The Confession
The entire population of Véziers-le-Réthel had followed Monsieur Badon-Leremincé to his grave; in every memory lingered still the last words of the prefect’s funeral oration: “At least he was a man of unquestioned honesty.”
Honest he had been in every notable action throughout his life, honest in his speech, in the example he set, in his appearance, in his bearing, in his gait, in the cut of his beard and the shape of his hats. He had never spoken a word which did not contain a precept, never given alms without adding a piece of advice, never held out his hand without the air of bestowing a benediction.
He left two children, a son and a daughter; his son was on the town council, and his daughter, who had married a solicitor, Monsieur Poirel de la Voulte, moved in the best circles in Véziers.
They were inconsolable at their father’s death, for they loved him sincerely.
As soon as the ceremony was over, they returned to the house of death. All three, son, daughter, and son-in-law, shut themselves up in a room and opened the will, which was to be unsealed by them alone, and only after the coffin had been deposited in its resting-place. This request was conveyed to them by a brief note on the envelope.
Monsieur Poirel de la Voulte opened the envelope, in his capacity as a lawyer accustomed to such proceedings. After adjusting his spectacles, he read it out to them in a dry voice fitted for the recital of legal details.
“My children, my dear children, I could not rest quietly in my last sleep did I not make this confession to you from beyond the grave. It is the confession of a crime which I have regretted with a bitterness that has poisoned my life. Yes, I am guilty of a crime, a frightful, appalling crime.
“I was twenty-six years old at the time, and had just been called to the bar in Paris. There I lived like any other young provincial stranded in the city without acquaintances, friends, or relatives.
“I took a mistress. How many people there are whom the word ‘mistress’ revolts! Yet there are people who cannot live alone. I am one of them. Solitude fills me with a frightful agony, solitude at night, at home by the fireside. At such times I feel as though I were alone on earth, terribly alone, but surrounded with vague dangers, strange fearful perils. The thin wall which separates me from my neighbour, the neighbour I do not know, keeps me as far from him as from the stars I see from my window. I am overcome with a sort of fever, a fever of impatience and fear, and the silent walls terrify me. It is so deep and so sad, the silence of a room in which one lives alone. It is not only a silence round about the body, but a silence about the soul, and when a piece of furniture creaks, a shiver runs through the heart, for in this sorrowful place any sound comes as a surprise.
“More than once, unnerved and distracted by this mute and terrifying silence, I have begun to speak, to babble words without sense or reason, just for the sake of making a noise. At these times my voice sounded so strange that I was afraid of it too. Is there anything more terrifying than talking to oneself in an empty house? One’s voice seems to be another’s, an unknown voice speaking, without cause, speaking to nobody, in the hollow air, with no human ear to hear. For one knows, even before they escape into the solitude of the room, the words which are about to come from one’s mouth, and when they resound mournfully in the silence, they sound no more than an echo, the strange echo of words murmured in an undertone by the brain.
“I took a mistress, a young girl just like all the young girls who work in Paris at a profession too poorly paid to keep them. She was a sweet, good little thing; her parents lived at Poissy. Occasionally she would go to spend a few days with them.
“For a year I lived uneventfully with her, fully intending to leave her as soon as I should find a girl attractive enough for me to marry. I proposed to leave her a small income, for among people of our class it is commonly acknowledged that a woman’s love must be paid for, in cash when she is poor, in presents when she is rich.
“But one day she informed me that she was going to have a child. I was aghast; in a flash I foresaw the ruin of my whole life. I saw the chain I was doomed to drag with me till the day of my death, everywhere I went, in my future family life, in my old age, forever: the chain of the woman bound to my life by the child, the chain of this child which must be brought up, watched, protected, while all the time the secret must be kept from it and from the world. I was utterly cast down by the news, and a vague desire—a desire I never expressed, but felt in my heart ready to leap out, like men hidden behind doors waiting the word to spring—a criminal desire lurked in the recesses of my mind. Supposing there were an accident. So many of these little creatures die before they are born.
“Oh! I had no wish to see my mistress die. Poor girl, I loved her well. But perhaps I desired the death of the other, before I saw it.
“The child was born. In my little bachelor apartment was a family, a sham family with a child; an unnatural thing. The child was like all babies. I did not love it. Fathers, you know, do not love till later. They have not the natural passionate tenderness that belongs to mothers; their affections have to wake little by little, their souls come upon love little by little, through those bonds which each day draws closer between human beings who share each other’s lives.
“Another year went by; I was shunning now my cramped little house, littered with linen and swaddling-clothes and socks the size of gloves, a thousand objects of all kinds lying on a table, on the arms of a chair, everywhere. Above all I kept away so as not to hear him cry, for he cried on every occasion, when his clothes were changed, when he was washed, when he was put to bed, indeed always.
“I had made some friendships, and in a drawing room one day I met your mother. I fell in love with her, and the desire to marry her woke in my heart. I wooed her and asked her hand in marriage; it was granted me.
“And there I was, caught in a trap. I must marry this young girl I adored, already having a child of my own—or I must tell the truth and renounce her, my happiness, my future, everything; for her parents, who were very strict, would never have consented to the marriage if they had known all.
“I spent a terrible month of agonising moral torment, a month during which a thousand terrible thoughts haunted me. And ever growing within me I felt a hatred for my son, for that little scrap of living, weeping flesh who barred my way, cut my life in two, and condemned me to a cheerless existence without any one of the vague hopes which are the charm of youth.
“Then my mistress’ mother fell ill, and I was left alone with the child.
