All of a sudden a frightened expression came into her eyes. She reeled against the wall, leaned there a second, and then fell over with a stifled cry.

Anna caught her in her arms, and dragged her along until she reached the bell and rang and rang. Then she stood still, not daring to budge, holding in her arms the heavy delicate woman, her own face close to the face with the rolling eyes. The cries, dull and stifled at first, burst out now in loud shrieks.

The door opened. People hurried in. Outside the door the servants were on the watch. I caught sight of the landlady, who succeeded ill in concealing her comic chagrin.

They laid the woman on the bed. They removed ornaments, unfolded towels, and gave hurried orders.

The crisis subsided and the woman stopped shrieking. She was so happy not to be suffering any more that she laughed. A somewhat constrained reflection of her laugh appeared on the faces bending over her. They undressed her carefully. She let them handle her like a child. They fixed the bed. Her legs looked very thin and her set face seemed reduced to nothing. All you saw was her distended body in the middle of the bed. Her hair was undone and spread around her face like a pool. Two feminine hands plaited it quickly.

Her laughter broke and stopped.

"It is beginning again."

A groan, which grew louder, a fresh burst of shrieks. Anna, her only friend, remained in the room. She looked and listened, filled with thoughts of motherhood. She was thinking that she, too, held within her such travail and such cries.

This lasted the whole day. For hours, from morning until evening, I heard the heart-rending wail rising and falling from that pitiful double being.

At certain moments I fell back, overcome. I could no longer look or listen. I renounced seeing so much truth. Then once more, with an effort, I stood up against the wall and looked into the Room again.

Anna kissed the woman on her forehead, in brave proximity to the immense cry.

When the cry was articulate, it was: "No, no! I do not want to!"

Serious, sickened faces, almost grown old in a few hours with fatigue, passed and repassed.

I heard some one say:

"No need to help it along. Nature must be allowed to take her course. Whatever nature does she does well."

And in surprise my lips repeated this lie, while my eyes were fixed upon the frail, innocent woman who was a prey to stupendous nature, which crushed her, rolled her in her blood, and exacted all the suffering from her that she could yield.

The midwife turned up her sleeves and put on her rubber gloves. She waved her enormous reddish-black, glistening hands like Indian clubs.

And all this turned into a nightmare in which I half believed. My head grew heavy and I was sickened by the smell of blood and carbolic acid poured out by the bottleful.

At a moment when I, feeling too harrowed, was not looking, I heard a cry different from hers, a cry that was scarcely more than the sound of a moving object, a light grating. It was the new being that had unloosened itself, as yet a mere morsel of flesh taken from her flesh— her heart which had just been torn away from her.

This shook me to the depths of my being. I, who had witnessed everything that human beings undergo, I, at this first signal of human life, felt some paternal and fraternal chord—I do not know what— vibrating within me.

She laughed. "How quickly it went!" she said.

. . . .

The day was coming to a close. Complete silence in the room. A plain night lamp was burning, the flame scarcely flickering. The clock, like a poor soul, was ticking faintly. There was hardly a thing near the bed. It was as in a real temple.

She lay stretched out in bed, in ideal quiet, her eyes turned toward the window. Bit by bit, she saw the evening descending upon the most beautiful day in her life.

This ruined mass, this languid face shone with the glory of having created, with a sort of ecstasy which redeemed her suffering, and one saw the new world of thoughts that grew out of her experience.

She thought of the child growing up. She smiled at the joys and sorrows it would cause her. She smiled also at the brother or sister it would have some day.

And I thought of this at the same time that she did, and I saw her martyrdom more clearly than she.

This massacre, this tragedy of flesh is so ordinary and commonplace that every woman carries the memory and imprint of it, and yet nobody really knows it. The doctor, who comes into contact with so much of the same sort of suffering, is not moved by it any more. The woman, who is too tender-hearted, never remembers it. Others who look on at travail have a sentimental interest, which wipes out the agony. But I who saw for the sake of seeing know, in all its horror, the agony of childbirth. I shall never forget the great laceration of life.

