, but quite unsuspicious, took off his
hat, and then he took his rival, who would be quite inoffensive for the
future, under the arms. I got between his two legs, as if I had been a
horse between the shafts, and we went downstairs, while his wife held a
light for us. When we got outside I stood the body up, so as to deceive
the coachman, and said: 'Come, my friend; it is nothing; you feel better
already I expect. Pluck up your courage, and make an effort. It will soon
be over.' But as I felt that he was slipping out of my hands, I gave him
a slap on the shoulder, which sent him forward and made him fall into the
carriage, and then I got in after him. Monsieur Lelievre, who was rather
alarmed, said to me: 'Do you think it is anything serious?' To which I
replied: 'No,' with a smile, as I looked at his wife, who had put her arm
into that of her husband, and was trying to see into the carriage.

"I shook hands with them and told my coachman to start, and during the
whole drive the dead man kept falling against me. When we got to his
house I said that he had become unconscious on the way home, and helped
to carry him upstairs, where I certified that he was dead, and acted
another comedy to his distracted family, and at last I got back to bed,
not without swearing at lovers."

The doctor ceased, though he was still smiling, and the young woman, who
was in a very nervous state, said: "Why have you told me that terrible
story?"

He gave her a gallant bow, and replied:

"So that I may offer you my services if they should be needed."




DREAMS

They had just dined together, five old friends, a writer, a doctor and
three rich bachelors without any profession.

They had talked about everything, and a feeling of lassitude came over
them, that feeling which precedes and leads to the departure of guests
after festive gatherings. One of those present, who had for the last five
minutes been gazing silently at the surging boulevard dotted with
gas-lamps, with its rattling vehicles, said suddenly:

"When you've nothing to do from morning till night, the days are long."

"And the nights too," assented the guest who sat next to him. "I sleep
very little; pleasures fatigue me; conversation is monotonous. Never do I
come across a new idea, and I feel, before talking to any one, a violent
longing to say nothing and to listen to nothing. I don't know what to do
with my evenings."

The third idler remarked:

"I would pay a great deal for anything that would help me to pass just
two pleasant hours every day."

The writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm, turned round
to them, and said:

"The man who could discover a new vice and introduce it among his fellow
creatures, even if it were to shorten their lives, would render a greater
service to humanity than the man who found the means of securing to them
eternal salvation and eternal youth."

The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he said:

"Yes, but it is not so easy to discover it. Men have however crudely,
been seeking for--and working for the object you refer to since the
beginning of the world. The men who came first reached perfection at once
in this way. We are hardly equal to them."

One of the three idlers murmured:

"What a pity!"

Then, after a minute's pause, he added:

"If we could only sleep, sleep well, without feeling hot or cold, sleep
with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are
thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams."

"Why without dreams?" asked the guest sitting next to him.

The other replied:

"Because dreams are not always pleasant; they are always fantastic,
improbable, disconnected; and because when we are asleep we cannot have
the sort of dreams we like. We ought to dream waking."

"And what's to prevent you?" asked the writer.

The doctor flung away the end of his cigar.

"My dear fellow, in order to dream when you are awake, you need great
power and great exercise of will, and when you try to do it, great
weariness is the result. Now, real dreaming, that journey of our thoughts
through delightful visions, is assuredly the sweetest experience in the
world; but it must come naturally, it must not be provoked in a painful,
manner, and must be accompanied by absolute bodily comfort. This power of
dreaming I can give you, provided you promise that you will not abuse
it."

The writer shrugged his shoulders:

"Ah! yes, I know--hasheesh, opium, green tea--artificial
paradises. I have read Baudelaire, and I even tasted the famous drug,
which made me very sick."

But the doctor, without stirring from his seat, said:

"No; ether, nothing but ether; and I would suggest that you literary men
should use it sometimes."

The three rich bachelors drew closer to the doctor.

One of them said:

"Explain to us the effects of it."

And the doctor replied:

"Let us put aside big words, shall we not? I am not talking of medicine
or morality; I am talking of pleasure. You give yourselves up every day
to excesses which consume your lives. I want to indicate to you a new
sensation, possible only to intelligent men--let us say even very
intelligent men--dangerous, like everything else that overexcites
our organs, but exquisite. I might add that you would require a certain
preparation, that is to say, practice, to feel in all their completeness
the singular effects of ether.

"They are different from the effects of hasheesh, of opium, or morphia,
and they cease as soon as the absorption of the drug is interrupted,
while the other generators of day dreams continue their action for hours.

"I am now going to try to analyze these feelings as clearly as possible.
But the thing is not easy, so facile, so delicate, so almost
imperceptible, are these sensations.

"It was when I was attacked by violent neuralgia that I made use of this
remedy, which since then I have, perhaps, slightly abused.

"I had acute pains in my head and neck, and an intolerable heat of the
skin, a feverish restlessness. I took up a large bottle of ether, and,
lying down, I began to inhale it slowly.

"At the end of some minutes I thought I heard a vague murmur, which ere
long became a sort of humming, and it seemed to me that all the interior
of my body had become light, light as air, that it was dissolving into
vapor.

"Then came a sort of torpor, a sleepy sensation of comfort, in spite of
the pains which still continued, but which had ceased to make themselves
felt. It was one of those sensations which we are willing to endure and
not any of those frightful wrenches against which our tortured body
protests.

"Soon the strange and delightful sense of emptiness which I felt in my
chest extended to my limbs, which, in their turn, became light, as light
as if the flesh and the bones had been melted and the skin only were
left, the skin necessary to enable me to realize the sweetness of living,
of bathing in this sensation of well-being. Then I perceived that I was
no longer suffering. The pain had gone, melted away, evaporated. And I
heard voices, four voices, two dialogues, without understanding what was
said. At one time there were only indistinct sounds, at another time a
word reached my ear. But I recognized that this was only the humming I
had heard before, but emphasized. I was not asleep; I was not awake; I
comprehended, I felt, I reasoned with the utmost clearness and depth,
with extraordinary energy and intellectual pleasure, with a singular
intoxication arising from this separation of my mental faculties.