A Woman’s Confession
You ask me to tell you about the most vivid recollections of my life. I am very old and have neither children nor relatives, and am therefore free to confide in you. Only promise that you will never reveal my name. As you know, I have been very much loved and have myself often loved in return. I was very beautiful; I may say so now that nothing remains of my beauty. To me love was the life of the soul just as air is the life of the body. I would rather have died than lived without affection, without being the constant subject of someone’s thought. Women often pretend that they only love once with all the strength of their feelings; I have often been so desperately in love that it was impossible to think that it could ever end, but the feeling always died out quite naturally, like a fire that lacks fuel. Today I will tell you my first adventure, a quite innocent one so far as I was concerned, but it led to others. The terrible revenge of that dreadful chemist of Pecq reminds me of the appalling drama I witnessed much against my will.
I had been married a year to a rich man, the Count Hervé de Ker, a member of an old Breton family, whom of course I did not love. Real love requires, at least so it seems to me, both freedom and opposition. Can that which is imposed upon one from the outside, sanctioned by law and blessed by the priest, be love? A legal kiss is never as good as a kiss that is stolen. My husband was tall, elegant, and quite the aristocrat in appearance. But he lacked intelligence. He spoke sharply and expressed opinions calculated to wound his hearers. One felt his mind to be full of ready-made thoughts transmitted by his father and mother, who had themselves got them from their ancestors. He never hesitated a moment, but gave directly his narrow-minded opinions about everything, without embarrassment and without realising that there might be other points of view. You felt that his mind was closed to all outer influences, that it contained none of those ideas that renew and cleanse the mind, like a breath of fresh air passing through a house with open doors and windows.
The country house we occupied was situated in a very lonely part of the country. It was a big, sad-looking building, surrounded by enormous trees with tufts of moss that reminded one of the white beards of old men. The park, a real forest, was enclosed by a deep ditch called a ha-ha; at its extremity, near the moors, were two big ponds full of reeds and floating grass; by the side of a stream which joined the two lakes my husband had built a little hut from which he could shoot wild duck.
In addition to our ordinary staff of servants we had a keeper, a brutish individual who would have died for my husband, and a lady’s maid, one might say a friend, passionately attached to me, whom I had brought back from Spain five years before. She was a foundling and might have been taken for a gipsy with her dark complexion, sombre eyes, and hair dense as a forest, which sprang up in waves from her brow; she was sixteen and looked twenty.
Autumn had just set in, and a great deal of shooting was going on, either over our neighbours’ land or over our own, and I noticed among the guns a young man, the Baron de C⸺, who was always coming to the château. Then his visits ceased and I thought no more about, but perceived that my husband’s manner to me had changed. He seemed taciturn and preoccupied, he never kissed me; and although he rarely came to my room—I insisted upon separate rooms so as to enjoy a little liberty—I often heard in the night a stealthy footstep approach my door, stay a few minutes, and then go away again.
My window being on the ground floor, I often thought I heard someone wandering about round the château in the dark. When I told my husband he looked at me steadily for a second or two, and then said:
“It is nothing, it is the keeper.”
Well, one evening, just as dinner was over, Hervé, who seemed in wonderful spirits, which was most unusual, though his cheerfulness had a touch of cunning about it, said to me:
“Would you like to spend three hours on the lookout for a fox who comes every night and eats the chickens?”
I was surprised and hesitated, but as he was gazing at me with curious obstinacy I finally replied: “Certainly, dear.” I must explain that I hunted both wolf and wild boar as well as any man, so that there was nothing unnatural in the suggestion. But suddenly my husband began to look very excited, and during the whole evening he could not keep still, but was always getting up and sitting down again.
Suddenly, about ten o’clock, he said to me:
“Are you ready?” I got up and as he brought me my gun I asked: “Must I load with bullets or buckshot?” He seemed surprised and said: “Oh, only with shot, that’s quite enough, you may be sure!” Then, after a few seconds, he added in a curious voice: “You may pride yourself on possessing amazing presence of mind!” I laughed, saying: “Me? Why? Presence of mind to kill a fox? Whatever are you thinking about, my friend?” So off we went without a sound, through the park. Everyone in the house was asleep. The full moon turned the dark old building with its shining roof yellow. The pinnaces of the two turrets, one on either side, were splotched with light, and no sound disturbed the deathlike stillness of the clear, sad, sweet, heavy night. There was no movement in the air, not a frog croaked, not an owl called; a dreary listlessness was weighing on everything.
When we reached the trees in the park the air was fresh and I could smell the fallen leaves. My husband never said a word, but he was listening, watching, he seemed to be scenting his prey in the dark, entirely carried away by the passion of the chase. We soon reached the bank of the ponds where the jungle of reeds lay perfectly still, unstirred by any breeze; but there was a faint pulsation of the water, occasional specks ruffled its surface, which spread in hardly perceptible circles, growing wider and wider, like luminous ripples.
When we reached the hut in which we were to wait, my husband made me go in first and then very deliberately loaded his gun, the sharp click of the hammer affecting me in a curious way. He knew I was trembling, and said:
“Perhaps this has been enough for you? If so, go!”
Very surprised, I answered:
“Not at all, I did not come here just to go back again. You are very queer tonight!”
He murmured: “Do as you like,” after which neither of us stirred.
In about half an hour, as nothing happened to disturb the heavy, clear calm of the autumn night, I whispered:
“Are you quite sure it goes this way?”
Hervé started as if I had bitten him, and with his lips to my ears hissed: “I tell you I am quite sure.”
And again there was silence.
I think I must have begun to doze when my husband squeezed my arm and hissed: “Do you see it down there under the trees?” I looked, but could see nothing, then, staring me straight in the eyes, Hervé raised his gun slowly. I was ready to shoot too, when suddenly thirty steps in front of us a man appeared in the full moonlight, he was walking quickly with body bent as if he were in flight.
I was so overcome with astonishment that I gave a loud cry, but before I had time to turn, there was a flash, the report of the gun stunned me, and I saw the man rolling on the ground like a wolf.
Shrill moans fell from my lips and I was alarmed and crazy with horror until an angry hand, Hervé’s, seized me by the throat. First he knocked me down and then he picked me up in his strong arms, and, holding me up in the air, ran towards the body lying on the grass, and threw me upon it with such violence that he might have wanted to break my head.
I felt done for; he was going to kill me; he had just raised his foot to crush my head when he was seized and thrown down before I could make out what had happened.
I sat up quickly and saw Paquita, my maid, kneeling upon him, crouching over him like a wild cat, convulsed with rage, tearing away at his beard and his moustache, and scratching his face.
Then, as if possessed by another idea, she hurriedly got up and threw herself on the dead body, which she took in her arms, kissing it on the eyes and mouth, opening the lips of the dead man with her own lips, seeking for a sign of life and the unfathomable embrace of passionate lovers. My husband, sitting up, looked on. At last he understood and, dropping at my feet, said:
“Oh! forgive me, darling. I suspected you and I have killed this girl’s lover; my keeper deceived me.”
As for me, I was looking on at the unnatural kisses exchanged between the dead and the living, at the sobs of the woman and her wild spasms of despairing love.
From that moment I knew that I should be unfaithful to my husband.