The Will
I knew that tall young fellow, René de Bourneval. He was an agreeable companion, though rather melancholy, and disillusioned about everything, very sceptical, with a scepticism which was direct and devastating, and especially skilful in exposing social hypocrisies in a biting phrase. He often used to say:
“There are no honest men, or, at least, they only appear so in comparison with swine.”
He had two brothers, whom he shunned, the Messieurs de Courcils. I thought they were by another father, on account of the difference in the name. I had frequently heard that something strange had happened in the family, but no details were given.
As I took a great liking to him, we soon became intimate, and one evening, when I had been dining with him alone, I asked him by chance: “Are you by your mother’s first or second marriage?” He grew rather pale; then he flushed, and did not speak for a few moments; he was visibly embarrassed. Then he smiled in that melancholy and gentle manner peculiar to him, and said:
“My dear friend, if it will not bore you, I can tell you some very strange details about my life. I know you to be a sensible man, so I am not afraid that our friendship will suffer by my revelations, and if it did, I should not care about having you for my friend any longer.
“My mother, Madame de Courcils, was a poor, timid, little woman, whom her husband had married for the sake of her fortune. Her whole life was a martyrdom. Of an affectionate, timorous and sensitive nature, she was constantly ill-treated by the man who ought to have been my father, one of those boors called country gentlemen. A month after their marriage he was living with a servant, and besides that, the wives and daughters of his tenants were his mistresses, which did not prevent him from having two children by his wife, three, if you count me. My mother said nothing, and lived in that noisy house like one of those little mice which slip under the furniture. Self-effacing, retiring and nervous, she looked at people with bright, uneasy, restless eyes, the eyes of some terrified creature which can never shake off its fear. And yet she was pretty, very pretty and fair, a grey blonde, as if her hair had lost its colour through her constant fears.
“Among Monsieur de Courcils’s friends who constantly came to the château there was an ex-cavalry officer, a widower, a man to be feared, a man at the same time tender and violent, and capable of the most energetic resolution, Monsieur de Bourneval, whose name I bear. He was a tall, thin man, with a heavy black mustache, and I am very like him. He was a man who had read a great deal, and whose ideas were not like those of most of his class. His great-grandmother had been a friend of J. J. Rousseau, and it seemed as if he had inherited something from this connection of his ancestor’s. He knew the Contrat Social and the Nouvelle Héloïse by heart, and, indeed, all those philosophical books which led the way to the overthrow of our old usage, prejudices, superannuated laws, and imbecile morality.
“It seemed that he loved my mother, and she loved him, but their intrigue was carried on so secretly that no one guessed it. The poor, neglected, unhappy woman must have clung to him desperately, and in her intimacy with him must have imbibed all his ways of thinking, theories of free thought, audacious ideas of independent love. But as she was so timid that she never ventured to speak aloud, it was all driven back, condensed, and compressed in her heart, which never opened itself.
“My two brothers were very cruel to her, like their father, and never gave her a caress. Used to seeing her count for nothing in the house, they treated her rather like a servant, and so I was the only one of her sons who really loved her, and whom she loved.
“I was eighteen at the time she died. I must add, in order that you may understand what follows, that a trustee had been appointed to look after my father’s affairs, that a decision in favour of my mother had been pronounced, dividing the property they held in common. Thanks to the workings of the law and the intelligent devotion of a lawyer to her interests, she had preserved the right to make her will in favour of anyone she pleased.
“We were told that there was a will lying at the lawyer’s, and were invited to be present at the reading of it. I can remember it, as if it were yesterday. It was a grand, dramatic, yet burlesque and surprising scene, brought about by the posthumous revolt of the dead woman, by a cry for liberty from the depths of her tomb, on the part of a martyred woman who had been crushed by our customs during her life, and who, from her grave, uttered a despairing appeal for independence.
