Books: Conscience, v4

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CONSCIENCE

By HECTOR MALOT

BOOK 4.

CHAPTER XXXVI

CONSCIENCE ASSERTS ITSELF

During the first years of his sojourn in Paris, Saniel had published in a
Latin Quarter review an article on the "Pharmacy of Shakespeare"--the
poison of Hamlet, and of Romeo and Juliet; and although since his choice
of medicine he read but little besides books of science, at that time he
was obliged to study the plays of his author. From this study there
lingered in his memory a phrase that for ten years had not risen to his
lips, and which all at once forced itself uppermost in his mind with
exasperating persistency. It was the words of Macbeth:

"Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds."

He also had lost it, "the innocent sleep, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt
minds." He had never been a great sleeper; at least he had accustomed
himself to the habit, hard at first, of passing only a few hours in bed.
But he employed these few hours well, sleeping as the weary sleep, hands
clenched, without dreaming, waking, or moving; and the thought that
occupied his mind in the evening was with him on waking in the morning,
not having been put to flight by others, any more than by dreams.

After Caffie's death this tranquil and refreshing sleep continued the
same; but suddenly, after Madame Dammauville's death, it became broken.

At first it did not bother him. He did not sleep, so much the better!
He would work more. But one can no more work all the time than one can
live without eating. Saniel knew better than any one that the life of
every organ is composed of alternate periods of repose and activity, and
he did not suppose that he would be able to work indefinitely without
sleep. He only hoped that after some days of twenty hours of work daily,
overcome by fatigue, he would have, in spite of everything, four hours of
solid sleep, that Shakespeare called "sore labor's bath."

He had not had these four hours, and the law that every state of
prolonged excitement brings exhaustion that should be refreshed by a
functional rest, was proved false in his case. After a hard day's work
he would go to bed at one o'clock in the morning and would go to sleep
immediately. But very soon he awoke with a start, suffocating, covered
with perspiration, in a state of extreme anxiety, his mind agitated by
hallucinations of which he could not rid himself all at once. If he did
not wake suddenly, he dreamed frightful dreams, always of Madame
Dammauville or Caffie. Was it not curious that Caffie, who until then
had been completely effaced from his memory, was resuscitated by Madame
Dammauville in the night, ghost of the darkness that the daylight
dissipated?

Believing that one of the causes of these dreams was the excitement of
the brain, occasioned by excessive work at the hour when he should not
exercise it, but on the contrary should allow it to rest, he decided to
change a plan which produced so little success. Instead of intellectual
work he would engage in physical exercise, which, by exhausting his
muscular functions, would procure him the sleep of the laboring class;
and as he could not roll a wheelbarrow nor chop wood, every evening after
dinner he walked seven or eight miles rapidly.

Physical work succeeded no better than intellectual; he endured the
fatigue of butchers and wood-choppers, but he did not obtain their sleep.
Decidedly, bodily fatigue was worth no more than that of the brain.
It was worth even less. At his table, plunged in his books, or in his
laboratory over his microscope, he absorbed himself in his work, and,
by the force of a will that had been long exercised and submissive to
obedience, he was able to keep his thoughts on the subject in hand,
without distraction as without dreams. Time passed. But when walking in
the streets of Paris, in the deserted roads on the outskirts, by the
Seine or Marne, his mind wandered where it would; it was the mistress,
and it always dwelt on Madame Dammauville, Caffie, and Florentin. It
seemed as if the heat of walking started his brain. When he returned in
this state, after many hours of cerebral excitability, how could he find
the tranquil and refreshing sleep, complete and profound, of the laboring
classes who work only with their muscles?

Never having been ill, he had never examined nor treated himself:
medicine was good for others but useless for him. With a machine
organized like his he need fear only accidents, and until now he had been
spared them; a true son of peasants, he victoriously resisted Paris life
as the destroyer of the intellect. But the time had come to undertake an
examination and to try a treatment that would give him rest. He was not
a sceptical doctor, and he believed that what he ordered for others was
good for himself.

