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I WILL NOT RECORD THE NAME EITHER OF THE COUNTRY OR OF the manconcerned. It was far, very far from this part of the world, on afertile and scorching sea-coast. All morning we had been followinga coast clothed with crops and a blue sea clothed in sunlight.Flowers thrust up their heads quite close to the waves, ripplingwaves, so gentle, drowsing. It was hot--a relaxing heat, redolentof the rich soil, damp and fruitful: one almost heard the rising ofthe sap. 

 I had been told that, in the evening, I could obtain hospitality inthe house of a Frenchman, who lived at the end of a headland, in anorange grove. Who was he? I did not yet know. He had arrived onemorning, ten years ago; he had bought a piece of ground, plantedvines, sown seed; he had worked, this man, passionately, furiously.l hen, month by month, year by year, increasing his demesne,continually fertilising the lusty and virgin soil, he had in thisway amassed a fortune by his unsparing labour.

Yet he went on working, all the time, people said. Up at dawn,going over his fields until night, always on the watch, he seemedto be goaded by a fixed idea, tortured by an insatiable lust formoney, which nothing lulls to sleep, and nothing can appease.

Now he seemed to be very rich.

The sun was just setting when I reached his dwelling. This was,indeed, built at the end of an out-thrust cliff, in the midst oforange-trees. It was a large plain-looking house, builtfour-square, and overlooking the sea.

As I approached, a man with a big beard appeared in the door way.Greeting him, I asked him to give me shelter for the night. He heldout his hand to me, smiling.

"Come in, sir, and make yourself at home."

He led the way to a room, put a servant at my disposal, with theperfect assurance and easy good manners of a man of the world; thenhe left me, saying:

"We will dine as soon as you are quite ready to come down."

We did indeed dine alone, on a terrace facing the sea. At thebeginning of the meal, I spoke to him of this country, so rich, sofar from the world, so little known. He smiled, answeringindifferently.

"Yes, it is a beautiful country. But no country is attractive thatlies so far from the country of one's heart."

"You regret France?"

"I regret Paris."

"Why not go back to it?"

"Oh, I shall go back to it."

Then, quite naturally, we began to talk of French society, of theboulevards, and people, and things of Paris. He questioned me afterthe manner of a man who knew all about it, mentioning names, allthe names familiar on the Vaudeville promenade.

"Who goes to Tortoni's now?"

"All the same people, except those who have died."

I looked at him closely, haunted by a vague memory. Assuredly I hadseen this face somewhere. But where? but when? He seemed wearythough active, melancholy though determined. His big fair beardfell to his chest, and now and then he took hold of it below thechin and, holding it in his closed hand, let the whole length of itrun through his fingers. A little bald, he had heavy eyebrows anda thick moustache that merged into the hair covering his cheeks.Behind us the sun sank in the sea, flinging over the coast a fieryhaze. The orange-trees in full blossom filled the air with theirsweet, heady scent. He had eyes for nothing but me, and with hisintent gaze he seemed to peer through my eyes, to see in the depthsof my thoughts the far-off, familiar, and well-loved vision of thewide, shady pavement that runs from the Madeleine to the RueDrouot.

"Do you know Boutrelle?"

"Yes, well."

"Is he much changed?"

"Yes, he has gone quite white."

"And La Ridamie?"

"Always the same."

"And the women? Tell me about the woman. Let me see, Do you knowSuzanne Verner?"

"Yes, very stout. Done for."

"Ah! And Sophie Astier?"

"Dead."

"Poor girl! And is . . . do you know. . . ."

But he was abruptly silent. Then in a changed voice, his face grownsuddenly pale, he went on:

"No, it would be better for me not to speak of it any more, ittortures me."

Then, as if to change the trend of his thoughts, he rose.

"Shall we go in?"

"I am quite ready."

And he preceded me into the house.

The rooms on the ground floor were enormous, bare, gloomy,apparently deserted. Napkins and glasses were scattered about thetables, left there by the swan-skinned servants who prowled aboutthis vast dwelling all the time. Two guns were hanging from twonails on the wall, and in the corners I saw spades, fishing-lines,dried palm leaves, objects of all kinds, deposited there by peoplewho happened to come into the house, and remaining there withineasy reach until someone happened to go out or until they werewanted for a job of work.

My host smiled.

"It is the dwelling, or rather the hovel; of an exile," said he,"but my room is rather more decent. Let's go there."

My first thought, when I entered the room, was that I waspenetrating into a second-hand dealer's, so full of things was it,all the incongruous, strange, and varied things that one feels mustbe mementoes. On the walls two excellent pictures by well-knownartists, hangings, weapons, swords and pistols, and then, right inthe middle of the most prominent panel, a square of white satin ina gold frame.

Surprised, I went closer to look at it and I saw a hairpin stuck inthe centre of the gleaming material.

My host laid his hand on my shoulder.

