The Immoralist — Chapter 1

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My dear friends, I knew you were faithful. At my call you came hurrying, just as I should have done at yours. And yet it is three years now since you had seen me. May your friendship, which withstands absence so well, withstand as well the account I mean to give you. For if I summoned you abruptly, and made you travel all the way to my distant house, it was to see you, that alone, and so that you might hear me. I want no other help than that one: to talk to you. — For I have come to a point in my life beyond which I cannot go. Yet it is not weariness. But I no longer understand. I need… I need to speak, I tell you. To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know how to be free. — Suffer me to speak of myself; I am going to tell you my life, simply, without modesty and without pride, more simply than if I were speaking to myself. Listen to me:

The last time we saw one another was, as I remember, in the neighbourhood of Angers, in the little country church where my marriage was being celebrated. There were few people present, and the excellence of the friends made of that commonplace ceremony a moving one. It seemed to me that everyone was touched, and that touched me in my turn. In the house of the woman who was becoming my wife, a short meal, without laughter and without noise, brought you together with us as we came out of the church; then the carriage that had been ordered took us away, according to the custom which joins in our minds, to the idea of a marriage, the vision of a departure platform.

I knew my wife very little and thought, without suffering much from it, that she knew me no better. I had married her without love, largely to please my father who, as he lay dying, was troubled at leaving me alone. I loved my father tenderly; taken up with his agony, I thought, in those sad moments, of nothing but making his end easier; and so I pledged my life without knowing what life could be. Our betrothal at the dying man's bedside was without laughter, but not without a grave joy, so great was the peace my father drew from it. If I did not love my betrothed, as I say, at least I had never loved any other woman. That, in my eyes, was enough to assure our happiness; and, still ignorant of myself, I believed I was giving myself wholly to her. She was an orphan too and lived with her two brothers. Marceline was barely twenty; I was four years older.

I have said that I did not love her — at least I felt for her nothing of what is called love, but I loved her, if one is willing to understand by that tenderness, a kind of pity, in short a considerable esteem. She was a Catholic and I am a Protestant… but I believed myself so little one! The priest accepted me; I accepted the priest: the thing was played out without a false note.

My father was, as they say, an “atheist” — at least I suppose so, since I was never able, through a kind of invincible reserve which I well believe he shared, to talk with him about his beliefs. My mother's grave Huguenot teaching had slowly faded from my heart along with her lovely image; you know that I lost her young. I did not yet suspect how far that first childhood morality masters us, nor what folds it leaves in the mind. That sort of austerity for which my mother had left me a taste while instilling its principles in me, I carried over entire into study. I was fifteen when I lost my mother; my father took charge of me, surrounded me, and made a passion of instructing me. I already knew Latin and Greek well; with him I quickly learned Hebrew, Sanskrit, and finally Persian and Arabic. By twenty I was so well primed that he ventured to associate me with his own work. It amused him to claim that I was his equal and he wished to give me proof of it. The Essay on the Phrygian Cults, which appeared under his name, was my work; he had scarcely revised it; nothing ever earned him so much praise. He was delighted. As for me, I was abashed to see the deception succeed. But from then on I was launched. The most erudite scholars treated me as their colleague. I smile now at all the honours that were paid me… So I reached twenty-five, having looked at almost nothing but ruins or books, and knowing nothing of life; I spent upon work a singular fervour. I loved a few friends (you were among them), but rather friendship than themselves; my devotion to them was great, but it was a need for nobility; I cherished in myself every fine sentiment. For the rest, I knew nothing of my friends, as I knew nothing of myself. — Not for an instant did the idea come to me that I might have led a different existence, or that one could live otherwise.

For my father and me simple things sufficed; we both spent so little that I reached my twenty-fifth year without knowing that we were rich. I imagined, without often thinking about it, that we had only enough to live on; and I had acquired, at my father's side, such habits of economy that I was almost put out when I understood that we possessed a great deal more. I was so far distracted from such matters that it was not even after the death of my father, whose sole heir I was, that I came to a somewhat clearer awareness of my fortune, but only at the time of my marriage contract, and then to perceive at the same stroke that Marceline brought me almost nothing.

Another thing of which I was ignorant, more important still perhaps, was that my health was very delicate. How should I have known it, never having put it to the test? I caught colds from time to time and treated them carelessly. The too-quiet life I led both weakened and protected me. Marceline, on the contrary, seemed robust — and that she was more so than I, we were soon to learn.

On the very evening of our wedding we slept in my apartment in Paris, where two rooms had been prepared for us. We stayed in Paris only as long as some indispensable purchases required, then made for Marseille, from which we embarked at once for Tunis.

The urgent business, the bewilderment of the last events, come too fast upon each other, the obligatory emotion of the wedding following so soon upon the more real emotion of my mourning, all this had exhausted me. It was only on the boat that I could feel my fatigue. Until then each occupation, while increasing it, had distracted me from it. The enforced leisure on board allowed me at last to reflect. It was, so it seemed to me, for the first time.