The misfortune was that he could not find in himself any of the causes
which resolve into insomnia; he had neither meningitis nor brain fever,
nor anything that indicated a cerebral tumor; he was not anaemic; he ate
well; he did not suffer with neuralgia, nor with any acute or chronic
affection that generally accompanied the absence of sleep; he drank
neither tea nor alcohol; and without this state of over-excitement of the
encephalic centres, he might have said that he was in good health, a
little thin, but that was all.

It was this excitement that he must cure, and as there are many remedies
for insomnia, he tried those which, it seemed to him, were suitable to
his case; but bromide of potassium, in spite of its hypnotic properties,
produced no more effect than the over-working of the brain and body.
When he realized this he replaced it with chloral; but chloral, which
should create a desire to sleep, after several days had no more effect
than the bromide. Then he tried injections of morphine.

It was not without a certain uneasiness that he made this third trial,
the first two having met with so little success; and since it is
acknowledged that chloral produces a calmer sleep than morphine, it
seemed as if the latter would prove as useless as the former. However,
he slept without being tormented by dreams or wakings, and the next day
he still slept.

But he knew too well the effects produced by a prolonged use of these
injections to continue them beyond what was strictly indispensable; he
therefore omitted them, and sleep left him.

He tried them again; then, soon, as the small doses lost their efficacy,
he gradually increased them. At the end of a certain time what he feared
came to pass--his leanness increased; he lost his appetite, his muscular
force, and his moral energy; his pale face began to wear the
characteristic expression of the morphomaniac.

Then he stopped, frightened.

Should he continue, he would become a morphomaniac in a given time, and
the apathy into which he fell prevented him from resisting the desire to
absorb new doses of poison, a desire as imperious, as irresistible in
morphinism as that of alcohol for the alcoholic, and more terrible in its
effects--the perversion of the intellectual faculties, loss of will, of
memory, of judgment, paralysis, or the mania that leads to suicide.

If he did not continue, and these sleepless nights or the agitated sleep
which maddened him should return, and following them, this over-
excitement of the brain in troubling the nutrition of the encephalic
mass, it might be the prelude of some grave cerebral affection.

On one side the morphine habit; on the other, dementia from the constant
excitement and disorganization of the brain.

Between a fatally certain result and one that was possible he did not
hesitate. He must give up morphine, and this choice forced itself upon
him with so much more strength, because if morphine assured him sleep at
night, it by no means gave him tranquil days--quite the contrary.

He began to use this remedy at night when he fell under the influence of
certain ideas; during the day when applying himself to work, by an effort
of will he escaped from these ideas, and was the man he had always been,
master of his strength and mind. But the action of the morphine rapidly
weakened this all-powerful will, so much so, that when these ideas
crossed his mind during his working hours he had not the energy to drive
them away. He tried to shake them off, but in vain; they would not leave
his brain, to which they clung and encompassed it with increasing
strength.

Truly, those two corpses troubled him horribly. Was it not exasperating
for a man who had seen and dissected so many, that there should be always
two before his eyes, even when they were closed--that of this old rascal
and of this unfortunate woman? In order not to complicate this
impression with another that humiliated him, he got rid of the packages
of bank bills taken from Caffie, by sending them "as restitution" to the
director of public charities. But this had no appreciable effect.

The thought of Florentin troubled him also; and if he saw Caffie lying in
his chair, Madame Dammauville motionless and pink on her bed, to him it
was not less cruel to see Florentin between the decks of the vessel that
would soon carry him to New Caledonia.

The ideas on conscience that he had expressed at Crozat's, and those that
he explained to Phillis about remorse, were still his; but he was not the
less certain that these two dead persons and the condemned one weighed
upon him with a terrible weight, frightful, suffocating, like a
nightmare. It was not in accordance with his education nor with his
environment to have these corpses behind him and this victim before him.

But where his former ideas were overthrown, since these dead bodies
seized hold of his life, was in his confidence in his strength.

The strong man that he believed himself, he who follows his ambition
regardless of things and of persons, looking only before him and never
behind, master of his mind as of his heart and of his arm, was not at all
the one that reality revealed.

On the contrary, he had been weak in action and yet weaker afterward.