The night lamp was placed so that the bed was plunged in shadow. I could no longer see the mother. I no longer knew her. I believed in her.

CHAPTER XI

The woman who had been confined was moved with exquisite care into the next room, which she had occupied previously. It was larger and more comfortable.

They cleaned the room from top to bottom, and I saw Anna and Philip seated in the room again.

"Take care, Philip," Anna was saying, "you do not understand the Christian religion. You really do not know /exactly/ what it is. You speak of it," she added, with a smile, "as women speak of men, or as men when they try to explain women. Its fundamental element is love. It is a covenant of love between human beings who instinctively detest one another. It is also a wealth of love in our hearts to which we respond naturally when we are little children. Later all our tenderness is added to it bit by bit, like treasure to treasure. It is a law of outpouring to which we give ourselves up, and it is the source of that outpouring. It is life, it is almost a work, it is almost a human being."

"But, my dear Anna, that is not the Christian religion. That is you."

. . . .

In the middle of the night, I heard talking through the partition. I struggled with my sleepiness and got up.

The man was alone, in bed. A lamp was burning dimly. He was asleep and talking in his sleep.

He smiled and said "No!" three times with growing ecstasy. Then his smile at the vision he saw faded away. For a moment his face remained set, as if he were waiting, then he looked terrified, and his mouth opened. "Anna! Ah, ah!—Ah, ah!" he cried through gaping lips. At this he awoke and rolled his eyes. He sighed and quieted down. He sat up in bed, still struck and terrified by what had passed through his mind a few seconds before.

He looked round at everything to calm himself and banish his nightmare completely. The familiar sight of the room, with the lamp, so wise and motionless, enthroned in the middle, reassured him. It was balm to this man who had just seen what does not exist, who had just smiled at phantoms and touched them, who had just been mad.

. . . .

I rose the next morning, all broken up. I was restless. I had a severe headache. My eyes were bloodshot. When I looked at them in the mirror, it was as if I saw them through a veil of blood.

When I was alone, free from the visions and scenes to which I devoted my life, all kinds of worries assailed me—worry about my position, which I was risking, worry about the steps I ought to be taking and yet was not taking, worry over myself that I was so intent upon casting off all my obligations and postponing them, and repudiating my wage-earning lot, by which I was destined to be held fast in the slow wheelwork of office routine.

I was also worried by all kinds of minutiæ, annoying because they kept cropping up every minute—not make any noise, not light a light when the Room was dark, hide myself, and hide myself all the time. One evening I got a fit of coughing while listening at the hole. I snatched up my pillow and buried my head in it to keep the sound from coming out of my mouth.

Everything seemed to be in a league to avenge itself upon me for I did not know what. I felt as though I should not be able to hold out much longer. Nevertheless, I made up my mind to keep on looking as long as my health and my courage lasted. It might be bad for me, but it was my duty.

. . . .

The man was sinking. Death was evidently in the house.

It was quite late in the evening. They were sitting at the table opposite each other.

I knew their marriage had taken place that afternoon, and that its purpose had been only to solemnise their approaching farewell. Some white blossoms, lilies and azaleas, were strewn on the table, the mantelpiece, and one armchair. He was fading away like those cut flowers.

"We are married," he said. "You are my wife. You are my wife, Anna!"

It was for the sweetness of saying, "You are my wife," that he had so longed. Nothing more. But he felt so poor, with his few days of life, that it was complete happiness to him.

He looked at her, and she lifted her eyes to him—to him who adored her sisterly tenderness—she who had become devoted to his adoration. What infinite emotion lay hidden in these two silences, which faced each other in a kind of embrace; in the double silence of these two human beings, who, I had observed, never touched each other, not even with the tips of their fingers.

The girl lifted her head, and said, in an unsteady voice:

"It is late. I am going to sleep."

She got up. The lamp, which she set on the mantelpiece, lit up the room.

She trembled. She seemed to be in a dream and not to know how to yield to the dream. Then she raised her arm and took the pins out of her hair. It fell down her back and looked, in the night, as if it were lit by the setting sun.

