to this very day, in spite of all the years that have gone by and all the sorrows that I have experienced, not a day passes without my thinking of it sadly.
One afternoon father and I were walking in the garden. My father carried a long stick ending in an iron skewer, by means of which he unearthed snails and limaxes that were eating up the plants. Suddenly on the edge of the basin we noticed a little kitten drinking. We hid behind a thick shrub.
"Child," my father said in a low voice, "go quickly, fetch my musket and come back. Be careful the cat does not see you."
And squatting down, he moved apart the twigs of the shrub so that he might observe every movement of the kitten which, resting on its forelegs, its neck drawn out and wagging its tail, was lapping the water in the basin and turning its head from time to time to lick its mouth and scratch its neck.
"Come on," repeated my father, "be off!" I pitied the little kitten. It was so pretty with its tawny fur striped with silky black, its supple and graceful movements and its tongue, like the petal of a rose, which pumped water! I would have liked to disobey my father, I even thought of making a noise, I wanted to cough, to brush the twigs apart rudely in order to warn the poor animal of the danger ahead. But my father looked at me with eyes so severe that I walked away in the direction of the house. Pretty soon I came back with the musket. The kitten was still there, confident and gay. It had finished drinking. Sitting on its back, its ears pricked up and eyes shining, it was following the flight of a butterfly in the air. Oh, what a moment of unspeakable anguish that was for me! My heart was beating so powerfully that I feared I was going to faint.
"Papa! Papa!" I shouted. At the same time a sharp report was heard, which sounded like the crack of a whip.
"Damned rascal!" my father swore.
He aimed again. I saw his finger pull the trigger; quickly I shut my eyes and stopped my ears. Bang!! … and I heard a mewing, at first plaintive and then sorrowful, oh, so sorrowful that one might have said it was the cry of a child. And the little kitten jumped, writhed, pawed the grass and did not stir any more.
Of an absolutely mediocre mind, tender hearted, though he seemed indifferent to everything which did not appeal to his vanity or did not affect his professional interests, lavish of counsel, ready to render aid, conservative, of graceful carriage and gay, my father justly enjoyed the respect of everybody. My mother, a young woman of the nobility, had brought no fortune with her as a dowry; instead, she had brought with her powerful connections, a closer alliance with the petty aristocracy of the country, which was considered just as useful as an increment in cash or an acquisition of land. Although his powers of observation were very limited and he did not boast of any ability to read souls as well as he could read a marriage contract or explain the legal points of a testament, my father very soon realized the difference of birth, education and temperament which separated him from his wife.
Whether or not in the beginning he felt hurt on that score, I do not know; at any rate he never showed it. He resigned himself to it. Between him, who was rather awkward, ignorant and indifferent—and her, who was educated, refined and emotional, there was a chasm which he never for a moment tried to bridge, having neither the desire nor the ability to do so. This moral situation of two beings united for all time, whom no community of thought and aspiration ever brought in close contact with each other, did not in the least trouble my father who considered himself satisfied if he found the house well managed, the meals well regulated, his habits and idiosyncrasies well respected. To my mother, on the other hand, this condition was very painful and made her heart heavy.
My mother was not beautiful, not even good looking, but there was so much simple dignity in her carriage, so much natural gracefulness in her movements, an expression of such broad kindness on her lips, somewhat pale, and in her eyes which by turns changed their color like the skies in April and shone like a sapphire, a smile so caressing, so sad, so humble, that one overlooked her forehead which was a little too high, swelling out under spots of hair irregularly planted, her nose all too large and her skin which was ash-colored and metal-like in appearance and which at times had an eruption of pimples on it. In her presence, as one of her old friends often told me, and as since then I sorrowfully realized myself, one felt at first slightly affected, then gradually carried away and finally violently possessed by a strange feeling of sympathy in which there was mingled a sort of affectionate respect, a vague desire, pity, and a longing to offer oneself as a sacrifice for her. Despite her physical imperfections or rather because of these very imperfections, she possessed the sad and irresistible charm which is given to certain creatures privileged by misfortune, and around whom there floats an atmosphere of something irreparable. Her childhood and her early youth were periods of illness and were marked by some disquieting nervous fits. But it was hoped that marriage, in modifying the conditions of her existence, would restore her health which the physicians believed was suffering only from an excessive sensitiveness. It was not so at all. Marriage, on the contrary, only developed the morbid tendencies that were in her, and her sensitiveness was heightened to such a degree that, among other alarming symptoms, my poor mother could not stand the slightest odor, without being thrown into a fit, which always ended in a swoon. Of what did she suffer? Why these melancholic fits, these prostrations, which left her huddled up on the lounge for entire days, motionless and sullen like an old paralytic? Why these tears which would suddenly choke her throat to suffocation and for hours roll from her eyes in burning streams? Why this disgust with everything, which nothing could overcome: neither distractions nor prayers? She could not tell, for she herself did not know … Of the causes of her physical ailments, her mental tortures, her hallucinations which filled her heart and brains with a passionate desire to die, she knew nothing. She knew not why one evening as she sat in front of the glowing fireplace, she was suddenly seized with a horrible temptation to roll on the fire grate, to deliver her body over to the kisses of the flame which called her, fascinated her, sang to her hymns of unknown love. Nor did she know why on another day, while taking a stroll in the country and noticing a man walking in a half-mowed meadow with his scythe on the shoulder, she ran towards him with outstretched arms, shouting "Death, O blessed death, take me, carry me away!" No, she knew not the cause or reason for all that. What she did know was that at such moments the image of her mother, her dead mother, was always before her, the image of her mother whom she herself, one Sunday morning, had found hanging from the chandelier in the parlor. And she again beheld the dead body which oscillated slowly in the air, she saw the face all black, the eyes all white and without pupils, she saw everything up to the sunbeam which, penetrating through the closed shutters, illuminated with a tragic light the tongue, stuck out, and the swollen lips. This anguish, these frenzies, this yearning for death, her mother had no doubt transmitted to her when she gave life to her; it is from her mother's side that she drew, it is from her mother's breast that she drank the poison, this poison which now filled her veins, with which her flesh was permeated, which fuddled her brain, which gnawed at her soul. During the intervals of calm which grew less frequent as the days, months and years passed by, she often thought of these things; and brooding over her life, recalling its remotest incidents and comparing the physical resemblances between the mother who died voluntarily and the daughter who wished to die, she felt more and more upon her the crushing weight of this lugubrious inheritance. She exalted in and completely abandoned herself to the idea that it was impossible for her to resist the fate of her ancestors who appeared to her as a long chain of suicides emerging from the depth of night, far in the past, and extending over ages to terminate … where? At this question her eyes became troubled, her temples grew moist with a cold sweat and her hands gripped her throat as if striving to grasp the imaginary cord, the loop of which she felt was bruising her neck and choking her. Every object seemed to her an instrument of fatal death; everything reminded her of the image of death, decomposed and bleeding; the branches of the trees appeared to her as so many sinister gibbets, and in the green water of the fish pond, among the reeds and water lilies, in the river shaded by tall herbage, she distinguished the floating form covered with slime.
In the meantime my father, squatted behind some thick shrub, musket in hand, was watching a cat or bombarding some vocalizing