And it was not only humiliation in the present that he felt in
acknowledging this weakness, it was also in uneasiness for the future;
for, if he lacked this strength that he attributed to himself before
having tested it, he should, if his beliefs were true, succumb some day.

Evidently, if he were perfectly strong he would not have complicated his
life with love. The strong walk alone because they need no one. And he
needed a woman; and so great was the need that it was through her only,
near her, when he looked at her, when he listened to her, that he
experienced a little calm.

Was he weak and cowardly on account of this? Perhaps not, but only
human.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ATTEMPTED REPARATION

Because he felt calm when with Phillis, Saniel wished that she might
never leave him.

But, as happy as she was in her sorrow to see that instead of avoiding
her--which a less generous man would have done, perhaps--he sought to
draw nearer each day, she could not give up her lessons and her work,
which was her daily bread, to give all her time to her love, any more
than she could leave her mother entirely alone, crushed with shame, who
had never needed so much as now to be cheered and sustained.

She did not let a day pass without going to see Saniel; but in spite of
her desire she could not remain with him as long as she wished and he
asked. When she rose to go and he detained her, she remained, but it was
only for a few minutes; they were short, and the time soon came when,
after ten attempts, she was obliged to leave him.

At all times these separations had been full of despair to her, the
apprehension of which, from the moment of her arrival, paralyzed her;
but now they were still more cruel. Formerly, on leaving him, she often
saw him deep in his work before she opened the door; now, on the
contrary, he conducted her to the vestibule, detained her, and only let
her leave him when she tore herself from his embrace, after promising and
repeating her promise to come early the next day and stay longer.
Formerly, also, she was calm when she left him, not thinking of his
health, nor asking herself how she would find him at their next meeting,
strong and powerful, as sound in body as in mind. On the contrary, now
she worried herself, wondering how she would find him on the occasion of
each visit. Would the sadness, melancholy, and dejection still remain?
Would he be thinner and paler? It was her care, her anguish, to try to
divine the causes of the change in him, which manifested itself as
strongly in his sentiments as in his person. Was it not truly
extraordinary that he was more grave and uneasy now that his life was
assured than during the hard times when he was so worried that he never
knew what the morrow would bring? He had obtained the position that his
ambition coveted; he had sufficient money for his wants; he admitted that
his experiments had succeeded beyond his expectations; the essays that he
published on his experiments were loudly discussed, praised by some,
contested by others; it seemed that he had attained his object; and he
was sad, discontented, unhappy, more tormented than when he exhausted
himself with efforts, without other support than his will. At last, when
frightened to see him thus, she questioned him as to how he felt, he
became angry, and answered brutally

"Ill? Why do you think that I am--ill? Am I not better able than any
one to know how I am? I am overworked, that is all; and as my life of
privation does not permit me to repair my forces, I have become anaemic;
it is not serious. It is strange, truly, that you ask for explanations
of what is natural. Count the teeth of the polytechnicians and look at
their hair after their examinations, and tell me what you think of them.
Why do you think anything else is the matter with me? One cannot expend
one's self with impunity; that would be too good. Everything must be
paid for in this world."

She was obliged to believe that he was right and understood his
condition; however, she could not help worrying. She knew nothing of
medicine; she did not know the meaning of the medical terms he used,
but she found that this was not sufficient to explain all--neither his
roughness of temper and excess of anger without reason, any more than his
sudden tenderness, his weakness and dejection, his preoccupation and
absence of mind.

She discovered the effect she produced on him, and how, merely by her
presence, she cheered this gloomy fancy and raised this depression by not
asking him stupid questions on certain subjects which she had not yet
determined on, but which she hoped to avoid. Also, she did not wish to
leave him, and ingeniously invented excuses to go to see him twice a day;
in the morning on going to her lessons, and in the afternoon or evening.

Late one evening she rang his bell with a hand made nervous with joy.

"I have come to stay till to-morrow," she said, in triumphant tones.

She expected that he would express his joy by an embrace, but he did
nothing.

"Are you going out?"

"Not at all; I am not thinking of myself, but of your mother."