For the first time too I consented to be deprived of my work for long. Until then I had granted myself only short holidays. A journey in Spain with my father, shortly after my mother's death, had, it is true, lasted more than a month; another, in Germany, six weeks; others still — but these were journeys of study; my father never let himself be diverted in them from his very precise researches; and I, the moment I ceased to follow him there, read. And yet, hardly had we left Marseille when various memories of Granada and Seville came back to me, of a purer sky, of franker shadows, of festivals, of laughter and of songs. That is what we are going to find again, I thought. I went up on deck and watched Marseille draw away.

Then, abruptly, it occurred to me that I was rather neglecting Marceline.

She was sitting in the bow; I went up to her, and, for the first time truly, looked at her.

Marceline was very pretty. You know it; you have seen her. I reproached myself for not having noticed it at once. I knew her too well to see her with any newness; our families had been close for as long as I could remember; I had seen her grow up; I was used to her grace… For the first time I was astonished, so great did that grace appear to me.

Over a plain black straw hat she let a large veil float; she was fair, but she did not look delicate. Her skirt and her matching bodice were made from a tartan shawl we had chosen together. I had not wanted her to be darkened by my mourning.

She felt that I was looking at her, turned toward me… until then I had shown her nothing but a dutiful attentiveness; I replaced love, as best I could, with a sort of cold gallantry which, I saw clearly, annoyed her a little; did Marceline feel at that instant that I was looking at her for the first time in a different way? In her turn she looked at me fixedly; then, very tenderly, smiled at me. Without speaking, I sat down beside her. I had lived for myself, or at least according to myself, up to then; I had married without imagining in my wife anything other than a comrade, without thinking at all precisely that our union might change my life. I had just understood at last that there the monologue came to an end.

We were alone, the two of us, on deck. She raised her forehead toward me; I pressed her gently against me; she lifted her eyes; I kissed her on the eyelids, and felt abruptly, by grace of my kiss, a sort of new pity; it filled me so violently that I could not hold back my tears.

“What is the matter with you?” Marceline said to me.

We began to talk. Her charming words delighted me. I had formed for myself, as best I could, a few ideas about the silliness of women. Beside her, that evening, it was I who seemed to myself awkward and stupid.

So then, the woman to whom I was binding my life had a life of her own, and a real one! The importance of that thought woke me several times that night; several times I raised myself on my berth to see, on the other berth, lower down, Marceline, my wife, asleep.

The next day the sky was splendid; the sea nearly calm. A few unhurried conversations lessened our constraint still further. The marriage was truly beginning. On the morning of the last day of October we landed at Tunis.

My intention was to stay there only a few days. I shall confess my foolishness to you: nothing in that new country attracted me but Carthage and a few Roman ruins: Timgat, of which Octave had spoken to me, the mosaics of Sousse and above all the amphitheatre of El Djem, to which I proposed to hurry without delay. First one had to reach Sousse, and from Sousse take the mail coach; I wished that nothing between here and there should be worth my attention.

Yet Tunis surprised me greatly. At the touch of new sensations certain parts of me stirred, sleeping faculties which, having never yet been used, had kept all their mysterious youth. I was more astonished, more bewildered, than amused, and what pleased me above all was Marceline's joy.

My fatigue, however, grew greater every day; but I should have thought it shameful to give way to it. I coughed and felt at the top of my chest a strange disturbance. We are going south, I thought; the heat will set me right.

The Sfax coach leaves Sousse at eight in the evening; it passes through El Djem at one in the morning. We had reserved seats in the coupé. I expected to find an uncomfortable rattletrap; on the contrary we were installed quite conveniently. But the cold!… By what childish trust in the mildness of southern air had we, lightly dressed both of us, brought nothing but one shawl? The moment we were clear of Sousse and the shelter of its hills, the wind began to blow. It took great leaps across the plain, howled, whistled, came in through every chink of the doors; nothing could protect us from it. We arrived frozen through, and I, besides, worn out by the jolting of the carriage, and by a horrible cough that shook me still more. What a night! — Arriving at El Djem, no inn; a hideous bordj served instead: what was to be done? The coach was leaving again. The village was asleep; in the night, which seemed immense, one made out vaguely the shapeless mass of the ruins; dogs were howling. We went back into an earthen room where two wretched beds had been set up. Marceline was trembling with cold, but there at least the wind no longer reached us.

The next day was a dreary one. We were surprised, on going out, to see a uniformly grey sky. The wind was still blowing, but less furiously than the day before. The coach was not to pass again until evening… It was, I tell you, a dismal day. The amphitheatre, walked over in a few moments, disappointed me; it even seemed ugly to me, under that dull sky. Perhaps my fatigue helped, increased my boredom. Toward the middle of the day, for want of anything to do, I went back to it, looking in vain for a few inscriptions on the stones. Marceline, sheltered from the wind, was reading an English book which she had luckily brought with her. I came back and sat down beside her.

“What a sad day! You are not too bored?” I said to her.

“No: you see: I am reading.”

“What have we come here to do? You are not cold, at least.”

