been mistaken about her, if this is not her true nature which has suddenly been revealed to me.
Lucie gives a little groan. Her hand goes to her throat and she opens wide, astonished eyes. No, it is not from herself that she draws strength to suffer. It comes to her from the outside . . . from the boulevard. She should be taken by the arm, led back to the lights, in the midst of people, into quiet, pink streets: down there one cannot suffer so acutely; she would be mollified, she would find her positive look again and the usual level of her sufferings.
I turn my back on her. After all, she is lucky. I have been much too calm these past three years. I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity. I leave.
Thursday, 11.30
I have worked two hours in the reading-room. I went down to the Cour des Hypotheques to smoke a pipe. A square paved with pinkish bricks. The people of Bouville are proud of it because it dates from the eighteenth century. At the entrance to the Rue Chamade and the Rue Suspedard, old chains bar the way to vehicles. Women in black who come to exercise their dogs glide beneath the arcades, along the walls. They rarely come out into the full light, but they cast ingenue glances from the corner of
27their eyes, on the statue of Gustave Impetraz. They don't know the name of this bronze giant but they see clearly from his frock coat and top hat that he was someone from the beau-monde. He holds his hat in his left hand, placing his right on a stack of papers: it is a little as though their grandfather were there on the pedestal, cast in bronze. They do not need to look at him very long to understand that he thought as they do, exactly as they do, on all subjects. At the service of their obstinately narrow, small ideas he has placed the authority and immense erudition drawn from the papers crushed in his hand. The women in black feel soothed, they can go peacefully minding their own business, running their households, walking their dogs out: they no longer have the responsibility of standing up, for their Christian ideals the high ideals which they get from their fathers; a man of bronze has made himself their guardian.
The encyclopedia devotes a few lines to this personage; I read them last year. I had set the volume on the window ledge; I could see Impetraz' green skull through the pane. I discovered that he flourished around 1890. He was a school inspector. He painted and drew charming sketches and wrote three books: Popularity and the Ancient Greeks (1887), Rollins Pedagogy (1891) and a poetic Testament in 1899. He died in 1902, to the deep regret of his dependents and people of good taste.
I lean against the front of the library. I suck out my pipe which threatens to go out. I see an old lady fearfully leaving the gallery of arcades, looking slyly and obstinately at Impetraz. She suddenly grows bolder, she crosses the courtyard as fast as her legs can carry her, stops for a moment in front of the statue, her jaws trembling. Then she leaves, black against the pink pavement, and disappears into a chink in the wall.
This place might have been gay, around 1800, with its pink bricks and houses. Now there is something dry and evil about it, a delicate touch of horror. It comes from that fellow up there on his pedestal. When they cast this scholar in bronze they also turned out a sorcerer.
I look at Impetraz full in the face. He has no eyes, hardly any nose, and beard eaten away by that strange leprosy which sometimes descends, like an epidemic, on all the statues in one neighbourhood. He bows; on the left hand side near his heart his waistcoat is soiled with a light green stain. He looks. He does not live, but neither is he inanimate. A mute power emanates from him: like a wind driving me backwards: Impetraz would 28
like to chase me out of the Cour des Hypotheques. But I shall not leave before I finish this pipe.
A great, gaunt shadow suddenly springs up behind me. I
Lucie gives a little groan. Her hand goes to her throat and she opens wide, astonished eyes. No, it is not from herself that she draws strength to suffer. It comes to her from the outside . . . from the boulevard. She should be taken by the arm, led back to the lights, in the midst of people, into quiet, pink streets: down there one cannot suffer so acutely; she would be mollified, she would find her positive look again and the usual level of her sufferings.
I turn my back on her. After all, she is lucky. I have been much too calm these past three years. I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity. I leave.
Thursday, 11.30
I have worked two hours in the reading-room. I went down to the Cour des Hypotheques to smoke a pipe. A square paved with pinkish bricks. The people of Bouville are proud of it because it dates from the eighteenth century. At the entrance to the Rue Chamade and the Rue Suspedard, old chains bar the way to vehicles. Women in black who come to exercise their dogs glide beneath the arcades, along the walls. They rarely come out into the full light, but they cast ingenue glances from the corner of
27their eyes, on the statue of Gustave Impetraz. They don't know the name of this bronze giant but they see clearly from his frock coat and top hat that he was someone from the beau-monde. He holds his hat in his left hand, placing his right on a stack of papers: it is a little as though their grandfather were there on the pedestal, cast in bronze. They do not need to look at him very long to understand that he thought as they do, exactly as they do, on all subjects. At the service of their obstinately narrow, small ideas he has placed the authority and immense erudition drawn from the papers crushed in his hand. The women in black feel soothed, they can go peacefully minding their own business, running their households, walking their dogs out: they no longer have the responsibility of standing up, for their Christian ideals the high ideals which they get from their fathers; a man of bronze has made himself their guardian.
The encyclopedia devotes a few lines to this personage; I read them last year. I had set the volume on the window ledge; I could see Impetraz' green skull through the pane. I discovered that he flourished around 1890. He was a school inspector. He painted and drew charming sketches and wrote three books: Popularity and the Ancient Greeks (1887), Rollins Pedagogy (1891) and a poetic Testament in 1899. He died in 1902, to the deep regret of his dependents and people of good taste.
I lean against the front of the library. I suck out my pipe which threatens to go out. I see an old lady fearfully leaving the gallery of arcades, looking slyly and obstinately at Impetraz. She suddenly grows bolder, she crosses the courtyard as fast as her legs can carry her, stops for a moment in front of the statue, her jaws trembling. Then she leaves, black against the pink pavement, and disappears into a chink in the wall.
This place might have been gay, around 1800, with its pink bricks and houses. Now there is something dry and evil about it, a delicate touch of horror. It comes from that fellow up there on his pedestal. When they cast this scholar in bronze they also turned out a sorcerer.
I look at Impetraz full in the face. He has no eyes, hardly any nose, and beard eaten away by that strange leprosy which sometimes descends, like an epidemic, on all the statues in one neighbourhood. He bows; on the left hand side near his heart his waistcoat is soiled with a light green stain. He looks. He does not live, but neither is he inanimate. A mute power emanates from him: like a wind driving me backwards: Impetraz would 28
like to chase me out of the Cour des Hypotheques. But I shall not leave before I finish this pipe.
A great, gaunt shadow suddenly springs up behind me. I
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