"There," he said, with a smile, "is the only thing I ever look atin this place, and the only one I have seen for ten years. MonsieurPrudhomme declared: 'This sabre is the finest day of my life!' Asfor me, I can say: 'This pin is the whole of my life!'"

I sought for the conventional phrase; I ended by saying:

"Some woman has made you suffer?"

He went on harshly:

"I suffer yet, and frightfully. . . . But come on to my balcony. Aname came to my lips just now, that I dared not utter, because ifyou had answered 'dead,' as you did for Sophie Astier, I shouldhave blown out my brains, this very day."

We had gone out on to a wide balcony looking towards two deepvalleys, one on the right and the other on the left, shut in byhigh sombre mountains. It was that twilight hour when the vanishedsun lights the earth only by its reflection in the sky.

He continued:

"Is Jeanne de Limours still alive?"

His eye was fixed on mine, full of shuddering terror.

I smiled.

"Very much alive . . . and prettier than ever."

"You know her?"

"Yes."

He hesitated:

"Intimately?"

"No."

He took my hand:

"Talk to me about her."

"But there is nothing I can say: she is one of the women, or ratherone of the most charming and expensive gay ladies in Paris. Sheleads a pleasant and sumptuous life, and that's all one can say."

He murmured: "I love her," as if he had said: "I am dying." Thenabruptly:

"Ah, for three years, what a distracting and glorious life welived! Five or six times I all but killed her; she tried to piercemy eyes with that pin at which you have been looking. There, lookat this little white speck on my left eye. We loved each other! Howcan I explain such a passion? You would not understand it.

"There must be a gentle love, born of the swift mutual union of twohearts and two souls; but assuredly there exists a savage love,cruelly tormenting, born of the imperious force which bindstogether two discordant beings who adore while they hate.

"That girl ruined me in three years. I had four millions which shedevoured quite placidly, in her indifferent fashion, crunching themup with a sweet smile that seemed to die from her eyes on to herlips.

"You know her? There is something irresistible about her. What isit? I don't know. Is it those grey eyes whose glance thrusts likea gimlet and remains in you like the barb of an arrow? It is ratherthat sweet smile, indifferent and infinitely charming, that dwellson her face like a mask. Little by little her slow grace invadesone, rises from her like a perfume, from her tall, slender body,which sways a little as she moves, for she seems to glide ratherthan walk, from her lovely, drawling voice that seems the music ofher smile, from the very motion of her body, too, a motion that isalways restrained, always just right, taking the eye with rapture,so exquisitely proportioned it is. For three years I was consciousof no one but her. How I suffered! For she deceived me with everyone. Why? For no reason, for the mere sake of deceiving. And whenI discovered it, when I abused her as a light-o'-love and a loosewoman, she admitted it calmly. 'We're not married, are we?' shesaid.

"Since I have been here, I have thought of her so much that I haveended by understanding her: that woman is Manon Lescaut come again.Manon could not love without betraying for Manon, love, pleasure,and money were all one."

He was silent. Then, some minutes later:

"When I had squandered my last sou for her, she said to me quitesimply: 'You realise, my dear, that I cannot live on air andsunshine. I love you madly, I love you more than anyone in theworld, but one must live. Poverty and I would never make goodbedfellows.'

"And if I did but tell you what an agonising life I had lead withher! When I looked at her, I wanted to kill her as sharply as Iwanted to embrace her. When I looked at her . . . I felt a madimpulse to open my arms, to take her to me and strangle her. Therelurked in her, behind her eyes, something treacherous and for everunattainable that made me execrate her; and it is perhaps becauseof that that I loved her so. In her, the Feminine, the detestableand distracting Feminine, was more puissant than in any otherwoman. She was charged with it, surcharged as with an intoxicatingand venomous fluid. She was Woman, more essentially than any onewoman has ever been.

"And look you, when I went out with her, she fixed her glance onevery man, in such a way that she seemed to be giving each one ofthem her undivided interest. That maddened me and yet held me toher the closer. This woman, in the mere act of walking down thestreet, was owned by every man in it, in spite of me, in spite ofherself, by virtue of her very nature, although she bore herselfwith a quiet and modest air. Do you understand?

"And what torture! At the theatre, in the restaurant, it seemed tome that men possessed her under my very eyes. And as soon as I lefther company, other men did indeed possess her.

"It is ten years since I have seen her, and I love her more thenever."

Night had spread its wings upon the earth. The powerful scent oforange-trees hung in the air.

I said to him:

"You will see her again?"

He answered:

"By God, yes. I have here, in land and money, from seven to eighthundred thousand francs. When the million is complete, I shall sellall and depart. I shall have enough for one year with her--oneentire marvellous year. And then goodbye, my life will be over."

I asked:

"But afterwards?"

"Afterwards, I don't know. It will be the end. Perhaps I shall askher to keep me on as her body-servant."