The man made a sudden movement and looked at her in surprise. Not a word.

She removed a gold brooch from the top of her blouse, and a bit of her bosom appeared.

"What are you doing, Anna, what are you doing?"

"Why, undressing."

She wanted to say this in a natural voice, but had not succeeded. He replied with an inarticulate exclamation, a cry from his heart, which was touched to the quick. Stupefaction, desperate regret, and also the flash of an inconceivable hope agitated him, oppressed him.

"You are my husband."

"Oh," he said, "you know I am nothing." He spoke feebly in a tragic tone. "Married for form's sake," he went on, stammering out fragmentary, incoherent phrases. "I knew it, I knew it—formality—our conventions—"

She stopped, with her hand hesitating on her blouse like a flower, and said:

"You are my husband. It is your right."

He made a faint gesture of denial. She quickly corrected herself.

"No, no, it is not your right. I want to do it."

I began to understand how kind she was trying to be. She wished to give this man, this poor man who was sinking at her feet, a reward that was worthy of her. She wanted to bestow upon him the gift of the sight of her body.

But the thing was harder than the mere bestowal of a gift. It must not look like the mere payment of a debt. He would not have consented to that. She must make him believe it was a voluntary wifely act, a willing caress. She must conceal her suffering and repugnance like a vice. Feeling the difficulty of giving this delicate shade to her sacrifice, she was afraid of herself.

"No, Anna—dear Anna—think—" He was going to say, "Think of Michel," but he did not have the strength at that moment to use this one decisive argument, and only murmured, "You, you!"

"I want to do it," she repeated.

"But I do not want you to. No, no."

He said this in a weaker voice now, overcome by love. Through instinctive nobility, he covered his eyes with his hand, but gradually his hand surrendered and dropped.

She continued to undress, with uncertain movements that showed she hardly knew what she was doing. She took off her black waist, and her bust emerged like the day. When the light shone on her she quivered and crossed her shining arms over her chest. Then she started to unhook the belt of her skirt, her arms curved, her reddened face bent down and her lips tightly compressed, as if she had nothing in mind but the unhooking of her skirt. It dropped to the ground and she stepped out of it with a soft rustle, like the sound the wind makes in a leafy garden.

She leaned against the mantelpiece. Her movements were large, majestic, beautiful, yet dainty and feminine. She pulled off her stockings. Her legs were round and large and smooth as in a statue of Michael Angelo's.

She shivered and stopped, overcome by repugnance.

"I feel a little cold," she said in explanation and went on undressing, revealing her great modesty in violating it.

"Holy Virgin!" the man breathed in a whisper, so as not to frighten her.

. . . .

I have never seen a woman so radiantly beautiful. I had never dreamed of beauty like it. The very first day, her face had struck me by its regularity and unusual charm, and her tall figure—taller than myself— had seemed opulent, yet delicate, but I had never believed in such splendid perfection of form.

In her superhuman proportions she was like some Eve in grand religious frescoes. Big, soft and supple, broad-shouldered, with a full beautiful bosom, small feet, and tapering limbs.

In a dreamy voice, going still further in the bestowal of her supreme gift, she said:

"No one"—she stressed these words with an emphasis amounting to the mention of a certain name—"/no one/—listen—no one, no matter what happens, will ever know what I have just done."

And now she, the giver of a gift, knelt—knelt to her adorer who was prostrated before her like a victim. Her shining knees touched the cheap common carpet. Her chastity clothed her like a beautiful garment. She murmured broken words of gratitude, as though she felt that what she was doing was higher than her duty and more beautiful, and that it glorified her.

. . . .

After she dressed and left the room without their having dared to say anything to each other, I wavered between two doubts. Was she right, or was she wrong? I saw the man cry and I heard him mutter:

"Now I shall not be able to die."

CHAPTER XII

The man was lying in bed. They moved about him carefully. He stirred faintly, said a few words, asked for a drink, smiled and then became silent under the rush of thoughts.

That morning they had seen him fold his hands, and they had asked him whether he wanted them to send for a priest.

