The Choice of Life | Page 9

not yet soiled, your character already has ugly
streaks in it; the voice of the multitude spoke through your lovely
mouth and, for a brief second, it became disfigured in my eyes! Alas, if
I wore a queer head-dress and a veil down my back and a chaplet
hanging by my side and said to you, "My child, I wish to save your
soul," would you not think my insistence quite simple and natural?
Taking her poor, deformed hands in mine, I knelt down beside her:
"Rose, the happiness which I find in helping you is a sufficient motive
for me; and I will offer you no others.... I give you my confidence
blindly, for one can do nothing without faith. I give you my confidence

and I ask for yours. Will you vouchsafe it me?"
The sun is streaming upon us; our faces are close together; my smile
calls for hers; my eyes gaze into hers; and I repeat my prayer.
Then she whispers, shily:
"You see ... I have been deceived once; perhaps you don't know...."
I interrupted her:
"I know that we must have been deceived twenty times before we learn
to give our confidence blindly, like a little child!... I know that we must
have been perpetually deceived before we understand that nothing
proves anything; that everything is unforeseen, inconsistent, and
unexpected; and that we must just simply 'believe,' because it is good to
believe and because it is sweet to offer to others what we ourselves are
unhappy enough to lack."
She went on:
"But what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to go away from here."
"Why?"
"Because you are wretched here."
"Has any one said so?"
"What does it matter what any one has said? I have only to look at you
to see that you are not happy. Oh, please don't regard this as an act of
charity, I would not even dare to talk about kindness! The interest that
impels me is one which you do not yet know; it looks to none for
recompense; it is its own reward. It is the mere joy, the mere delight of
knowledge.... Do you understand?"
She shook her head; and I began to laugh:

"I suppose I really am a little obscure!... But why do you force me to
explain myself now? You learn to understand me by degrees.... I am
leading you towards a goal of which I am almost as ignorant as you are;
I am only the guide waving a hand towards the roads which he himself
has taken and never knowing what the traveller will see or feel in the
depths of his being."
She was going to speak, but I placed my hand on her lips:
"Hush! I ask nothing more of you. I shall know how to win your
confidence."
I feel that she is silenced but not convinced. Hers is not a character to
be thus persuaded: she will wait for deeds before judging the sincerity
of words. I feel clearly that she is searching and judging me, while I
myself am engaged in discovering her; and I shall have some curiosity
in bending over the untroubled waters of that soul in order to see my
image there, as soon as there is sufficient light to reflect my image.
CHAPTER VII
1
Rose is already almost happy. Hope is penetrating her life; and the
moments of rest filter into her days of wearisome toil like the cool
water trickling through the rocks.
As soon as she can get away on any excuse, she runs across to me.
Flushed and laughing, she hurls herself into my arms with all the
violence of a catastrophe; she crushes my cheek with a vehement kiss
which waits for no response; and my hair catches in the rough hands
squeezing my head. Smiling, I cannot help warding off the attack,
while she pours out a torrent of incoherent words at the top of her
voice....
During our early talks, I tried speaking very quietly, as a hint that she
should do the same. She would shake the house with the thunder of her
most intimate confidences, bellowed after the fashion of the peasants,

who are accustomed to keep up a conversation from one end of a field
to the other. As I obtained no result, I had to speak to her about it; and,
because I did so as delicately as possible, in order not to wound her
feelings, she burst into a roar of laughter which showed me that her
rustic life had robbed her of all sensitiveness.
Being now authorised to admonish her at all times with regard to her
gestures, her voice and her accent, I often make her repeat the same
sentence; and, when I at last