The Hermit
Together with some friends, we had been to see the old hermit living on an ancient tumulus, covered with great trees, in the midst of the vast plain that stretches from Cannes to La Napoule.
On the way back, we talked about these strange solitary layman, once so numerous, whose kind have now almost disappeared from the earth. We sought for the moral motives, and made an effort to realise what could be the nature of the sorrows that formerly drove men into solitary places.
One of our companions said abruptly:
“I’ve known two recluses, a man and a woman. The woman must be still living. For five years she lived at the summit of an absolutely deserted hill on the Corsican coast, fifteen or twenty miles from any other house. She lived there with a nurse; I went to see her. She must undoubtedly have been a well-known woman of the world. She received us with courtesy, even with pleasure, but I knew nothing about her, and I discovered nothing.
“The man, now, well, I’ll tell you his unfortunate fate.
“Turn round. Away over there, you see the peaked and wooded hill that stands out behind La Napoule, thrust up by itself in front of the peaks of the Esterel; its local name is the Hill of Serpents. That’s where my recluse lived for about twelve years, within the walls of a small ancient temple.
“When I heard of him, I decided to make his acquaintance, and one March morning I set out for Cannes on horseback. I left my mount at the Napoule inn, and began to climb this strange conical hill on foot; it is perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards high and covered with aromatic plants, mostly cytisus, whose scent is so strong and pungent that it is quite overpowering and makes you feel positively ill. The ground is stony and you often see long vipers slithering over the stones and disappearing in the grass. That’s what gives the place its well-merited nickname of the Hill of Serpents. There are some days when the ground under your feet seems to give birth to these reptiles as you climb the bare, sun-scorched slope. They are so numberless that you daren’t walk any farther; you are conscious of a strange uneasiness, not fear, for the creatures are harmless, but a kind of mystic terror. Several times I have had an odd sense that I was climbing a hill sacred of old, a fantastic hill, scented, mysterious, covered with and peopled by serpents and crowned with a temple.
“The temple is still there. At least, I am told that it was a temple. And I have refrained from trying to find out more about it, because I don’t want to destroy the emotional appeal it has for me.
“Well, I climbed it that March morning, ostensibly to admire the scenery. As I approached the top I did indeed see walls, and, sitting on a stone, a man. He was hardly more than forty-five years old, although his hair was quite white; but his beard was still almost black. He was stroking a cat that curled on his knees, and he appeared to take no interest in me. I explored the ruins; a corner of them, roofed over, enclosed behind a construction of branches, straw, grass, and stones, formed his dwelling-place; then I returned and stood beside him.
“The view from the hill is splendid. On the right the Esterel hills lift their strange truncated peaks; beyond them the rimless sea stretches to the far-off Italian coast with its innumerable headlands, and over against Cannes the flat green islands of Lérins seem to float on the water, the farther of them thrusting into the open sea a massive great castle, ancient and battlemented, its walls rising from the waves.
“Then the Alps, their heads still hooded in the snows, rear their great bulk and dominate the green coast with its string of villas and white tree-fast towns that at this distance look like innumerable eggs laid on the edge of the shore.
“I murmured: ‘Gad, what a view!’
“The man lifted his head and said: ‘Yes, but when you see it every day and all day, it gets monotonous.’
“So he could speak, my recluse, he could talk and he was bored. I had him.
“I did not stay very long that day, and I did not try to do more than find out the form his misanthropy took. The impression he made on me was that of a man utterly weary of his fellow creatures, tired of everything, hopelessly disillusioned, and disgusted with himself and with the rest of mankind.
“I left him after half an hour’s conversation. But I came back a week later, and once again the following week, and then every week; so that long before the end of two months we were friends.
“Then, one evening in late May, I decided that the moment had come, and I carried up some food to have dinner with him on the Hill of Serpents.
“It was one of those southern evenings heavy with the mingled perfume of flowers that this countryside grows as the north grows corn, to make almost all the scents that women use for their bodies and their clothes: an evening when old men’s senses stir and swoon in dreams of love born of the fragrance of innumerable orange-trees filling the gardens and all the folds of the valley.