"Yes—no," he said.

They went out, and a few minutes later, as if he had been waiting outside the door, a dark-robed priest entered. The two were left alone together.

The dying man turned his face toward the newcomer.

"I am going to die," he said.

"What is your religion?" asked the priest.

"The religion of my own country, the Greek Orthodox Church."

"That is a heresy which you must instantly abjure. There is only one true religion, the Roman Catholic religion. Confess now. I will absolve you and baptise you."

The other did not reply.

"Tell me what sins you have committed. You will repent and everything will be forgiven you."

"My sins?"

"Try to remember. Shall I help you?" He nodded toward the door. "Who is that person?"

"My—wife," said the man with slight hesitation, which did not escape the priest, who was leaning over him with ears pricked. He smelt a rat.

"How long has she been your wife?"

"Two days."

"Oh, two days! Now I have struck it. And before that, you sinned with her?"

"No," said the man.

The priest was put out of countenance.

"Well, I suppose you are not lying. Why didn't you sin? It is unnatural. After all," he insisted, "you are a man."

The sick man was bewildered and began to get excited. Seeing this, the priest said:

"Do not be surprised, my son, if my questions are direct and to the point. I ask you in all simplicity, as is my august duty as a priest. Answer me in the same simple spirit, and you will enter into communion with God," he added, not without kindness.

"She is a young girl," said the old man. "I took her under my protection when she was quite a child. She shared the hardships of my traveller's life, and took care of me. I married her before my death because I am rich and she is poor."

"Was that the only reason—no other reason at all?"

He fixed his look searchingly on the dying man's face, then said, "Eh?" smiling and winking an eye, almost like an accomplice.

"I love her," said the man.

"At last, you are confessing!" cried the priest. He buried his eyes in the eyes of the dying man. The things he said fairly hit him as he lay there.

"So you desired this woman, the flesh of this woman, and for a long time committed a sin in spirit? Didn't you? Eh?

"Tell me, when you were travelling together, how did you arrange for rooms and beds in the hotels?

"You say she took care of you? What did she have to do for you?"

The two men scanned each other's faces keenly, and I saw the misunderstanding between them growing.

The dying man withdrew into himself and became hardened, incredulous before this stranger, with the vulgar appearance, in whose mouth the words of God and truth assumed a grotesque aspect.

However, he made an effort:

"If I have sinned in spirit, to use your words," he said, "it proves that I have not sinned in reality, and why should I repent of what was suffering pure and simple?"

"No theories now. We are not here for theorising. I tell you, a sin committed in spirit is committed in intention, and therefore in effect, and must be confessed and redeemed. Tell me how often you succumbed to guilty thoughts. Give me details."

"But I resisted," moaned the unfortunate man. "That is all I have to say."

"That is not enough. The stain—you are now convinced, I presume, of the justice of the term—the stain ought to be washed out by the truth."

"Very well," said the dying man. "I confess I have committed the sin, and I repent of it."

"That is not a confession, and is none of my business," retorted the priest. "Now tell me, under exactly what circumstances did you yield to temptation with that person, to the suggestions of the evil spirit?"

The man was swept by a wave of rebellion. He half rose and leaned on his elbow, glaring at the stranger, who returned his look steadily.

"Why have I the evil spirit in me?" he demanded.

"You are not the only one. All men have it."

"Then it is God who put it into them, since it is God who made them."

"Ah, you are a debater! Well, if it gives you pleasure, I will answer you. Man has both the spirit of good and the spirit of evil in him, that is to say, the possibility of doing the one or the other. If he succumbs to evil, he is damned. If he triumphs over it, he is rewarded. To be saved, he must earn salvation by struggling with all his powers."

"What powers?"

"Virtue and faith."

"And if he does not have enough virtue and faith, is that his fault?"

"Yes, because that comes from his having too much iniquity and blindness in his soul."

The man sat up again, seized by a new fit of anger which consumed him like a fever.

"Ah," he said, "original sin! There's nothing that can excuse the suffering of good people on earth. It is an abomination."

The priest looked at the rebellious man blankly.

