The Girls Read online

  There are two or three young men here who would, I think, willingly marry me. They are not unattractive: young, pleasant, perfectly decent and well-bred. One of them at least I could perhaps succeed in loving if I really put my mind to it. But in what a limited environment - provincial tradespeople - oblivious to poetry, to everything profound or subtle or disinterested. A married man can perhaps detach himself from his environment. But a married woman? She cannot cut herself off either from her husband or from his circle, or even risk shocking them. Can you imagine how devastating it is for a woman to be even the slightest bit superior? That is the crux of my tragedy. The pleasure of disdaining mediocrities has to be paid for. And liking mediocrities must be paid for by the mediocrity of the pleasure one gets from them. Ah! what a wife I would have been for an artist! For to be an artist's wife one must love the artist even more than the man, dedicate oneself to making the former great and the latter happy. And then, how restful to be alone together, to understand each other's unspoken thoughts.

  I have a horror of old maids. I pity the unhappily married. Illicit love revolts me. So? ... And I shall be thirty in April! Thirty, the crucial age.... My head spins. I'm terrified of botching everything. Oh Costals, what am I to do with my life?

  One thing alone sustains me: your existence. You alone give me the poise a woman needs. If I shut my eyes an instant and tell myself that you exist, I feel assuaged. Yes, one must thank creatures such as you for existing, simply for existing! Is fire diminished by needing something to kindle it? I love you like a torch with which I set myself alight. So what has happened to me is this: you have made every other man uninteresting to me, for the rest of my life, and every other future meaningless. I can no longer envisage any normal happiness - I mean a commonplace marriage - without my whole being revolting against the insipidity of it, because I shall never have the strength to devote my life to a man I scarcely love at all. Imagine a mortal woman who had loved Jupiter, and could not then love any man, though wanting desperately to be able to love one.

  How I should have liked to be able to do something for you, for your work! But I can do nothing, nothing! If I could write, I should write articles about you, or a book. I almost wish that you were poor, sickly, unrecognized. I almost wish that you were wandering in search of your life's work, as I am searching for mine. Your weakness would be my strength. But no, you are entirely self-sufficient, you are embedded, as it were, in your solitude, and what makes others hate you - your self-assurance - is for me a matter for regret. There is no hope of my ever being able to feel this bond between us, this unique bond: a conviction on your part that you can put your trust in me absolutely. But tell me, at least, that you will never need such devotion! For if, one day, you did come to need it, how terrible if I could not respond to your appeal because I was bogged down in some dreary task, undertaken out of despair of ever finding anything better to do!

  Once, as I was writing to you, this sentence came to the tip of my pen: 'I love you with all my heart.' I did not dare write it, in case you misunderstood. Now that you know me, now that you realize that I am not and never will be 'in love' with you, I can write it with complete confidence, I can write it without the slightest reticence: I love you with all my heart.

  You must not answer; you must forget this letter or keep only an impression of tenderness from it, if possible. Above all, you must not make me atone for it by changing your attitude towards me.

  A.H.

  P.S. I am having a dark-red dress made for the winter, all velvety and light. And I've bought myself a grey coat, very delicate and chic - oh! so chic - which looks as though it might have come from a smart couturier (it is in fact a copy). I shall also buy a tight-fitting grey feather toque, because it is so kind to the face. ... You see how light-hearted I am in spite of you.

  To be elegant, perhaps even pretty. ... And all for what, for whom? For the Saint-Léonardins. ...

  Goodnight, Monsieur

  to Andrée Hacquebaut

  Saint-Léonard

  Pierre Costals

  Paris

  26 November 1926

  Dear Mademoiselle,

  I write in answer to your esteemed letter of the 11th inst. with the regulation fortnight's delay. One week during which I did not even open your envelope (a little quarantine to which I submit all letters from women, after which time there is a chance that they may no longer be contagious). And one week during which I put off replying to you day after day because the thought of it bored me. Forgive me, but I find it difficult to remain completely serious when people tell me they love me.

  The fact is that I did not find your letter at all agreeable. Why leave the nice, friendly plane we were on for the vulgarity and tediousness of 'sentiment'? You have now moved on to such exalted heights that I doubt whether I shall be able to follow you. I treated you with complete naturalness, as an intelligent comrade, if you like. Now I shall have to watch my step. Now I shall feel I have obligations towards you: an obligation to show myself worthy of your sublime gift of yourself, an obligation to treat you with infinite consideration (of which this letter is already a sample), an obligation to give you in return something more or less in proportion with what you have done me the honour of offering me. So many obligations! And obligations, alas, have never been my strong suit. I'm afraid you have been both clumsy and rash. You should have kept it all to yourself, so that I could have gone on pretending that I hadn't understood.

  To change the subject: you surprised me one day by confessing your ignorance of English literature. I have just inherited the library of an old lady who had, I suppose, a kind of feeling for me which it should be easy for you to reconstruct by analogy. Would you like me to send you a little parcel of English literature in translation? I already have the books in English. And it distresses me to think that a girl like you might spend her whole life without having been brought into contact with the genius of England.

  Cordially yours, dear Mademoiselle. But keep a tight rein on yourself, I beg of you.