“My recluse greeted me with obvious pleasure, and willingly consented to share my dinner.
“I made him drink a little wine, to which he had long been unused; it exhilarated him and he began to talk of his past life. I got the impression that he had always lived in Paris, and the life of a gay bachelor.
“I asked him abruptly: ‘What mad impulse made you come and perch on this hilltop?’
“He answered readily: ‘Oh, because I had the severest blow a man could have. But why should I hide my unhappy fate from you? It might make you pity me, perhaps. And besides … I have never told anyone … never … and I should like to know … just once … how it struck another person … what he thought of it.
“ ‘I was born in Paris, educated in Paris, and I grew up and lived in that city. My parents had left me a few thousand francs’ income, and I had enough influence to get a quiet subordinate post which made me well off, for a bachelor.
“ ‘Since early youth I had led the life of a bachelor. You know what that’s like. Free, with no family ties, determined never to burden myself with a wife, I spent now three months with one woman, now six months with another, then a companionless year, sipping honey among the multitude of girls on offer or on sale.
“ ‘This easygoing manner of life, call it commonplace if you like, suited me well enough, and satisfied my natural love of change and novelty. I lived on the boulevard, in theatres and cafés, always out, almost homeless, although I had a comfortable house. I was one of the thousands of people who let themselves drift through life, like corks, for whom the walls of Paris are the walls of the world, who trouble themselves for nothing, since there is nothing they ardently desire. I was what you call a good sort, with no outstanding virtues and no vices. There you have me. And I’ve a quite accurate knowledge of myself.
“ ‘So, from the time I was twenty to my fortieth year, my life ran on, slow or fast, with nothing to disturb its even flow. They go so quickly, those uneventful Parisian years when nothing ever happens that the mind remembers as a turning-point, those long crowded years, gay trivial years when you eat and drink and laugh without knowing why, and desiring nothing, yet touch your lips to all the savour of life and every kiss that offers. You were young; and then you are old without having done any of the things that other men do, without any ties, any roots, any place in life, almost without friends, without parents, without wives, without children.
“ ‘Well, I reached the fortieth year of my easy pleasant life; and to celebrate this anniversary I invited myself to a good dinner in one of the best restaurants. I was alone in the world; it pleased my sense of what was fitting to celebrate the day alone.
“ ‘Dinner over, I could not decide what to do next. I rather wanted to go to a theatre; and then I was struck with the idea of making a pilgrimage to the Quartier Latin where I studied law. So I made my way across Paris and wandered unthinkingly into one of those cafés where you are served by girls.
“ ‘The one who looked after my table was very young, pretty, and bubbling over with laughter. I offered her a drink, which she readily accepted. She sat down opposite me and looked me over with an expert eye, unable to make out what kind of masculine creature she had to deal with. She was fair-haired, fair altogether; she was a clear-skinned, healthy girl, and I guessed her to be plump and rosy under the swelling folds of her bodice. I murmured all the meaningless gallantries that one always says to these girls, and as she was really very charming, the whim suddenly seized me to take her out … just to celebrate my fortieth birthday. It was neither long nor difficult to arrange. She was unattached … had been for a fortnight, she told me … and she at once agreed to come and have supper with me at the Halles when her work was over.
“ ‘As I was afraid that she wouldn’t stick to me—you never know what will happen, nor who’ll come into these beershops, nor what a woman will take into her head to do—I stayed there the whole evening, waiting for her.
“ ‘I had been unattached myself for a month or two, and as I watched this adorable neophyte of Love flitting from table to table, I wondered if I shouldn’t do as well to take her on for a time. What I’m describing to you is one of the daily commonplace adventures in a Parisian’s life.
“ ‘Forgive these crude details; men who have never known an ideal love take and choose their woman as they choose a chop at the butcher’s, without bothering about anything but the quality of their flesh.
“ ‘Well, I went with her to her house—for I’ve too much respect for my own sheets. It was a workgirl’s tiny room, on the fifth floor, clean and bare; I spent two delightful hours there. She had an uncommonly graceful and charming way with her, that little girl.
