Clotilde read the letter attentively to the end without a word, without a sign. Then she said simply:

"Well, you are going to answer it, are you not? I refuse."

He was obliged to exercise a strong effort of self-control to avoid uttering a great cry of joy, as he pressed her to his heart. As if it were another person who spoke, he heard himself saying quietly:

"You refuse--impossible! You must reflect. Let us wait till to-morrow to give an answer; and let us talk it over, shall we?"

Surprised, she cried excitedly:

"Part from each other! and why? And would you really consent to it? What folly! we love each other, and you would have me leave you and go away where no one cares for me! How could you think of such a thing? It would be stupid."

He avoided touching on this side of the question, and hastened to speak of promises made--of duty.

"Remember, my dear, how greatly affected you were when I told you that Maxime was in danger. And think of him now, struck down by disease, helpless and alone, calling you to his side. Can you abandon him in that situation? You have a duty to fulfil toward him."

"A duty?" she cried. "Have I any duties toward a brother who has never occupied himself with me? My only duty is where my heart is."

"But you have promised. I have promised for you. I have said that you were rational, and you are not going to belie my words."

"Rational? It is you who are not rational. It is not rational to separate when to do so would make us both die of grief."

And with an angry gesture she closed the discussion, saying:

"Besides, what is the use of talking about it? There is nothing simpler; it is only necessary to say a single word. Answer me. Are you tired of me? Do you wish to send me away?"

He uttered a cry.

"Send you away! I! Great G.o.d!"

"Then it is all settled. If you do not send me away I shall remain."

She laughed now, and, running to her desk, wrote in red pencil across her brother's letter two words--"I refuse;" then she called Martine and insisted upon her taking the letter back at once. Pascal was radiant; a wave of happiness so intense inundated his being that he let her have her way. The joy of keeping her with him deprived him even of his power of reasoning.

But that very night, what remorse did he not feel for having been so cowardly! He had again yielded to his longing for happiness. A deathlike sweat broke out upon him when he saw her in imagination far away; himself alone, without her, without that caressing and subtle essence that pervaded the atmosphere when she was near; her breath, her brightness, her courageous rect.i.tude, and the dear presence, physical and mental, which had now become as necessary to his life as the light of day itself. She must leave him, and he must find the strength to die of it. He despised himself for his want of courage, he judged the situation with terrible clear-sightedness. All was ended. An honorable existence and a fortune awaited her with her brother; he could not carry his senile selfishness so far as to keep her any longer in the misery in which he was, to be scorned and despised. And fainting at the thought of all he was losing, he swore to himself that he would be strong, that he would not accept the sacrifice of this child, that he would restore her to happiness and to life, in her own despite.

And now the struggle of self-abnegation began. Some days pa.s.sed; he had demonstrated to her so clearly the rudeness of her "I refuse," on Maxime's letter, that she had written a long letter to her grandmother, explaining to her the reasons for her refusal. But still she would not leave La Souleiade. As Pascal had grown extremely parsimonious, in his desire to trench as little as possible on the money obtained by the sale of the jewels, she surpa.s.sed herself, eating her dry bread with merry laughter. One morning he surprised her giving lessons of economy to Martine. Twenty times a day she would look at him intently and then throw herself on his neck and cover his face with kisses, to combat the dreadful idea of a separation, which she saw always in his eyes. Then she had another argument. One evening after dinner he was seized with a palpitation of the heart, and almost fainted. This surprised him; he had never suffered from the heart, and he believed it to be simply a return of his old nervous trouble. Since his great happiness he had felt less strong, with an odd sensation, as if some delicate hidden spring had snapped within him. Greatly alarmed, she hurried to his a.s.sistance.

Well! now he would no doubt never speak again of her going away. When one loved people, and they were ill, one stayed with them to take care of them.

The struggle thus became a daily, an hourly one. It was a continual a.s.sault made by affection, by devotion, by self-abnegation, in the one desire for another's happiness. But while her kindness and tenderness made the thought of her departure only the more cruel for Pascal, he felt every day more and more strongly the necessity for it. His resolution was now taken. But he remained at bay, trembling and hesitating as to the means of persuading her. He pictured to himself her despair, her tears; what should he do? how should he tell her? how could they bring themselves to give each other a last embrace, never to see each other again? And the days pa.s.sed, and he could think of nothing, and he began once more to accuse himself of cowardice.

Sometimes she would say jestingly, with a touch of affectionate malice:

"Master, you are too kind-hearted not to keep me."

But this vexed him; he grew excited, and with gloomy despair answered:

"No, no! don't talk of my kindness. If I were really kind you would have been long ago with your brother, leading an easy and honorable life, with a bright and tranquil future before you, instead of obstinately remaining here, despised, poor, and without any prospect, to be the sad companion of an old fool like me! No, I am nothing but a coward and a dishonorable man!"

