CURIOSITY THAT CAME WITHIN AN ACE OF BEING FATALOn returning to Ville d'Avray, Sallenauve was confronted by a singular event.Who does not know how sudden events upset the whole course of our lives, and place us, without our will, in compromising positions?
Sallenauve was not mistaken in feeling serious anxiety as to the mental state of his friend Marie-Gaston.
When that unfortunate man had left the scene of his cruel loss immediately after the death of his wife, he would have done a wiser thing had he then resolved never to revisit it.Nature, providentially ordered, provides that if those whose nearest and dearest are struck by the hand of death accept the decree with the resignation which ought to follow the execution of all necessary law, they will not remain too long under the influence of their grief.Rousseau has said, in his famous letter against suicide: "Sadness, weariness of spirit, regret, despair are not lasting sorrows, rooted forever in the soul;experience will always cast out that feeling of bitterness which makes us at first believe our grief eternal."But this truth ceases to be true for imprudent and wilful persons, who seek to escape the first anguish of sorrow by flight or some violent distraction.All mental and moral suffering is a species of illness which, taking time for its specific, will gradually wear out, in the long run, of itself.If, on the contrary, it is not allowed to consume itself slowly on the scene of its trouble, if it is fanned into flame by motion or violent remedies, we hinder the action of nature; we deprive ourselves of the blessed relief of comparative forgetfulness, promised to those who will accept their suffering, and so transform it into a chronic affection, the memories of which, though hidden, are none the less true and deep.
If we violently oppose this salutary process, we produce an acute evil, in which the imagination acts upon the heart; and as the latter from its nature is limited, while the former is infinite, it is impossible to calculate the violence of the impressions to which a man may yield himself.
When Marie-Gaston returned to the house at Ville d'Avray, after two years' absence, he fancied that only a tender if melancholy memory awaited him; but not a step could he make without recalling his lost joys and the agony of losing them.The flowers that his wife had loved, the lawns, the trees just budding into greenness under the warm breath of May,--they were here before his eyes; but she who had created this beauteous nature was lying cold in the earth.Amid all the charms and elegances gathered to adorn this nest of their love, there was nothing for the man who rashly returned to that dangerous atmosphere but sounds of lamentation, the moans of a renewed and now ever-living grief.Alarmed himself at the vertigo of sorrow which seized him, Marie-Gaston shrank, as Sallenauve had said, from taking the last step in his ordeal; he had calmly discussed with his friend the details of the mausoleum he wished to raise above the mortal remains of his beloved Louise, but he had not yet brought himself to visit her grave in the village cemetery where he had laid them.There was everything, therefore, to fear from a grief which time had not only not assuaged, but, on the contrary, had increased by duration, until it was sharper and more intolerable than before.
The gates were opened by Philippe, the old servant, who had been constituted by Madame Gaston majordomo of the establishment.
"How is your master?" asked Sallenauve.
"He has gone away, monsieur," replied Philippe.
"Gone away!"
"Yes, monsieur; with that English gentleman whom monsieur left here with him.""But without a word to me! Do you know where they have gone?""After dinner, which went off very well, monsieur suddenly gave orders to pack his travelling-trunk; he did part of it himself.During that time the Englishman, who said he would go into the park and smoke, asked me privately where he could go to write a letter without monsieur seeing him.I took him to my room; but I did not dare question him about this journey, for I never saw any one with such forbidding and uncommunicative manners.By the time the letter was written monsieur was ready, and without giving me any explanation they both got into the Englishman's carriage, and I heard one of them say to the coachman, 'Paris.'""What became of the letter?" asked Sallenauve.
"It is there in my room, where the Englishman gave it me secretly.It is addressed to monsieur.""Fetch it at once, my dear man," cried Sallenauve.
After reading the letter, his face seemed to Philippe convulsed.
"Tell them not to unharness," he said; and he read the letter through a second time.
When the old servant returned after executing the order, Sallenauve asked him at what hour they had started.
"About nine," answered Philippe.