A Father's Confession
by Guy de Maupassant
Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others.
by Guy de Maupassant
Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others.
All Veziers-le-Rethel had followed the funeral
procession of M. Badon- Leremince to the grave, and the last words of the
funeral oration pronounced by the delegate of the district remained in the
minds of all: "He was an honest man, at least!"
An honest man he had been in all the known acts of his
life, in his words, in his examples, his attitude, his behavior, his
enterprises, in the cut of his beard and the shape of his hats. He never had
said a word that did not set an example, never had given an alms without adding
a word of advice, never had extended his hand without appearing to bestow a
benediction.
He left two children, a boy and a girl. His son was
counselor general, and his daughter, having married a lawyer, M. Poirel de la
Voulte, moved in the best society of Veziers.
They were inconsolable at the death of their father,
for they loved him sincerely.
As soon as the ceremony was over, the son, daughter
and son-in-law returned to the house of mourning, and, shutting themselves in
the library, they opened the will, the seals of which were to be broken by them
alone and only after the coffin had been placed in the ground. This wish was
expressed by a notice on the envelope.
M. Poirel de la Voulte tore open the envelope, in his
character of a lawyer used to such operations, and having adjusted his
spectacles, he read in a monotonous voice, made for reading the details of
contracts:
My children, my dear children, I could not sleep the
eternal sleep in peace if I did not make to you from the tomb a confession, the
confession of a crime, remorse for which has ruined my life. Yes, I committed a
crime, a frightful, abominable crime.
I was twenty-six years old, and I had just been called
to the bar in Paris, and was living the life off young men from the provinces
who are stranded in this town without acquaintances, relatives, or friends.
I took a sweetheart. There are beings who cannot live
alone. I was one of those. Solitude fills me with horrible anguish, the
solitude of my room beside my fire in the evening. I feel then as if I were
alone on earth, alone, but surrounded by vague dangers, unknown and terrible
things; and the partition that separates me from my neighbor, my neighbor whom
I do not know, keeps me at as great a distance from him as the stars that I see
through my window. A sort of fever pervades me, a fever of impatience and of
fear, and the silence of the walls terrifies me. The silence of a room where
one lives alone is so intense and so melancholy It is not only a silence of the
mind; when a piece of furniture cracks a shudder goes through you for you
expect no noise in this melancholy abode.
How many times, nervous and timid from this motionless
silence, I have begun to talk, to repeat words without rhyme or reason, only to
make some sound. My voice at those times sounds so strange that I am afraid of
that, too. Is there anything more dreadful than talking to one's self in an
empty house? One's voice sounds like that of another, an unknown voice talking aimlessly,
to no one, into the empty air, with no ear to listen to it, for one knows
before they escape into the solitude of the room exactly what words will be
uttered. And when they resound lugubriously in the silence, they seem no more
than an echo, the peculiar echo of words whispered by ones thought.
My sweetheart was a young girl like other young girls
who live in Paris on wages that are insufficient to keep them. She was gentle,
good, simple. Her parents lived at Poissy. She went to spend several days with
them from time to time.
For a year I lived quietly with her, fully decided to
leave her when I should find some one whom I liked well enough to marry. I
would make a little provision for this one, for it is an understood thing in
our social set that a woman's love should be paid for, in money if she is poor,
in presents if she is rich.
But one day she told me she was enceinte. I was
thunderstruck, and saw in a second that my life would be ruined. I saw the
fetter that I should wear until my death, everywhere, in my future family life,
in my old age, forever; the fetter of a woman bound to my life through a child;
the fetter of the child whom I must bring up, watch over, protect, while
keeping myself unknown to him, and keeping him hidden from the world.
I was greatly disturbed at this news, and a confused
longing, a criminal desire, surged through my mind; I did not formulate it, but
I felt it in my heart, ready to come to the surface, as if some one hidden
behind a portiere should await the signal to come out. If some accident might
only happen! So many of these little beings die before they are born!
Oh! I did not wish my sweetheart to die! The poor
girl, I loved her very much! But I wished, possibly, that the child might die
before I saw it.
He was born. I set up housekeeping in my little
bachelor apartment, an imitation home, with a horrible child. He looked like
all children; I did not care for him. Fathers, you see, do not show affection
until later. They have not the instinctive and passionate tenderness of
mothers; their affection has to be awakened gradually, their mind must become
attached by bonds formed each day between beings that live in each other's
society.
A year passed. I now avoided my home, which was too
small, where soiled linen, baby-clothes and stockings the size of gloves were
lying round, where a thousand articles of all descriptions lay on the
furniture, on the arm of an easy-chair, everywhere. I went out chiefly that I
might not hear the child cry, for he cried on the slightest pretext, when he
was bathed, when he was touched, when he was put to bed, when he was taken up
in the morning, incessantly.
I had made a few acquaintances, and I met at a
reception the woman who was to be your mother. I fell in love with her and
became desirous to marry her. I courted her; I asked her parents' consent to
our marriage and it was granted.
I found myself in this dilemma: I must either marry
this young girl whom I adored, having a child already, or else tell the truth
and renounce her, and happiness, my future, everything; for her parents, who
were people of rigid principles, would not give her to me if they knew.
I passed a month of horrible anguish, of mortal
torture, a month haunted by a thousand frightful thoughts; and I felt
developing in me a hatred toward my son, toward that little morsel of living,
screaming flesh, who blocked my path, interrupted my life, condemned me to an
existence without hope, without all those vague expectations that make the
charm of youth.
But just then my companion's mother became ill, and I
was left alone with the child.
