On the Brink of the World's End Read online

  Two months! He had waited two months! He had lived those two months in the unique hope of this charming hour. Now, the hour has come...

  Well, what is he going to do? He does not know, and does not want to know. He dare not confess to himself, what he is going to decide. Or rather, he has not decided anything. He will let Angèle do as she wishes…and he will abandon himself to her. She will pronounce. For the heroic sacrifice that he made before, he no longer feels the courage to recommence.

  “Well, Sister,” he said, “If you wish, we can set to work right away. We could play, for instance Mozart’s Requiem? It’s also a song of dolor, but the plaint is more solemn and less poignant than in the Stabat.”

  He began. Sister Marthe, standing behind him, listened attentively. When he had finished, it was her who spoke.

  “Certainly,” she said, “it’s an admirable music, but you’ve played it from memory. Alas, it will be impossible for me to profit from it. If you wish, you can play me the Ave Maria again, which I know quite well.”

  “Very well,” said Laurent, slightly astonished.

  Then he played the first bars of the Ave Maria. After a few moments, he looked at Sister Marthe, but he did not see any change in her; her eyes were not staring. On the contrary, she was following with a keen interest the development of the admirable song, which, under Laurent’s experienced fingers, shook the somber vaults of the church with all its passion.

  Laurent stopped.

  “Why aren’t you continuing, Monsieur?” asked Sister Marthe. “For the Ave Maria, which I know, I can follow you very well.”

  Laurent shivered. Yes, he remembered that, on that fatal night, he had solemnly ordered Angèle never to appear again. Is she, perchance, being too faithful to that command? He knew that an order given is absolute. He knew that obedience is servile. Was it, in fact, true that Angèle would never, ever return?

  Then he continued. His fingers ran across the keyboard mechanically, but silently he repeated: “Angèle! Angèle! Come, I want it. Come, I order you to. Forget the order I gave you before. You know full well that I love you, and that I love only you. You know that I want to live for you, for you alone.”

  Involuntarily, however, he remembered having said: “I no longer want you. You will no longer exist, for me or for anyone else.” And he understood that he had raised between Angèle and the world of the living a barrier that nothing could cross.

  Until then, even in the bitterest hours of great despair, he had always, in the depths of his soul, thought that he could see Angèle again; but in that cruel moment, the atrocious idea that Angèle was lost to him had cut through his intelligence like a flash of lightning, the dazzle of which obliterates everything.

  Then he looked at Sister Marthe.

  “Oh, Monsieur,” she said to him, smiling, “I’m very grateful to you. Will you permit me to play the same song in my turn? You can see whether I’ve profited from the lesson.”

  “Try,” said Laurent, standing up. He said it with a kind of irritation. His voice, caressant until then, had become a trifle harsh, as if he were annoyed.

  Sister Marthe looked at him in surprise for a moment, and then she sat down at the organ.

  While she played, Laurent stood behind her. He concentrated all the forces of his will and his intelligence. “Angèle! Angèle! I want, I want you to come.” He even made a gesture, and extended his hand over the nun’s head.

  But it had no effect. Sister Marthe continued playing, tranquilly,

  “I really believe that I’m making progress,” she said, smiling.

  Laurent did not reply. He was humiliated, desperate, with sorrow in the depths of his soul. Tears rose to his eyes.

  “Are you in pain, Monsieur?” asked Sister Marthe, standing up.

  “No, Sister, it’s nothing, I assure you. Perhaps a little emotion.”

  “In any case, it’s getting late. I need to go back. Thank you, Monsieur.”

  She was about to leave. He made one last effort. “Angèle,” he said aloud.

  She blushed. “How do you know my former name, Monsieur le Docteur?” she said, slightly hesitant. “Doubtless Monsieur le Curé told you. But Angèle has consecrated herself to God, and there’s only Sister Marthe now.”

  “Forgive me,” he said, taking her hand. “Forgive me if I called you Angèle; but I once had a friend, a sister, that I loved tenderly. Her name was Angèle, and she’s dead…dead.”