“It was December, and frightfully cold. What a night! My mistress had just gone; I had dined alone in the little parlour, and softly entered the room where the baby slept.
“I sat before the fire in an armchair. A dry, icy wind blew outside and rattled the windowpanes, and through the window I could see the stars glitter with that keen light they have on frosty nights.
“Then the obsession which for the last month had haunted me entered into my head anew. The moment I sat still it descended upon me and gnawed my brain. It gnawed me as fixed ideas do, as cancer must gnaw the flesh. I felt it there in my head, in my heart, in my whole body; it devoured me like a wild beast. I tried to hunt it down, to drive it away, to open my mind to other thoughts, to new hopes, as one opens a window in the morning to let out the tainted air of the night; but not for a single instant could I chase it from my brain. I do not know how to describe this torture. It nibbled at my soul, and I felt every movement of its teeth with horrible pain, a veritable anguish of body and soul.
“My life was over! How was I to escape from this dilemma? How draw back and how confess?
“And I loved your mother madly; that made the insurmountable obstacle still more frightful.
“A terrible rage grew in me, tightening my throat, a rage which was akin to madness … madness! Yes, I was mad, that night!
“The child was asleep. I rose and watched it sleeping. It was he, that abortion, that mite, that nothing, who condemned me to hopeless misery.
“He slept, with his mouth open, under a heap of blankets, in a cradle near the bed I could not sleep in.
“How did I do what I did? Do I know? What force led me on, what evil power possessed me? Oh, the temptation came to me without my realising how it made its presence known. I remember only that my heart beat furiously, so violently that I heard it like the strokes of a hammer from behind a wall. That is all I remember—my heart beating. In my head was a strange confusion, a tumult, a routing of all reason, all common sense. I was in one of those hours of terror and hallucination wherein man has no longer knowledge of his actions nor control of his will.
“Softly I raised the coverings which hid my child’s body; I threw them on the foot of the cradle, and saw him stark naked. He did not wake. Then I went to the window, softly, so softly; and I opened it.
“A blast of icy air rushed in like a murderer, so bitter cold that I fell back before it; and the two candles flickered. And I remained standing by the window, not daring to turn round, as if not to see what was happening behind me, and always feeling, gliding over my temples, my cheeks, my hands, the deathly air which flowed into the room in a steady stream. It went on a long time.
“I did not think, I considered nothing. Suddenly a little cough sent a dreadful shiver through me from head to foot, a shiver I can feel at this moment, in the roots of my hair. With a wild movement I slammed the window down and, turning round, ran to the cradle.
“He was still asleep, with open mouth, stark naked. I touched his legs; they were frozen, and I pulled up the coverings.
“My heart suddenly softened, snapped, was filled with pity, tenderness, and love for the poor innocent wretch I had wanted to kill. I pressed a long kiss on his thin hair, then sat down again by the fireside.
“I thought with stupor, with horror, of what I had done; I wondered whence came these tempests of the soul wherein man loses all awareness of things, all control over himself, and acts under a kind of mad intoxication, not knowing what he does, nor where he goes, like a ship in a hurricane.
“The child coughed once more, and my heart was rent in two. If he were to die! Oh, my God! my God! What would become of me?
“I got up to go and look at him; and, a candle in my hand, I bent over him. Seeing him breathing quietly, I was reassured; he coughed a third time, and I was seized with a terrible shudder, and started so violently back—as a man might when distracted at the sight of some frightful happening—that I let the candle fall.
“When I straightened myself after picking it up I observed that my temples were drenched with the sweat of agony, a sweat hot and icy at once, as though some part of the frightful moral suffering and unspeakable torture, which does actually burn like fire and freeze like ice, were oozing out through the skin and bone of my skull.
“Till daybreak I remained beside the cradle, calming my fears when he remained quiet for a long stretch, and enduring terrible agonies when a feeble cough issued from his mouth.
“He awoke with red eyes and a sore throat, obviously ill.
“When the charwoman came, I sent her out at once for a doctor. He came at the end of an hour, and after examining the child, he said:
“ ‘Has he not been cold?’
“ ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I stammered, trembling like a very old man.
“Then I asked:
“ ‘What is it? Is it serious?’
“ ‘I cannot tell yet,’ he answered. ‘I will come back again this evening.’
“He did come back again that evening. My son had lain almost all day in a deep slumber, coughing from time to time.
“During the night inflammation of the lungs set in.
“It lasted ten days. I cannot tell you what I suffered during those interminable hours which separate dawn from dusk and dusk from dawn.
“He died …
“And since then, since that moment, I have not passed an hour, no, not one hour, without that poignant, fearful memory, that memory which gnaws and twists and rends my spirit, stirring within me like a ravenous beast imprisoned in the bottom of my soul.
“Oh, if I had only been able to go mad!”
Monsieur Poirel de la Voulte pushed up his spectacles: it was a gesture customary with him when he had finished reading a deed; and the three looked at one another in silence, pale and motionless.
After a moment the lawyer said: “This must be destroyed.”
The other two nodded their assent. He lit a candle, carefully separated the pages containing the dangerous confession from those containing the monetary dispositions, then placed them in the flame of the candle and threw them into the grate.
They watched the white pages burn up. Soon they were only a small black heap. Several letters could still be distinguished, standing out white against the blackened paper, so the daughter crushed the thin shrivelled layer of ash with nervous movements of her toe, and stamped it down among the cold cinders.
For some time longer the three of them stayed watching as though they were afraid that the burnt secret would escape up the chimney.