It was in December, and the weather was terribly cold.
What a night!
My companion had just left. I had dined alone in my
little dining- room and I went gently into the room where the little one was asleep.
I sat down in an armchair before the fire. The wind
was blowing, making the windows rattle, a dry, frosty wind; and I saw trough
the window the stars shining with that piercing brightness that they have on
frosty nights.
Then the idea that had obsessed me for a month rose
again to the surface. As soon as I was quiet it came to me and harassed me. It
ate into my mind like a fixed idea, just as cancers must eat into the flesh. It
was there, in my head, in my heart, in my whole body, it seemed to me; and it
swallowed me up as a wild beast might have. I endeavored to drive it away, to
repulse it, to open my mind to other thoughts, as one opens a window to the
fresh morning breeze to drive out the vitiated air; but I could not drive it
from my brain, not even for a second. I do not know how to express this
torture. It gnawed at my soul, and I felt a frightful pain, a real physical and
moral pain.
My life was ruined! How could I escape from this
situation? How could I draw back, and how could I confess?
And I loved the one who was to become your mother with
a mad passion, which this insurmountable obstacle only aggravated.
A terrible rage was taking possession of me, choking
me, a rage that verged on madness! Surely I was crazy that evening!
The child was sleeping. I got up and looked at it as
it slept. It was he, this abortion, this spawn, this nothing, that condemned me
to irremediable unhappiness!
He was asleep, his mouth open, wrapped in his
bed-clothes in a crib beside my bed, where I could not sleep.
How did I ever do what I did? How do I know? What
force urged me on? What malevolent power took possession of me? Oh! the
temptation to crime came to me without any forewarning. All I recall is that my
heart beat tumultuously. It beat so hard that I could hear it, as one hears the
strokes of a hammer behind a partition. That is all I can recall--the beating
of my heart! In my head there was a strange confusion, a tumult, a senseless
disorder, a lack of presence of mind. It was one of those hours of bewilderment
and hallucination when a man is neither conscious of his actions nor able to
guide his will.
I gently raised the coverings from the body of the
child; I turned them down to the foot of the crib, and he lay there uncovered
and naked.
He did not wake. Then I went toward the window,
softly, quite softly, and I opened it.
A breath of icy air glided in like an assassin; it was
so cold that I drew aside, and the two candles flickered. I remained standing
near the window, not daring to turn round, as if for fear of seeing what was
doing on behind me, and feeling the icy air continually across my forehead, my
cheeks, my hands, the deadly air which kept streaming in. I stood there a long
time.
I was not thinking, I was not reflecting. All at once
a little cough caused me to shudder frightfully from head to foot, a shudder
that I feel still to the roots of my hair. And with a frantic movement I
abruptly closed both sides of the window and, turning round, ran over to the
crib.
He was still asleep, his mouth open, quite naked. I
touched his legs; they were icy cold and I covered them up.
My heart was suddenly touched, grieved, filled with
pity, tenderness, love for this poor innocent being that I had wished to kill.
I kissed his fine, soft hair long and tenderly; then I went and sat down before
the fire.
I reflected with amazement with horror on what I had
done, asking myself whence come those tempests of the soul in which a man loses
all perspective of things, all command over himself and acts as in a condition
of mad intoxication, not knowing whither he is going--like a vessel in a
hurricane.
The child coughed again, and it gave my heart a
wrench. Suppose it should die! O God! O God! What would become of me?
I rose from my chair to go and look at him, and with a
candle in my hand I leaned over him. Seeing him breathing quietly I felt
reassured, when he coughed a third time. It gave me such a shock tat I started
backward, just as one does at sight of something horrible, and let my candle
fall.
As I stood erect after picking it up, I noticed that
my temples were bathed in perspiration, that cold sweat which is the result of
anguish of soul. And I remained until daylight bending over my son, becoming
calm when he remained quiet for some time, and filled with atrocious pain when
a weak cough came from his mouth.
He awoke with his eyes red, his throat choked, and
with an air of suffering.
When the woman came in to arrange my room I sent her
at once for a doctor. He came at the end of an hour, and said, after examining
the child:
"Did he not catch cold?"
I began to tremble like a person with palsy, and I
faltered:
"No, I do not think so."
And then I said:
"What is the matter? Is it serious?"
"I do not know yet," he replied. "I
will come again this evening."
He came that evening. My son had remained almost all
day in a condition of drowsiness, coughing from time to time. During the night
inflammation of the lungs set in.
That lasted ten days. I cannot express what I suffered
in those interminable hours that divide morning from night, right from morning.
He
died.
And since--since that moment, I have not passed one
hour, not a single hour, without the frightful burning recollection, a gnawing
recollection, a memory that seems to wring my heart, awaking in me like a
savage beast imprisoned in the depth of my soul.
Oh! if I could have gone mad!
M. Poirel de la Voulte raised his spectacles with a
motion that was peculiar to him whenever he finished reading a contract; and
the three heirs of the defunct looked at one another without speaking, pale and
motionless.
At the end of a minute the lawyer resumed:
"That must be destroyed."
The other two bent their heads in sign of assent. He
lighted a candle, carefully separated the pages containing the damaging
confession from those relating to the disposition of money, then he held them
over the candle and threw them into the fireplace.
And they watched the white sheets as they burned, till
they were presently reduced to little crumbling black heaps. And as some words
were still visible in white tracing, the daughter, with little strokes of the
toe of her shoe, crushed the burning paper, mixing it with the old ashes in the
fireplace.
Then all three stood there watching it for some time,
as if they feared that the destroyed secret might escape from the fireplace.
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