"Do you think that I would have left her alone in her weak and nervous
state? A cousin of ours arrived from the country, who will occupy my
bed, and I profited by it quick enough, saying that I would remain at the
school. And here I am."

In spite of his desire for it, he had never dared ask her to pass the
night with him. During the day he would only betray himself by his sad
or fantastic temper; but at night, with such dreams as came to him, might
not some word escape that would betray him?

However, since she was come it was impossible to send her away; he could
not do it for her nor for himself. What pretext could he find to say,
"Go! I do not want you?" He wanted her above all; he wanted to look at
her, to listen to her, to hear her voice that soothed and lulled his
anguish, to feel her near him--only to have her there, and not be face
to face with his thoughts.

She examined him secretly, asking herself the cause of this singular
reception, standing at the entrance of the office, not daring to remove
her hat. How could her arrival produce an effect so different from what
she expected?

"You do not take off your hat?" he said.

"I was asking myself if you had to work."

"Why do you ask yourself that?"

"For fear of disturbing you."

"What a madness you have for always asking something!" he exclaimed
violently. "What do you expect me to say? What astonishes you? Why
should you disturb me? In what? 'Voyons', speak, explain yourself!"

The time was far distant when these explosions surprised her, though they
always pained her.

"I speak stupidly," she said. "What will you? I am stupid; forgive me."

These words, "forgive me," were more cruel than numberless reproaches,
for he well knew that he had nothing to forgive in her, since she was the
victim and he the criminal. Should he never be able to master these
explosions, as imprudent as they were unjust?

He took her in his arms and made her sit by him.

"It is for you to forgive," he said.

And he was as tender and caressing as he had been brutal. He was a fool
to imagine that she could have suspicions, and the surest way to give
birth to them was to show fear that she had them. To betray himself by
such awkwardness was as serious as to let a cry escape him while
sleeping.

But for this night he had a way which was in reality not difficult, that
would not expose him to the danger of talking in his sleep-he would not
sleep. After having passed so many nights without closing his eyes,
without doubt he could keep them open this entire night.

But he deceived himself; when he heard the calm and regular respiration
of Phillis with her head on his shoulder, and felt the mild warmth of her
body penetrate his, in the quiet imposed upon him, without being
conscious of it, believing himself far from sleep, and convinced that he
required no effort to keep awake, he suddenly slept. When he awoke a ray
of pale sunlight filled the room, and leaning her elbow on the bolster,
Phillis was watching him. He made a brusque movement, throwing himself
backward. "What is the matter?" he cried. "What have I said?"
Instantly his face paled, his lips quivered; he felt his heart beat
tumultuously and his throat pressed by painful constriction. "But
nothing is the matter," she answered, looking at him tenderly. "You have
said nothing." To come to the point, why should he have spoken? During
his frightful dreams, his nights of disturbed sleep, he might have cried
out, but he did not know if he had ever done so. And besides, he had not
just waked from an agitated sleep. All this passed through his mind in
an instant, in spite of his alarm. "What time is it?" he asked.
"Nearly six o'clock." "Six o'clock!" "Do you not hear the vehicles in
the street? The street-venders are calling their wares." It must have
been about one o'clock when he closed his eyes; he had then slept five
hours, profoundly, and he felt calm, rested, refreshed, his body active
and his mind tranquil, the man of former times, in the days of his happy
youth, and not the half-insane man of these last frightful months.

He breathed a sigh.

"Ah, if I could have you always!" he murmured, as much to himself as to
her.

And he gave her a long look mingled with a sad smile; then, placing his
arm around her shoulders, he pressed her to him.

"Dear little wife!"

She had never heard so profound, so vibrating, a tenderness in his voice;
never had she been able, until hearing these words, to measure the depth
of the love that she had inspired in him; and it even seemed that this
was the declaration of a new love.

Pressing her passionately to him, he repeated:

"Dear little wife!"

Distracted, lost in her happiness, she did not reply.

All at once he held her from him gently, and looking at her with the same
smile:

"Does this word tell you nothing?"

"It tells me that you love me."

"And is that all?"