"How else could souls be tried?" he said quite calmly.

"Nothing can excuse the suffering of the good."

"God's designs are inscrutable."

The dying man flung out his emaciated arms. His eyes became hollow.

"You are a liar!"

"Enough," said the priest. "I have listened patiently to your ramblings and feel sorry for you. But there's no good arguing. You must prepare to appear before God, from whom you seem to have lived apart. If you have suffered, you will be consoled in His bosom. Let that suffice for you."

The invalid fell back and lay still for a while. He remained motionless under the white spread, like a reclining sepulchral statue of marble with a face of bronze.

He regained his voice.

"God cannot console me."

"My son, my son, what are you saying?"

"God cannot console me, because He cannot give me what I want."

"Ah, my poor child, how far gone you are in your blindness! Why did you have me summoned?"

"I had hopes, I had hopes."

"Hopes? Hopes of what?"

"I do not know. The things we hope for are always the things we do not know."

His hands wavered in the air, then fell down again.

"Time is passing," said the priest and began all over again.

"Tell me the circumstances of your sin. Tell me. When you were alone with this person, when you two were close together, did you talk to each other, or did you keep quiet?"

"I do not believe in you," said the man.

The priest frowned.

"Repent, and tell me that you believe in the Catholic religion, which will save you."

But the other man shook his head in utter anguish and denied all his happiness.

"Religion—" he began.

The priest interrupted brutally.

"You are not going to start over again! Keep quiet. All your arguments are worthless. Begin by /believing/ in religion and then you will see what it means. I have come to force you to believe."

It was a duel to the end. The two men at the edge of the grave glared at each other like enemies.

"You must believe."

"I do not believe."

"You must."

"You would make truth different from what it is by threats."

"Yes." He stressed the clear, elementary command. "Whether you are convinced or not, believe. Evidence does not count. The one important thing is faith. God does not deign to convince the incredulous. These are no longer the days of miracles. The only miracle is in our hearts, and it is faith. Believe!" He hurled the same word ceaselessly, like stones.

"My son," he continued, more solemnly, standing up, with his large fat hand uplifted, "I exact of you an act of faith."

"Get out!" said the man, with hatred.

But the priest did not stir. Goaded by the urgence of the case, impelled by the necessity of saving this soul in spite of itself, he became implacable.

"You are going to die," he said, "you are going to die. You have only a few more minutes to live. Submit."

"No," said the man.

The black-robed priest caught hold of both his hands.

"Submit. No discussion. You are losing precious time. All your reasoning is of no account. We are alone, you and I before God."

He shook his head with the low bulging forehead, the prominent fleshy nose, wide moist nostrils dark with snuff, thin yellow lips like twine tight across two projecting teeth that showed by themselves in the darkness. There were lines on his forehead and between his eyebrows and around his mouth. His cheeks and chin were covered with a grey layer.

"I represent God," he said. "You are in my presence as if you were in the presence of God. Simply say 'I believe,' and I will absolve you. 'I believe,' that is all. The rest makes no difference to me."

He bent lower and lower, almost gluing his face to that of the dying man, trying to plant his absolution like a blow.

"Simply say with me, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.' I do not ask you to do anything else."

The sick man's face contracted.

"No—no!"

Suddenly the priest rose with a triumphant air.

"At last! You have said it."

"No."

"Ah!" muttered the priest between his teeth.

He twisted the man's hands in his. You felt he would have put his arms around him to stifle him, assassinate him if his death rattle would have brought a confession—so possessed was he with the desire to persuade him, to snatch from him the words he had come to seek on his lips.

He let the withered hands go, paced the room like a wild beast, then came back and stationed himself in front of the bed again.

"Remember—you are going to die," he stammered to the miserable man. "You will soon be in the earth. Say, 'Our Father,' just these two words, nothing else."

He hung over him with his eyes on his mouth, his dark, crouching figure like a demon lying in wait for a soul, like the whole Church over dying humanity.

"Say it! Say it! Say it!"