  Laurent, his head between his hands, was weeping.

  “Alas!” murmured Sister Marthe. “Pray to God, Monsieur. All consolations come from God.”

  XII

  The General found, that evening, that Laurent was very whimsical. He came out with a firework display of paradoxes regarding magnetism, science, women and religions.

  “In sum,” he said, to conclude the argument, “the more I see your Plancheuille, General, the more admirable I find the existence that one can lead here. The peasants, the fields, the hunting, the mountains, the wheat and the sheep: that’s the only verity. All the rest is nothing but lies. I truly have a yen to come and live here. I could pay you a small rent to compensate you, and since George—the imprudent fellow!—has thought it good to place his happiness in the hands of a woman, the two of us could live like hermits, as recluses, without asking anything of the gods or of humans but to leave us undisturbed.”

  At that point, the curé arrived. They started a game of whist, which lasted until eleven o’clock. But when the General had gone up to his room, Laurent took on a grave, almost solemn, expression that made a strange contrast with the artificial and unhealthy joviality that he had affected all evening.

  “Forgive me, Monsieur le Curé, if I speak to you again about Sister Marthe, but since she is an orphan and abandoned, are you not her sole protector here? Now, this is truly a matter of grave concern for her, and you would not forgive me if I kept silent. You’ve told me that Angèle’s father is dead. Do you know the name of that father?”

  “Yes,” said the curé. “The superior of the Ursuline convent, without telling me positively, allowed me to understand that Angèle’s guardian was really her father.”

  “And did she tell you the name of that guardian?”

  “She told me—but no one here knows it, and Sister Marthe does not know it herself.”

  “Well, Monsieur le Curé, I can tell you the name of Sister Marthe’s father. She would be called Angèle de Mérande if her father had recognized her. Am I not well informed? And what would you say if I succeeded in establishing that Monsieur de Mérande, died without children or nephews, made a will in favor of his daughter?”

  “I would say that you’re truly something of a sorcerer, because it’s nearly a year since Monsieur de Mérande died. His fortune has all been divided today, and nothing resembling a testament has been found.”

  “Well, Monsieur le Curé, that testament exists.”

  “Is it one of your somnambulists who made you that revelation?” asked the curé, smiling.

  “Yes,” said Laurent, coldly, “it’s one of my somnambulists. And don’t think that I’m joking. Never, at any moment of my life, have I been more serious. Tomorrow morning, I shall leave for Paris, and when I return here, I shall bring you Angèle de Mérande’s fortune. Do you understand what that signifies, Monsieur le Curé? Poor, Sister Marthe cannot be cured, but if she is rich, if she is surrounded by luxury and the minute cares that only wealth can acquire, she will live. What is at stake, therefore, is Sister Marthe’s life…and also her happiness. Have you not told me that poverty determined her vocation? Now, wish me good luck and au revoir.”

  The curé went back to the presbytery very intrigued, not knowing what to think. Was it a joke or an idle boast?

  The next day, at the château, he learned that Laurent had gone.

  “He’s a very amiable fellow,” said the General. “He doesn’t seem very serious to me, but what does it matter? After all, serious people are boring, and Laurent isn’t boring at
all.”

  XIII

  As Laurent drew away from Plancheuille, he measured the difficulty of the enterprise more accurately. To discover Monsieur de Mérande’s notary—one of the hundreds of notaries in Paris—was simple enough, but to interrogate him, to question him, to talk to him about little Angèle or Sister Marthe was a much more delicate matter. What entitlement could he invoke for thus defending the interests of the young nun? And above all, what reason could he allege for affirming the existence of a testament? A testament is an authentic, tangible fact, not an airy proposition. When the notary demanded proof, what proof could be offered? Angèle alone could say, in one of her flashes of lucidity, where Monsieur de Mérande had written his last will.

  Angèle…oh, misery of miseries! Angèle will not come again. That’s finished forever now. Well, so be it, everything is finished. I won’t search for the testament. I’ll carry out other experiments. I’ll find other subjects as brilliant, and easier to handle than Angèle. That’s enough of nuns and nonsense.