“The man who thought that he was my father, a stout, ruddy-faced man who looked like a butcher, and my brothers, two great fellows of twenty and twenty-two, were waiting quietly in their chairs. Monsieur de Bourneval, who had been invited to be present, came in and stood behind me. He was very pale, and bit his mustache, which was turning grey. No doubt he was prepared for what was going to happen. The lawyer double-locked the door, and began to read the will, after opening in our presence the envelope, which was sealed with red wax, and whose contents he did not know.”
My friend stopped suddenly and got up, and from his writing-table took an old paper, unfolded it, kissed it and continued:
“This is the will of my beloved mother:
“I, the undersigned, Anne-Catherine-Geneviève-Mathilde de Croixluce, the legitimate wife of Léopold-Joseph Gontran de Courcils, sound in body and mind, here express my last wishes:
“I first of all ask God, and then my dear son René, to pardon me for the act I am about to commit. I believe that my child’s heart is great enough to understand me, and to forgive me. I have suffered my whole life long. I was married for mercenary reasons, then despised, misunderstood, oppressed, and constantly deceived by my husband.
“I forgive him, but I owe him nothing.
“My eldest sons never loved me, never petted me, scarcely treated me as a mother. During my whole life I was everything that I ought to have been to them, and I owe them nothing more after my death. The ties of blood cannot exist without daily and constant affection. An ungrateful son is less than a stranger; he is a culprit, for he has no right to be indifferent toward his mother.
“I have always trembled before men, before their unjust laws, their inhuman customs, their shameful prejudices. Before God, I have no longer any fear. Dead, I fling aside disgraceful hypocrisy; I dare to speak my thoughts, and to avow and to sign the secret of my heart.
“I therefore leave that part of my fortune of which the law allows me to dispose, as a deposit with my dear lover Pierre-Gennes-Simon de Bourneval, to revert afterward to our dear son René.
“(This wish is, moreover, formulated more precisely in a notarial deed.)
“And I declare before the Supreme Judge who hears me, that I should have cursed Heaven and my own existence, if I had not met my lover’s deep, devoted, tender, unshaken affection, if I had not felt in his arms that the Creator made His creatures to love, sustain, and console each other, and to weep together in the hours of sadness.
“Monsieur de Courcils is the father of my two eldest sons; René alone owes his life to Monsieur de Bourneval. I pray to the Master of men and of their destinies to place father and son above social prejudices, to make them love each other until they die, and to love me also in my coffin.
“These are my last thoughts, and my last wish.
“Monsieur de Courcils had risen, and he cried:
“ ‘It is the will of a mad woman.’
“Then Monsieur de Bourneval stepped forward and said in a loud penetrating voice: ‘I, Simon de Bourneval, solemnly declare that this writing contains nothing but the strict truth, and I am ready to prove it by letters which I possess.’
“On hearing that, Monsieur de Courcils went up to him, and I thought that they were going to collar each other. There they stood, both of them tall, one stout and the other thin, both trembling. My mother’s husband stammered out:
“ ‘You are a worthless wretch!’
“And the other replied in a loud, dry voice:
“ ‘We will meet elsewhere, Monsieur. I should have slapped your ugly face, and challenged you long since, if I had not, before all else, thought of the peace of mind, during her lifetime, of that poor woman whom you made to suffer so much.’
“Then, turning to me, he said:
“ ‘You are my son; will you come with me? I have no right to take you away, but I shall assume it, if you will allow me.’ I shook his hand without replying, and we went out together; I was certainly three parts mad.
“Two days later Monsieur de Bourneval killed Monsieur de Courcils in a duel. My brothers, fearing the terrible scandal, held their tongues. I offered them, and they accepted, half the fortune which my mother had left me. I took my real father’s name, renouncing that which the law gave me, but which was not really mine. Monsieur de Bourneval has been dead for five years, and I am still mourning for him.”
He rose from his chair, took a few steps, and, standing in front of me, said:
“I hold that my mother’s will was one of the most beautiful and loyal, one of the greatest acts that a woman could accomplish. Do you not agree with me?”
I held out my two hands:
“Most certainly I do, my friend.”