“ ‘When I was ready to go, I walked towards her mantelshelf to deposit thereon the usual present. I had arranged a day for a second interview with the little wench, who was still lying in bed. I saw dimly a clock under a glass case, two vases of flowers, and two photographs, one of which was very old, one of those negatives on glass called daguerreotypes. I bent casually to look at this portrait, and I stood there paralysed, too surprised to understand. … It was myself, my first portrait, one that I had had made long ago when I was a student living in the Quartier Latin.
“ ‘I snatched it up to examine it more closely. I’d made no mistake … and I felt like laughing, it struck me as so queer and unexpected.
“ ‘ “Who is this gentleman?” I demanded.
“ ‘ “That’s my father, whom I never knew,” she answered. “Mamma left it to me and told me to keep it, because it would be useful to me some day. …”
“ ‘She hesitated, burst out laughing, and added: “I don’t know what for, upon my word. It’s not likely he’ll come and recognise me.”
“ ‘My heart leaped madly, like the galloping of a runaway horse. I laid the picture on its face on the mantelshelf, put two hundred-franc notes that I had in my pocket on top of it, without at all thinking what I was doing, and hurried out crying: “See you again soon! … Goodbye, my dear … goodbye!”
“ ‘I heard her answer: “On Wednesday.” I was on the darkened stairs and groping my way down them.
“ ‘When I got outside, I saw that it was raining, and I set off with great strides, taking the first road.
“ ‘I walked straight on, dazed, bewildered, raking my memory. Was it possible? Yes, I suddenly remembered a girl who had written to me, about a month after we had broken off relations, that she was with child by me. I had torn up or burned the letter, and forgotten the whole thing. I ought to have looked at the photograph of the woman on the little girl’s mantelshelf. But should I have recognised her? I had a vague memory of it as the photograph of an old woman.
“ ‘I reached the quay. I saw a bench and sat down. It was raining. Now and then people hurried past under umbrellas. Life had become for me hateful and revolting, full of miserable shameful things, infamies willed or predestined. My daughter … perhaps I had just possessed my own daughter. And Paris, vast sombre Paris, gloomy, dirty, sad, black, with all its shuttered houses, was full of suchlike things, adulteries, incests, violated children. I remembered all I’d been told of bridges haunted by vicious and degraded wretches.
“ ‘Without wishing or knowing it, I had sunk lower than those vile creatures. I had climbed into my daughter’s bed.
“ ‘I could have thrown myself in the water. I was mad. I wandered about until daybreak, then I went back to my house to think things out.
“ ‘I decided on what seemed to me the most prudent course. I would have a solicitor send for the girl and ask her under what circumstances her mother had given her the portrait of the man she believed to be her father: I would tell him that I was acting on behalf of a friend.
“ ‘The solicitor carried out my instructions. It was on her deathbed that the woman had made a statement about the father of her child, and before a priest whose name I was given.
“ ‘Then, always in the name of this unknown friend, I made half my fortune over to this child, about a hundred and forty thousand francs, arranging it so that she could only touch the interest of it; then I sent in my resignation, and here I am.
“ ‘I was wandering along this coast, and I found this hill and stopped here … since … I have forgotten how long since that was.
“ ‘What do you think of me? … and of what I did?’
“I gave him my hand and answered:
“ ‘You did the right thing. There are plenty of men who would have attached less importance to such a vile accident.’
“ ‘I know that,’ he replied, ‘but I almost went mad. I must have had a tender conscience without ever guessing it. And I’m afraid of Paris now, as believers must be afraid of hell. I’ve had a blow on the head, that’s all, a blow like a tile falling on you as you walk down the street. Time is making it more bearable.’
“I left my recluse. His story disturbed me profoundly.
“I saw him again twice, then I went away, because I never stay in the south after the end of May.
“When I came back the following year, the man was no longer living on the Hill of Serpents, and I have never heard a word about him since.
“That’s the story of my hermit.”