The Choice of Life | Page 6

the colour, the very life itself of our life will never reach us except through them.
I thought of all this vaguely. There were two women before me: one, coarse and awkward, was obliterating the other, so beautiful amid the ripe corn. Alas, should I ever see that other again? Was she not one of those images which fade out of our remembrance, becoming ever paler and more shadowy?
I felt a little discouraged. But perhaps the sadness of the hour was influencing me? My feminine nerves must be affected by this damp, warm mist. I went back to the house, doing my utmost simply to think that I was about to undertake a "rather difficult" task.
Under the lamp, which the outside pall had caused to be lit earlier than usual, and in the brightness of the red-and-white dining-room, decked with gorgeous flowers, I discovered another side to my interview. While I was describing it laughingly, my disappointment had seemed natural; and, my eagerness being now reinforced by pity, a new fervour inspired my curiosity.
In sensitive and therefore anxious natures, the very excess of the sensation makes the impression received subject to violent reaction. It goes up and down, down and up; and not until it slackens a little can reason intervene and bring it to its normal level.
CHAPTER V
1
I have before me one of those little exercise-books whose covers are gay with pictures of soldiers or rural scenes. It is Rose's diary. I received it this morning, I have read it and it has left me both pleased and touched.
It is a very simple and rather commonplace narrative, but one which, in my eyes, has the outstanding merit of sincerity. To me it represents the story of a real living creature, of a woman whom I saw yesterday, whom I shall see to-morrow and whose suffering is but a step removed from my happiness. The smallest details of that story have a familiar voice and aspect....
Poor girl! Would not one think that an evil genius had taken pleasure in playing with her destiny, like a child playing at ball? She was born of poor parents. Her father, a carpenter, was a drunkard and frequently out of work. He would often come home at night intoxicated, when he would beat his wife and threaten to kill her. Coarse scenes, visions of murder, screams, oaths and suppressed weeping were the first images and the first sounds that stamped themselves on Rose's memory. One's heart bleeds to think of those child-souls which open in the same hour to the light of day and to horror, gaining their knowledge of life whilst trembling lest they should lose it. We see them caught in a hurricane of madness, like little leaves whirling in the storm; and to the end of their days they will shudder at the thought of it.
She was left an orphan at the age of six. A neighbour offered to take her, a wealthy and devout old man, who sent her to the Nuns of the Visitation at the neighbouring town.
Of those quiet, uneventful years in the convent there is nothing in particular to record. The child is perfectly happy, nor could she be otherwise, for she is naturally reasonable and she is in no danger of forgetting how kind fate has been to her. She pictures what she might have been, she sees what she is; and her soul is full of gladness.
In January 18--, Rose is seventeen. She is to pass her examinations the following summer. Her diary here gives evidence of a steadfast and wholehearted optimism; she views the future with joyous eyes, or rather she does not see it at all, which is the surest way of smiling at it cheerfully. Her eyes are still the eyes of a child, to whom the convent-garden is a world and the present hour an eternity.
Unfortunately, she had a rude awakening to life. The old man who had adopted her died after a few days' illness, without having time to make arrangements for her future. The good sisters at once wrote to her grandmother; and, the next day, Rose was packed 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