"What more can I wish? You say it, I feel it. You give me the greatest
joy of which I can dream."

"It is enough for you?"

"It would be enough if it need never be interrupted. But it is the
misfortune of our life that we are obliged to separate at the time when
the ties that unite us are the most strongly bound."

"Why should we separate?"

"Alas! Mamma? And daily bread?"

"If you did not leave your mother. If you need no longer worry about
your life?"

She looked at him, not daring to question him, not betraying the
direction of her thoughts except by a trembling that she could not
control in spite of her efforts.

"I mean if you become my wife."

"Oh, my beloved!"

"Will you not?"

She threw herself in his arms, fainting; but after a moment she
recovered.

"Alas! It is impossible," she murmured.

"Why impossible?"

"Do not ask me; do not oblige me to say it."

"But, on the contrary, I wish you to tell me."

She turned her head away, and in a voice that was scarcely perceptible,
in a stifled sigh:

"My brother--"

"It is greatly on account of your brother that I wish this marriage."

Then, suddenly: "Do you think me the man to submit to prejudiced
blockheads?"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE IMPORTANT QUESTION

Saniel had not waited until this day to acknowledge the salutary
influence that Phillis's presence exercised over him, yet the idea of
making her his wife never occurred to him. He thought himself ill-
adapted to marriage, and but little desirous of being a husband.
Until lately he had had no desire for a home.

This idea came to him suddenly and took strong hold of him; at least as
much on account of the calmness he felt in her presence, as by the charm
of her manner, her health, happiness, and gayety.

It was not only physical calm that she gave him by a mysterious affinity
concerning which his studies told him nothing, but of which he did not
the less feel all the force; it was also a moral calm.

There were duties he owed her, and terribly heavy were those he owed her
mother and Florentin.

He did all he could for Florentin, but this was not all that he owed
them. Florentin was in prison; Madame Cormier fell into a mournful
despair, growing weaker each day; and Phillis, in spite of her elasticity
and courage, bent beneath the weight of injustice.

How much the situation would be changed if he married her--for them,
and for him!

When Phillis was a little recovered from her great surprise, she asked
him:

"When did you decide on this marriage?"

He did not wish to prevaricate, and he answered that it was at that
instant that the idea came to him, exact enough and strong enough to give
form to the ideas that had been floating in his brain for several months.

"At least, have you considered it? Have you not yielded to an impulse of
love?"

"Would it be better to yield to a long, rational calculation? I marry
you because I love you, and also because I am certain that without you
I cannot be happy. Frankly, I acknowledge that I need you, your
tenderness, your love, your strength of character, your equal temper,
your invincible faith in hope, which, for me as I am organized, is worth
the largest dot."

"It is exactly because I have no dot to bring you. When you were at the
last extremity, desperate and crushed, I might ask to become the wife of
the poor village doctor that you were going to be; but to-day, in your
position, above all in the position that you will soon occupy, is poor
little Phillis worthy of you? You give me the greatest joy that I can
ever know, of which I have only dreamed in telling myself that it would
be folly to hope to have it realized. But just that gives me the
strength to beg you to reflect, and to consider whether you will ever
regret this moment of rapture that makes me so happy."

"I have reflected, and what you say proves better than anything that I do
not deceive myself. I want a wife who loves me, and you are that wife."

"More than I can tell you at this moment, wild with happiness, but not
more than I shall prove to you in the continuance of our love."

"Besides, dearest, do not have any illusions on the splendors of this
position of which you speak; it is more than probable that they will
never be realized, for I am not a man of money, and will do nothing to
gain any. If it does not come by itself--"

"It will come."

"That is not the object for which I work. What I wish I have obtained
partly; if now I make money and obtain a rich practice, the jealousy of
my confreres will make me lose, or wait too long, for what my ambition
prefers to a fortune. For the moment this position will be modest; my
four thousand francs of salary, that which I gain at the central bureau
while waiting to have the title of hospital physician, and five hundred
francs a month more that my editor offers me for work and a review of
bacteriology, will give us nearly twelve thousand francs, and we must
content ourselves with that for some time."

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