‘Swear you will not let it out!’
He swore it: ‘So help me God!’
‘I am his sister.’
‘Françoise!’ he shrieked.
She looked intently at him, and softly, softly moved her lips, hardly letting the words escape:
‘So you are Celestin!’
They did not stir, but remained as though benumbed, gazing into each other’s eyes.
Around them the others shouted with drunken voices. The ringing of glasses, the beating of hands and heels, and the piercing screams of women, intermingled with the singing and the shouting.
‘How can it have happened?’ said he, so gently that even she could hardly catch the words.
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
‘They died,’ she continued. ‘All three in one month. What was I to do? I was left alone. The chemist, the doctor, the three funerals.… I had to sell everything to pay the debts. Nothing was left but the clothes I wore. I went as servant to Monsieur Cacheux.… Do you remember him? A lame man. I was only just fifteen. I was scarcely fourteen when you left home – and I went wrong with him.… You know how stupid we peasant girls are. Then I went as nurse in a notary’s family – and it was the same with him. For a time he made me his mistress and I had a lodging of my own; but that did not last long. He left me, and for three days I was without food. No one would take me, so I came here like the rest of them.’ And as she spoke the water flowed in streams from her eyes and nose, wetting her cheeks and trickling into her mouth.
‘What have we done?’ said he.
‘I thought you were dead also. How could I have helped it?’ whispered she through her tears.
‘How was it you did not know me?’ he answered, also in a whisper.
‘I do not know. It was not my fault,’ continued she, weeping yet more bitterly.
‘How could I know you?’ he said again. ‘You were so different when I left home! But you should have known me!’
She threw up her hands in despair.
‘Ah! I see so many of them – these men. They all look alike to me now!’
His heart contracted so painfully and so strongly that he wanted to cry aloud, as a little boy does when he is beaten.
He rose and held her at arm’s length; then, seizing her head in his great sailor paws, he gazed intently into her face.
Little by little he recognized in her the small, slender, merry maiden he had left at home with those others whose eyes it had been her lot to close.
‘Yes, you are Françoise! My sister!’ he exclaimed. And suddenly sobs – the sobs of a strong man, sounding like the hiccups of a drunkard – rose in his throat. He let go of her head, and striking the table so that the glasses upset and broke to atoms, he cried out in a wild voice.
His comrades, astonished, turned towards him.
‘See how he’s swaggering,’ said one.
‘Stop that shouting,’ said another.
‘Eh, Duclos! What are you bawling about? Let’s get upstairs again,’ said a third, plucking Celestin by the sleeve with one hand while his other arm encircled a flushed, laughing, black-eyed lass, in a rose-coloured, low-cut, silk dress.
Duclos suddenly became quiet, and holding his breath looked at his comrades. Then, with the same strange and resolute expression with which he used to enter on a fight, he staggered up to the sailor who was embracing the girl, and struck down with his hand – dividing them apart.
‘Away! Do you not see that she is your sister! Each of them is someone’s sister. See, here is my sister, Françoise! Ha, ha … ha …’ and he broke into sobs that almost sounded like laughter. Then he staggered, raised his hands, and fell with a crash to the floor, where he rolled about, striking the floor with his hands and feet and choking as though about to die.
‘He must be put to bed,’ said one of his comrades. ‘We shall be having him taken up if we go out into the streets.’
So they lifted Celestin and dragged him upstairs to Françoise’s room, where they laid him on her bed.
A TALK AMONG
LEISURED PEOPLE AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STORY
THAT FOLLOWS
SOME guests assembled at a wealthy house one day happened to start a serious conversation about life.
They spoke of people present and absent, but failed to find anyone who was satisfied with his life.
Not only could no one boast of happiness, but not a single person considered that he was living as a Christian should do. All confessed that they were living worldly lives concerned only for themselves and their families, none of them thinking of their neighbours, still less of God.
So said all the guests, and all agreed in blaming themselves for living godless and unchristian lives.
‘Then why do we live so?’ exclaimed a youth. ‘Why do we do what we ourselves disapprove of? Have we no power to change our way of life? We ourselves admit that we are ruined by our luxury, our effeminacy, our riches, and above all by our pride – our separation from our fellow-men. To be noble and rich we have to deprive ourselves of all that gives man joy. We crowd into towns, become effeminate, ruin our health, and in spite of all our amusements we die of ennui, and of regrets that our life is not what it should be.
‘Why do we live so? Why do we spoil our lives and all the good that God gives us? I don’t want to live in that old way! I will abandon the studies I have begun – they would only bring me to the same tormenting life of which we are all now complaining. I will renounce my property and go to the country and live among the poor. I will work with them, will learn to labour with my hands, and if my education is of any use to the poor I will share it with them, not through institutions and books but directly by living with them in a brotherly way.
‘Yes, I have made up my mind,’ he added, looking inquiringly at his father, who was also present.
‘Your wish is a worthy one,’ said his father, ‘but thoughtless and ill-considered. It seems so easy to you only because you do not know life. There are many things that seem to us good, but the execution of what is good is complicated and difficult. It is hard enough to walk well on a beaten track, but it is harder still to lay out a new one. New paths are made only by men who are thoroughly mature and have mastered all that is attainable by man. It seems to you easy to make new paths of life only because you do not yet understand life. It is an outcome of thoughtlessness and youthful pride. We old folk are needed to moderate your impulsiveness and guide you by our experience, and you young folk should obey us in order to profit by that experience. Your active life lies before you. You are now growing up and developing. Finish your education, make yourself thoroughly conversant with things, get on to your own feet, have firm convictions of your own, and then start a new life if you feel you have strength to do so. But for the present you should obey those who are guiding you for your own good, and not try to open up new paths of life.’
The youth was silent and the older guests agreed with what the father had said.
‘You are right,’ said a middle-aged married man, turning to the youth’s father. ‘It is true that the lad, lacking experience of life, may blunder when seeking new paths of life and his decision cannot be a firm one. But you know we all agreed that our life is contrary to our conscience and does not give us happiness. So we cannot but recognize the justice of wishing to escape from it.
‘The lad may mistake his fancy for a reasonable deduction, but I, who am no longer young, tell you for myself that as I listened to the talk this evening the same thought occurred to me. It is plain to me that the life I now live cannot give me peace of mind or happiness. Experience and reason alike show me that. Then what am I waiting for? We struggle from morning to night for our families, but it turns out that we and our families live ungodly lives and get more and more sunk in sins. We work for our families, but our families are no better off, because we are not doing the right thing for them. And so I often think that it would be better if I changed my whole way of life and did just what that young man proposed to do: ceased to bother about my wife and children and began to think about my soul. Not for nothing did Paul say: “He that is married careth how he may please his wife, but he that is unmarried careth how he may please the Lord.’ ”