The Choice of Life | Page 7

off to
Sainte-Colombe with a parcel of indulgences, a few sacred medals and
a scapular round her neck. What more can a young life want to stay its
uncertain steps?
2
From that moment, I see her delicate profile stand out against a
background of pain and sorrow, like a lovely cameo whose dainty
workmanship has been obliterated by the hand of time. Moral suffering
can refine and accentuate the character of a beautiful face, is indeed
nearly always kind to it. But here the mental distress was only the
feeble reflection of a crushing and deadening material torture. In the
evenings, when the hour of rest came at last, Rose, exhausted, accepted
it dully; her whole body called for oblivion; her heavy eyelids drooped;
and her submerged wretchedness had no time for tears.
How could the poor girl make any resistance? Her environment was too
hostile, her disposition too gentle and the task laid upon her too
oppressive.
The very look of her diary, during those Sainte-Colombe days, tells us
her story far better than the words which it contains. The first few
pages are filled with wild and incoherent sentences. There are passages
that can scarcely be deciphered and others blotted with tears. Her
suffering is not sufficiently well-expressed for it to be understood and
more or less identified, but it can be felt and divined: it is a landscape
of pain, it is the sight of an inner life which has received a grievous
wound and whose blood is gushing forth in torrents.

And then hope is exhausted drop by drop; and with it go anger and
resistance. Everything goes under, grows still and silent. For months,
Rose hardly touches her diary: here and there, scattered on pages
bearing no date, are occasional melancholy reflections, the last flickers
of an expiring consciousness....
It is then, no doubt, that one day she flies to death for deliverance. She
is saved, but for a long time remains ill and weak. When she recovers
her health, her spirit is finally broken. In silence and gloom, she drowns
all feeling in work too heavy for her strength.
3
In the district they blame this young girl who, after receiving a good
education, has acquiesced in this miserable existence. And yet I find a
thousand reasons which explain her conduct and cannot find one for
condemning it. Rose's soul is still in the chrysalis-stage. Ignorant of her
own strength and qualities, how could she make use of them?
Is not this the case with most young girls? If our moral transformations
could bring about physical changes, if a woman, like a butterfly, had to
pass through different phases before attaining her perfect state, we
should almost always see her stop at the first and die without even
approaching the second.
It is difficult enough for us merely to conceive that there are other roads
to follow than that laid down for us by chance or by parents too often
shortsighted; and when we make the discovery, our first dreams of
liberty appear so momentous and so dangerous! Is it not just then that
we need time to venture upon the most lawful actions, seeing that we
have no sense of their real proportion?
It is as though a wall separated the life that is forced upon us from the
life which we do not know. Little by little, slowly, by instinct as much
as by volition, we withdraw from the wall and it seems to become
lower. The sky above us becomes vaster, the horizon is disclosed
before our eyes and we at last distinguish what is happening on the
other side. Ah, what sight would compare with that, if it broke

suddenly upon our vision, if we could view life as we view the
spreading country beneath us, when we stand on the summit of a tower!
All our senses, being equally affected, would impart to our will a
motive force which is, on the contrary, dissipated by the tardiness of
our feeble comprehension.
Yes, an age comes when our vision is clear and true; but often it is too
late to find a way out of the circle in which we are imprisoned. That is
the secret tragedy of many women's lives.
What would one not give to tell them, those women who tremble and
weep, to lift their minds high enough to see beyond their wretchedness!
Let them develop and strengthen themselves while still under the yoke,
in order to throw it off one day like a gossamer garment which one
casts aside without giving it a thought!...
CHAPTER VI
1
I am happy. Wonderful flowers lie at my feet, flowers which have been
plucked and flung aside: I will pick them all up again, all of them! I
will gather