“Not too cold. And you? Why, it's true! you are quite pale.”

“No…”

In the night the wind took up its strength again… At last the coach arrives. We set off once more.

From the first jolts I felt myself broken. Marceline, very tired, soon fell asleep on my shoulder. But my cough will wake her, I thought, and gently, gently, disengaging myself, I leaned her toward the wall of the carriage. Meanwhile I was no longer coughing, no: I was spitting; this was new; I brought it up without effort; it came in little spurts, at regular intervals; it was so strange a sensation that at first I was almost amused by it, but I was very soon sickened by the unfamiliar taste it left in my mouth. My handkerchief was quickly past use. Already my fingers were full of it. Am I going to wake Marceline?… Luckily I remembered a large scarf which she wore tucked through her belt. I took possession of it gently. The spittle, which I no longer held back, came more abundantly. I was extraordinarily relieved by it. It is the end of the cold, I thought. Suddenly I felt very weak; everything began to turn and I believed I was going to faint. Am I going to wake her?… ah! for shame!… (I have kept, I believe, from my puritan childhood the hatred of any surrender to weakness; I call it at once cowardice.) I took hold of myself, clung on, ended by mastering my dizziness… I thought myself at sea again, and the noise of the wheels became the noise of the waves… But I had stopped spitting.

Then I rolled into a kind of sleep.

When I came out of it, the sky was already full of dawn; Marceline was still asleep. We were drawing near. The scarf I held in my hand was dark, so that at first nothing showed on it; but when I took out my handkerchief again, I saw with stupefaction that it was full of blood.

My first thought was to hide this blood from Marceline. But how? — I was stained all over with it; I saw it everywhere now; my fingers above all… I must have had a nosebleed… That is it; if she asks, I shall tell her that I had a nosebleed.

Marceline was still sleeping. We arrived. She had to get down first and saw nothing. Two rooms had been kept for us. I was able to dash into mine, wash, make the blood disappear. Marceline had seen nothing.

Yet I felt very weak, and had tea sent up for the two of us. And while she was preparing it, very calm, a little pale herself, smiling, a sort of irritation came over me that she should have seen nothing. I felt that I was being unjust, it is true, and told myself: if she saw nothing, it is because I hid it well; no matter; nothing helped; the thing grew in me like an instinct, it invaded me… In the end it was too strong; I could hold out no longer: as though absent-mindedly I said to her:

"I spat blood last night."

She did not cry out; she simply turned much paler, swayed, tried to hold herself up, and fell heavily to the floor.

I flung myself toward her in a kind of fury: Marceline! Marceline! — There now! what have I done! Was it not enough that I should be the one who was ill? — But I was, as I have said, very weak; I came within very little of fainting in my turn. I opened the door; I called; people came running.

In my valise there was, I remembered, a letter of introduction to an officer of the town; I made use of that note to send for the army doctor.

Marceline, meanwhile, had come to herself; she was now at the head of my bed, in which I lay shaking with fever. The army doctor came and examined us both: there was nothing wrong with Marceline, he declared, and she was suffering no effects from her fall; I was gravely stricken; indeed he would not pronounce upon my case, and promised to come back before evening.

He came back, smiled at me, talked to me and gave me various remedies. I understood that he had condemned me. Shall I confess it to you? I did not so much as flinch. I was weary. I simply gave myself up. "After all, what did life offer me? I had worked well to the very end, had done my duty resolutely and passionately. The rest… ah! what is that to me?" I thought, finding my stoicism sufficiently fine. But what I suffered from was the ugliness of the place. "This hotel room is hideous" — and I looked at it. Abruptly it came to me that next door, in a room just like it, was my wife, Marceline; and I heard her speaking. The doctor had not gone; he was talking with her; he was trying to keep his voice down. A little time passed: I must have slept…

When I woke, Marceline was there. I understood that she had been weeping. I did not love life enough to pity myself; but the ugliness of that place tormented me; almost with a kind of pleasure my eyes came to rest on her.

Now, near me, she was writing. She seemed to me pretty. I saw her seal several letters. Then she rose, came over to my bed, and tenderly took my hand:

"How do you feel now?" she said to me. I smiled and said to her sadly:

"Shall I recover?" But at once she answered me: "You will recover!" — with a conviction so passionate that, almost convinced myself, I had a confused sense of all that life might be, of that love of hers, a vague vision of beauties so moving that the tears started from my eyes and I wept a long while, neither able nor willing to hold them back.

By what violence of love she managed to get me away from Sousse; surrounded by what charming attentions, protected, helped, watched over… from Sousse to Tunis, then from Tunis to Constantine, Marceline was admirable. It was at Biskra that I was to recover. Her confidence was perfect; her zeal did not slacken for a moment. She prepared everything, arranged our departures and made sure of our lodgings. What she could not do, alas, was make the journey less atrocious. Several times I thought I must stop and have done with it. I sweated like a dying man, I choked, at moments lost consciousness. At the end of the third day I arrived at Biskra like a dead man.