Read Online The Thibaults by Roger Martin Du Gard - Free Book Online Page B

difficult.) I have begun an ode in rhymed stanzas on the martyrdom I spoke to you about. This is the beginning:

    Ode to Father Perboyre, who died a martyr’s death in
    China, Nov. 20, 1839, and was beatified in fanuary 1889.

    Hail, holy priest, at whose most cruel fate
    All the world shuddered through its length and breadthl
    Thee would I sing, to Heaven predestinate,
And faithful unto death.

But since yesterday I have come to think that my true vocation will be to write, not poems, but stories and, if I have patience enough, novels. A great theme is fermenting in my mind. Listen!
    A young girl, the daughter of a great artist, born in a studio and herself an artist (that’s to say, rather unstable in character and finding her ideal not in family life but in the cult of Beauty), is loved by a sentimental but bourgeois young man, whom her exotic beauty fascinates. But their love changes to bitter hatred and they part. He then marries a harmless little provincial girl, while she, heartbroken for lost love, plunges into debauchery (or dedicates her genius to God—I don’t yet know which). That’s my idea; what does my friend think of it?
    The great thing, you know, is to produce nothing that’s artificial, but to follow one’s bent. Given the instinct to create, one should regard oneself as having the noblest and finest of missions there can be, a great duty to fulfil. Yes, sincerity is all that matters. Sincerity in all things, always. Ah, how cruelly that thought torments me! A thousand times I have fancied I detected in myself that insincerity of the pseudo-artist, pseudo-genius, of which Maupassant discourses in Sur I’Eau. And my heart grew sick with disgust. O dearest, how I thank God that He has given you to me, and how greatly we shall need each other, so as to know ourselves truly and never fall into illusions about the nature of our genius!
    I adore you and I clasp your hand passionately, as we did this morning, do you remember? With all my being, which is yours, wholeheartedly, passionately!
    Take care! QQ has given us a dirty look. He can’t understand that one may have noble thoughts and pass them on to one’s friend—while he goes mumbling on over his Sallust!!
    J.

    Another letter, almost illegible, seemed to have been dashed down without a pause:

Amicus amico.
    Too full, my heart is overflowing! What I can capture of the flood, I commit to paper.
    Born to suffer, love, and hope, I hope and love and suffer! The tale of my life can be told in two lines: What makes me live is love, and I have but one love, YOU!
    From my early youth I always felt a need to pour the emotions welling up in my heart into another, into an understanding heart. How many letters did I write in those days to an imaginary person who matched me like a brother! But, alas, it was only my own heart, carried away by its emotion, speaking, or, rather, writing to itself!! Then suddenly God willed that this Ideal should become Flesh, and it took form in You, my love! How did it begin? There is no telling; step by step, I lose myself in a maze of fancies, without ever tracing it to its origin. Could any one ever imagine anything so voluptuous, so sublime as our love?? I seek in vain for comparisons. Beside our great secret everything else turns pale! It’s a sun that warms, enlightens our two lives. But no words can describe it. Written, it is like the photo of a flower.
    That’s enough!
    Perhaps you are in need of help, of hope or consolation, and here I am sending you not words of affection but the sad effusions of a heart that lives only for itself. Forgive me, my love! I cannot write to you otherwise! I am going through a crisis, my heart is more parched than the stones of a dry watercourse. I am so unsure about everything, unsure of myself; can crueller suffering be??
    Scorn me! Write to me no more! Go, love another!! No longer am I worthy of the gift you make me of yourself!
    What irony is in this implacable destiny that urges me