  C.

  to Pierre Costals

  Paris

  Andrée Hacquebaut

  Saint-Léonard

  November 1926

  How absurd you are! Imagine thinking that I wanted to lay hands on you! And immediately you shake with fright, in your ferocious desire for independence.

  What, after all, does it all amount to? As I have told you, you are like a god to me. And isn't a god more or less a mirror in which to contemplate oneself and see oneself in a better light? Does one not create him in one's own image, only better? That is what you are, my sublimated double, the strongest, the proudest, the best of me. I have, then, a calm, cold passion for you. And beside this, my friendship. You are at once a god and a chum - isn't that delicious?

  What obligations does it impose on you? Give me what you have given me up to now - I ask nothing more. I shall never weigh more than a feather in your life. How small one would be prepared to make oneself, in order to remain close to the man one loves! As long as I can write to you, I shall not be really unhappy. And what do I care even if you grow tired of me, since I shall never grow tired of you, and I shall still have your books? At the worst, even if you no longer gave me anything more than you give everyone else, it would still be a noble gift. Hence my attachment to you is calm and relaxed.

  I fancy Mme de Beaumont, who loved Chateaubriand more than Chateaubriand loved her, must have written to him as I am writing to you.

  How deep-rooted the idea of mutual obligation is! One tells a person again and again: 'Don't worry. For your sake and for mine, I do not and will not love you. I have a passionate friendship for you, because it gives me pleasure, because I want it, because it makes me happy, because it is gratifying to think about another person, to look after him, to make him happy. I ask nothing of you. You owe me nothing. I love you at my own risk.' And the other person imagines that you love him with an irresistible love and are miserable because it is not requited. Nothing of th
e kind.

  You will not, no, you cannot resent this melancholy half-offering of mine, finer in quality than the offerings of other women. Do not withhold your esteem from me. And write to me sometimes, I beg of you. When you maintain an absolute silence for a long time, I begin to fade away, I lapse into a sort of moral and spiritual lethargy. To understand becomes a matter of indifference to me, if I cannot make you share the fruit of my conquest.

  I give you my hand.

  A.H.

  I accept with gratitude your offer of English books, although I would have preferred not to owe you anything for the moment.

  to Andrée Hacquebaut

  Saint-Léonard

  Pierre Costals

  Paris

  30 November 1926

  I recognize, dear Mademoiselle, that loving me is no fun. The moment I realize that someone cares for me, I'm disconcerted and annoyed. My next impulse is to put myself on the defensive. I have had a deep attachment for three or four people in my life, and they were always people I could have sworn were not even remotely drawn towards me. I think if they had loved me I should have been inclined to steer clear of them.

  To be loved more than one loves oneself is one of the crosses of life. Because it obliges one either to feign a reciprocal passion which one does not feel, or to cause pain by one's coldness and the rebuffs one administers. In either case there is constraint (and a man like me cannot feel constrained without the risk of turning nasty), and in either case pain. As Bossuet so powerfully put it: 'To love someone too much is to do him an irreparable wrong.' It's almost what I once wrote myself: 'To love without being loved is to do more harm than good.' The consequence is to be found in La Rochefoucauld: 'We are more prepared to love those who hate us than those who love us more than we would wish.' And your humble servant concludes: one should never tell people one loves them without asking their forgiveness.

  Anyone I love takes away part of my freedom, but in that case it is I who wished it; and there is so much pleasure in loving that one gladly sacrifices something for its sake. Anyone who loves me takes away all my freedom. Anyone who admires me (as a writer) threatens to take it away from me. I even fear those who understand me, which is why I spend so much time covering my tracks - both in my private life and in the persona I express through my books. What would have delighted me, had I loved God, is the thought that God gives nothing in return.

  I am equally afraid, needless to say, of being the object of a physical desire which I could not reciprocate. I would prefer to have an utterly passive woman, a block of wood, in my arms than a woman who got more pleasure from contact with me than I from contact with her. I can remember some truly hellish nights. ... There will surely be demonesses in hell who desire one without one's desiring them. It is inconceivable that a God who is an expert in torture will not have thought of that.

  I know so well how painful it is to be loved more than one loves oneself that I have always kept a careful watch on myself when I felt that I loved more than I was loved. That has happened to me sometimes, of course, and also to feel that my desire was only tolerated out of complaisance: the person concerned had scruples, or else was frigid. How careful I was then to make my presence felt as little as possible, how gingerly I advanced, how attentively I watched for the first sign of lassitude, in order to go into reverse, to meet less frequently! ... Needless to say I suffered. But I knew that it was vital for my own sake, that I would lose everything if I tried to impose myself, and that anyhow it was I who was in the wrong for loving too much.

  I know all about love: it's a feeling I have little respect for. Besides, it doesn't exist in nature; it's an invention of women. If a price were put on my head I should feel safer in the wilds, like a hunted animal, than with a woman who was in love with me. But there is affection. And there is affection mixed with desire, a splendid thing. In every one of the books I have published you will find, in one form or another, this affirmation: 'What matters to me above everything is loving.' But it is never a question of 'love'. It is a compound of affection and desire, which is not the same thing. 'A compound of affection and desire - what's that if it isn't love?' Well, no, it isn't love. 'Explain.' ... I don't feel like it. Women do not understand these things.