  Sure of that resolution, he reached Paris again. He immediately resumed work on magnetism. A young woman named Lucienne had once lent herself with a good grace to various experiments. She was the lover of Émile D***, one of Laurent’s comrades. Émile had left Paris, leaving Lucienne alone; Laurent succeeded in finding her address.

  Then he tried a few experiments, which succeeded; but he quickly tired of them, Lucienne only presented vulgar phenomena, the classics of hypnotism, for which Laurent now had an insurmountable aversion.

  Then again, he sensed that Lucienne had a stupid amorous passion for him. She became absolutely odious to him. He tried to inspire an aversion in the entranced Lucienne to replace the amour, but he did not succeed; the amour persisted, in spite of all his suggestions. The various commands he formulated were executed irregularly by Lucienne; he became angry then, and abused the poor girl roundly.

  He multiplied sessions of catalepsy and ecstasy, prolonging them for several hours. He studied their phases with persevering attention. Docile, like a well-regulated machine, or an ingenious and savant automaton, Lucienne obeyed, but with a word, Laurent could make the entire edifice that he had laboriously constructed disappear.

  And always, his thoughts returned to Angèle. What a difference there is between the stable lucidity of Angèle and the gross, rudimentary mechanism of poor Lucienne. If lucidity exists—and it exists—it is Angèle alone who can give the proof of it. In an hour, with Angèle, he could learn more than in fifteen years with Lucienne.

  One evening, as he was passing the large shop selling musical instruments, he perceived an organ that was for sale for eight hundred francs. He went in, examined the machine, and decided to buy it.

  From that moment on he abandoned Lucienne completely. He spent his days at home playing the organ, without paying any heed to the complaints of the tenants, piling up in his drawing room the religious music of the great masters—but it was always Rossini’s Stabat and Gounod’s Ave Maria to which he found himself incessantly brought back.

  There is an extraordinary, sometimes frightening, logic in things and events. The ignorant speak of chance, but it is probable that there is no chance. One evening, while casting his eyes over the display of a second-hand book dealer who lived nearby, Laurent fell upon a pitifully dilapidated pamphlet entitled Le Château de Mérande. He learned thus that there is a Château de Mérande in Picardy, near Abbeville. The pamphlet was dated 1842. It related the beauties of the princely, almost historic, dwelling, the property of a very rich, very ancient and very noble family.

  This time, Laurent’s ideas have definitively settled. It is no longer a question of an amorous caprice or scientific curiosity. It is a matter of great act of justice to accomplish. Angèle is the heir of the Mérande family. It is necessary to render her the heritage that is her due.

  Then he did his research. By consulting a directory he discovered that there were three Mérandes in Paris: a cabinet-maker living in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, a wine-merchant in Belleville and a Comte de Mérande living a 118 Rue Oudinot. At 118 Rue Oudinot Laurent learned from the concierge that the Comte had died the previous year. He was, it appeared, a man of about fifty, deceased without children leaving only distant heirs. The division of the fortune had not yet taken place and the house was for sale. The advertisement bore the notary’s name, Maître Leflèchu, Rue de l’Élysée.

  Thus far, everything had been easy, but Laurent could not go any further. Maître Leflèchu, very busy and very distracted, smiled thinly when Laurent talked to him about a heritage and a testament.

  “But after all,” Laurent said to him, impatiently. “You know full well that Monsieur de Mérande had a natural child. It’s almost publicly notorious, and it isn’t possible that he didn’t leave anything to his daughter.”

  “Yes, Monsieur,” replied Maître Leflèchu, “I know that story as well as you do, perhaps better. The little Angèle that the Comte went to see every month at the convent in the Avenue d’Eylau was the daughter of one of his gamekeepers, a worthy man killed by accident. I don’t know any more, and no one knows any more. Certainly, Monsieur de Mérande had taken the poor child under his protection, but that’s all. When my noble client died, carried off in a matter of hours, as you doubtless know, by a devastating malady, his heirs wanted to send help to the young woman and her mother. It was, I believe, a considerable sum, but they had the regret of being poorly received.”