She hastily stopped him. And it was in truth his kindness of heart, above all, that bled, that immense kindness of heart which sprang from his love of life, which he diffused over persons and things, in his continual care for the happiness of every one and everything. To be kind, was not this to love her, to make her happy, at the price of his own happiness? This was the kindness which it was necessary for him to exercise, and which he felt that he would one day exercise, heroic and decisive. But like the wretch who has resolved upon suicide, he waited for the opportunity, the hour, and the means, to carry out his design.

Early one morning, on going into the workroom, Clotilde was surprised to see Dr. Pascal seated at his table. It was many weeks since he had either opened a book or touched a pen.

"Why! you are working?" she said.

Without raising his head he answered absently:

"Yes; this is the genealogical tree that I had not even brought up to date."

She stood behind him for a few moments, looking at him writing. He was completing the notices of Aunt Dide, of Uncle Macquart, and of little Charles, writing the dates of their death. Then, as he did not stir, seeming not to know that she was there, waiting for the kisses and the smiles of other mornings, she walked idly over to the window and back again.

"So you are in earnest," she said, "you are really working?"

"Certainly; you see I ought to have noted down these deaths last month.

And I have a heap of work waiting there for me."

She looked at him fixedly, with that steady inquiring gaze with which she sought to read his thoughts.

"Very well, let us work. If you have papers to examine, or notes to copy, give them to me."

And from this day forth he affected to give himself up entirely to work.

Besides, it was one of his theories that absolute rest was unprofitable, that it should never be prescribed, even to the overworked. As the fish lives in the water, so a man lives only in the external medium which surrounds him, the sensations which he receives from it transforming themselves in him into impulses, thoughts, and acts; so that if there were absolute rest, if he continued to receive sensations without giving them out again, digested and transformed, an engorgement would result, a _malaise_, an inevitable loss of equilibrium. For himself he had always found work to be the best regulator of his existence. Even on the mornings when he felt ill, if he set to work he recovered his equipoise.

He never felt better than when he was engaged on some long work, methodically planned out beforehand, so many pages to so many hours every morning, and he compared this work to a balancing-pole, which enabled him to maintain his equilibrium in the midst of daily miseries, weaknesses, and mistakes. So that he attributed entirely to the idleness in which he had been living for some weeks past, the palpitation which at times made him feel as if he were going to suffocate. If he wished to recover his health he had only to take up again his great work.

And Pascal spent hours developing and explaining these theories to Clotilde, with a feverish and exaggerated enthusiasm. He seemed to be once more possessed by the love of knowledge and study in which, up to the time of his sudden pa.s.sion for her, he had spent his life exclusively. He repeated to her that he could not leave his work unfinished, that he had still a great deal to do, if he desired to leave a lasting monument behind him. His anxiety about the envelopes seemed to have taken possession of him again; he opened the large press twenty times a day, taking them down from the upper shelf and enriching them by new notes. His ideas on heredity were already undergoing a transformation; he would have liked to review the whole, to recast the whole, to deduce from the family history, natural and social, a vast synthesis, a resume, in broad strokes, of all humanity. Then, besides, he reviewed his method of treatment by hypodermic injections, with the purpose of amplifying it--a confused vision of a new therapeutics; a vague and remote theory based on his convictions and his personal experience of the beneficent dynamic influence of work.

Now every morning, when he seated himself at his table, he would lament:

"I shall not live long enough; life is too short."

He seemed to feel that he must not lose another hour. And one morning he looked up abruptly and said to his companion, who was copying a ma.n.u.script at his side:

"Listen well, Clotilde. If I should die--"

"What an idea!" she protested, terrified.

"If I should die," he resumed, "listen to me well--close all the doors immediately. You are to keep the envelopes, you, you only. And when you have collected all my other ma.n.u.scripts, send them to Ramond. These are my last wishes, do you hear?"

But she refused to listen to him.

"No, no!" she cried hastily, "you talk nonsense!"

"Clotilde, swear to me that you will keep the envelopes, and that you will send all my other papers to Ramond."

At last, now very serious, and her eyes filled with tears, she gave him the promise he desired. He caught her in his arms, he, too, deeply moved, and lavished caresses upon her, as if his heart had all at once reopened to her. Presently he recovered his calmness, and spoke of his fears. Since he had been trying to work they seemed to have returned. He kept constant watch upon the press, pretending to have observed Martine prowling about it. Might they not work upon the fanaticism of this girl, and urge her to a bad action, persuading her that she was securing her master's eternal welfare? He had suffered so much from suspicion! In the dread of approaching solitude his former tortures returned--the tortures of the scientist, who is menaced and persecuted by his own, at his own fireside, in his very flesh, in the work of his brain.

One evening, when he was again discussing this subject with Clotilde, he said unthinkingly:

"You know that when you are no longer here--"