  And finally, I don't like people needing me, intellectually, 'emotionally', or carnally. The inexplicable pleasure which my presence inspires in certain people diminishes them in my eyes. What do I care about having a place in someone else's universe!

  I enclose an article I wrote on the subject many years ago. I would write it differently today. It is overstated and lacking in subtlety. But on the basic point I haven't changed.

  One word more. You mention Pauline de Beaumont. I suspect Chateaubriand would not have done what he did for her if she hadn't been dying. He knew it was only for a brief moment.

  My compliments to you, dear Mademoiselle.

  C.

  Fragment of an article by Costals

  'The ideal in love is to love without being loved in return.'

  ...For the repugnance which some men feel for being loved, I can see several reasons, contradictory of course, inconsistency being a characteristic of the male.

  Pride. - The desire to keep the initiative. In the love that others bear us, there is always something which eludes us, which threatens to catch us off guard, perhaps to overwhelm us, which has designs on us, which seeks to control us. Even in love, even when we are two, we do not want to be two, we want to remain alone.

  Humility, or, if this seems too strong a word, absence of conceit. - The humility of a clear-sighted man, who does not think himself especially handsome or especially worthy, and finds it somehow ridiculous that his slightest gesture, word, silence, etc., can create happiness or misery. What an unfair power he is given! I have no great opinion of a man who is conceited enough to think aloud: 'She loves me', who does not try at least to minimize the thing by saying: 'She's getting worked up about me.' Whereby, no doubt, he belittles the woman, but only because he has first of all belittled himself.

  An attitude that I would compare, for instance, to that of a writer who finds it ridiculous to have 'disciples', because he knows what his personality is made of, and what his 'message' adds up to. Any man worthy of the name despises the influence he exercises, in whatever direction, and puts up with having to exercise it as the price he must pay for his urge to express himself. We do not want to be dependent. How then can we approve of those who would depend on us? It is an exalted view of human nature that makes one refuse to be a leader.

  Dignity. - Embarrassment and shame at the passive role a man who is loved has to play. For him, the state of being loved is suitable only to women, animals and children. For a man to allow himself to be embraced, caressed, held hands with, looked at with swimming eyes - ugh! (Even the majority of children, however effeminate they may be in France, thoroughly dislike being kissed. They put up with it out of politeness, and because they have to, grown-ups being more muscular than they are. Their impatience with these slobberings is obvious to everyone except the slobberer, who thinks they are delighted by it.)

  The desire to remain free, to protect oneself. - A man who is loved is a prisoner. No need to dwell on this, since it is well known.

  to Pierre Costals

  Paris

  Thérèse Pantevin

  La Vallée Maurienne

  3 December 1926

  †

  A.M.D.G.

  You have answered me! You have written to me to say that you would be willing to read a letter from me every three weeks! I have read this and kissed these words. Do not let me languish. If you could only see how pale I am! Quick, write some more words for me to kiss.

  I crushed your letter against my breast, against my medals, until they hurt me, and the more they hurt the more it did me good. Everything that hurts me does me good. I dream of you coming into my room, but if you really came in I would probably begin to cry.

  If I could, I would gladly leave
the 'plague centre'. But where could I go? I ought to set out, like Abraham, walking straight ahead without knowing where, in the holy freedom of the children of God. For I dare not go to you. I would not know what to say to you, you would not be able to drag a word out of me ... and yet I await a sign from you, in spite of my terrible fear of disappointing you. But I don't spend all my time in the house; I'm often in the fields. I go to the local town three or four times a year. Last week we went to the fair at N— and I enjoyed myself very much. You see I don't deserve to be a nun, if that is what you meant.

  However, do not start thinking I'm a flibbertigibbet. Every day I repose in the Eucharist, as I repose body and soul beside you in the silence of each night, and then everything that exists reposes in me. And I pray for my poor father, who does not believe in God, and who treats me so roughly. Do you know what he said just now at supper? 'It would be better to rear pigs than daughters.' He was looking at me when he said it.

  Good-bye, my friend. My heart is heavy with all I have to give you. Love me just one jot as much as I love you, and Eternity will take us to its bosom.

  Marie Paradis

  to Thérèse Pantevin

  La Vallée Maurienne

  Pierre Costals

  Paris

  9 December 1926

  Mademoiselle,

  If you belong to Jesus Christ, you must not belong to him in a muddled way. Granted that God exists, he has given love to human beings only that they may give it back to him and him alone. Must I remind you of St Augustine's words: 'The soul can only reach God by approaching him without human intervention,' or the mystic (Meister Eckhart) who goes so far as to say: 'Do you know why God is God? It is because he is independent of all creatures.' You dishonour God by mixing him up with me. Such sloppiness is nauseating. When I see Jesus Christ mixed up with the human species (mixed, not juxtaposed, for juxtaposition occurs in all of us), I always think of the Princess Palatine's story of the schoolboy who had pictures of saints painted on his bottom so as not to be whipped.