  Then Laurent became angry. He had arrived at the state of nervous exasperation that cannot suffer contradiction. The notary replied to him politely and coldly. Finally, as Laurent continued to argue fervently, Maître Leflèchu stood up.

  “Permit me, Monsieur, not to continue this futile conversation. You speak to me about a testament and a deed of acknowledgement. Nothing would be better—but it’s up to you to find the proof. Thus far, your protégée has no more rights than you or I, or my most junior clerk, to the Comte de Mérande’s succession. If you would authorize me to give you some advice, I would engage you to abandon the pursuit of research that cannot have any result. But that is not my concern. Come to me with the documents, and we’ll see what can be done. Until then, the best thing is to remain silent. In the meantime, I have the honor of saluting you, for I have numerous clients waiting for me.”

  That same evening, Laurent left once again for Plancheuille.

  XIV

  Nothing is more somber than Plancheuille in winter: snow everywhere; a bitter, glacial north wind that whistles and roars in the denuded branches of the trees; in the distance, making stains on the white ground, the thatch of scattered houses, sending their plums of smoke into the mist; roads kneaded by mud and snow, crows dotting the sky in hungry bands, croaking; somber gray clouds, running very low, chased by the wind, covering the mountains with their damp obscurity.

  Laurent’s soul was even sadder than the valley of Plancheuille. He understood that he had ruined his life. For every man, there is a fateful moment when his future is determined: the happiness of an entire existence depends on that minuscule point, an imperceptible atom of time. Well, Laurent, at that supreme moment, had been unable to show resolution, energy or perspicacity. He had allowed to pass, without taking advantage of it, the decisive minute that judged his entire life. That minute would never come again, and, so cruel is the fatality of human things, forty years of repentance and tears would not repair that fugitive and irreparable moment.

  Yes, Laurent had ruined his life. The poor fellow had rejected Angèle. And yet, Angèle was love, profound, sweet, immense love, such as poets and great men have conceived it: the love devoid of brake or law that dominates the paltry social conventions in the bosom of which we stifle. She was also knowledge, an infinite and mysterious knowledge that surpasses the wildest conceptions of intelligence, and which, in one bound, would have placed Laurent among the benefactors of humanity. By virtue of a caprice of fortune, he had held a prodigy in his hands. An almost supernatural revelation had b
een offered to him, and he had not taken advantage of it.

  Idiot, triple idiot! Brute, triple brute!

  In the depths of his soul, he has lost all hope. He knows that all is finished between Angèle and him. The rip is profound, irreparable; the past never comes back, because it is the past. No human force can recall the minute that has disappeared, efface the word that has just resounded in space. One word, one alone, like a funeral knell, has resonated in Angèle’s ears, and Angèle has reentered oblivion.

  At the Château de Plancheuille, the General was alone. He had an attack of gout, and it was with great difficulty that he came down to the dining room at meal times.

  “Thank you, my young friend, for this unexpected and unhoped-for visit. You’re truly very kind to think about an old recluse like me. Let’s see, is it to cure me or distract yourself that you’ve come? I divine that you have chagrins…amorous chagrins, perhaps?”

  Laurent shook his head. “Who knows? Even for the happiest man in the world, life is a heavy burden—but in any case, General, I believe that I’ll cure you sooner than myself.”

  “Get away, child that you are, an amorous chagrin isn’t mortal; it’s not even cruel, and when it is cruel, the sweetness holds sway over the cruelty. Oh, how hard it is no longer to feel the ardent and tender sap of youth rising to the heart! Let’s leave all that. What are you going to do here, all alone?”

  “I’ve brought a few books, and I’ll work as best I can. Work is still the best thing one can imagine to soothe the ills of the soul.”

  But Laurent did not set to work. Scarcely was lunch over than he went to the presbytery.