The sick man tried to wrest himself free. There was a rattle of fury in his throat. With the remnant of his voice, in a low tone, he gasped:

"No!"

"Scoundrel!" cried the priest.

And he struck him in the face. After that neither man made a move for a while. Then the priest went at it again.

"At least you will die holding a crucifix," he snarled.

He drew a crucifix from his pocket, and put it down hard on his breast.

The other man shook himself in a dull horror, as if religion were contagious, and threw the crucifix on the floor.

The priest stooped, mumbling insults. "Carrion, you want to die like a dog, but I am here!" He picked up the crucifix, and with a gleam in his eyes, sure of crushing him, waited for his final chance.

The dying man panted, completely at the end of his strength. The priest, seeing him in his power, laid the crucifix on his breast again. This time the other man let it stay there, unable to do anything but look at it with eyes of hatred. But his eyes did not make it fall.

. . . .

When the black man had gone out into the night, and the patient little by little recovered from the struggle and felt free once more, it occurred to me that the priest in his violence and coarseness was horribly right. A bad priest? No, a good priest, who spoke strictly according to his conscience and belief, and tried to apply his religion simply, such as it was, without hypocritical concessions. Ignorant, clumsy, gross—yes, but honest and logical even in his fearful attempt. In the half-hour that I had listened to him, he had tried by all the means that religion uses and recommends to follow his calling of making converts and giving absolution. He had said everything that a priest cannot help saying. Every dogma had come out clearly and definitely from the mouth of this rough, common hewer of wood and drawer of water for his religion. If the sick man was right, so was the priest.

. . . .

What was that thing near the bed, that thing which loomed so high and did not stir and had not been there a moment before? It stood between me and the leaping flame of the candle placed near the sick man.

I accidentally made a little noise in leaning against the wall, and very slowly the thing turned a face toward me with a frightened look on it that frightened me.

I knew that head. Was it not the landlord himself, a man with peculiar ways, whom we seldom saw?

He had been walking up and down the hall, waiting for the sick man to be left alone. And now he was standing beside him as he lay in bed either asleep or helpless from weakness.

He stretched his hand out toward a bag. In doing so, he kept his eyes on the dying man, so that his hand missed the bag twice.

There was a creaking on the floor above, and both the man and I trembled. A door slammed. He rose as if to keep back an exclamation.

He opened the bag slowly, and I, no longer myself, I was afraid that he would not have time.

He drew a package out of the bag. It made a slight sound. When he saw the roll of banknotes in his hand, I observed the extraordinary gleam on his face. All the sentiments of love were there, adoration, mysticism, and also brutal love, a sort of supernatural ecstasy and the gross satisfaction that was already tasting immediate joys. Yes, all the loves impressed themselves for a moment on the profound humanity of this thief's face.

Some one was waiting for him behind the half-open door. I saw an arm beckoning to him.

He went out on tiptoe, first slowly, then quickly.

I am an honest man, and yet I held my breath along with him. I /understood/ him. There is no use finding excuses for myself. With a horror and a joy akin to his, I was an accomplice in his robbery.

All thefts are induced by passion, even that one, which was cowardly and vulgar. Oh, his look of inextinguishable love for the treasure suddenly snatched up. All offences, all crimes are outrages accomplished in the image of the immense desire for theft, which is the very essence and form of our naked soul.

Does that mean that we must absolve criminals, and that punishment is an injustice? No, we must protect ourselves. Since society rests upon honesty, we must punish criminals to reduce them to impotence, and above all to strike them with terror, and halt others on the threshold of evil deeds. But once the crime is established, we must not look for excuses for it. We run the danger then of always finding excuses. We must condemn it in advance, by virtue of a cold principle. Justice should be as cold as steel.

But justice is not a virtue, as its name seems to indicate. It is an organisation the virtue of which is to be feelingless. It does not aim at expiation. Its function is to establish warning examples, to make of the criminal a thing to frighten off others.

Nobody, nothing has the right to exact expiation. Besides, no one can exact it. Vengeance is too remote from the act and falls, so to speak, upon another person. Expiation, then, is a word that has no application in the world.