The Pastoral Symphony

by André Gide

  28 May Evening

  Into what abominable night am I plunging! Pity, Lord, pity! I renounce my love for her, but, You, do not permit her to die!

  I am right to fear! What has she done? What did she want to do? Amélie and Sarah said that they accompanied her to the door of La Grange where Mlle de la M… was waiting for her. She then wanted to go out again… What happened?

  I’m trying to put some order into my thoughts. The stories that I have been told are incomprehensible or contradictory. Everything is boiling in my head… The gardener of Mlle de la M… has just brought her back unconscious to La Grange. He said that he saw her walking along the river, then she crossed the bridge in the garden, then she bent over, then disappeared. But since at first he did not understand that she had fallen, he did not run as he should have done. He found her again near the small lock where the current had carried her. When I saw her again a little bit later, she had not regained consciousness, or had lost it again, for an instant later she came back to herself, thanks to the quick and prodigious care she quickly received. Martins, who thank God had not yet left, had trouble understanding this kind of stupor and indolence into which she had plunged. He tried in vain to question her. One might say that she didn’t hear anything or that she had resolved to say nothing. Her breathing was very oppressed, and Martins feared pulmonary congestion. He applied some mustard poultices and some suction cups and promised to return tomorrow. The mistake was to leave her in her wet clothes for too long while people tried to reanimate her. The water of the river is icy. Mlle de la M…, who was the only one who was able to get a few words out of her, thought she wanted to pick some forget-me-nots which were growing in abundance on this side of the river, and that, still not used to measuring distances or thinking that the floating carpet of flowers was the ground, she brusquely lost her footing. If I could only believe this! Convince me that this was just an accident and what a horrible weight would be lifted from my soul! During the entire meal, which was so gay in any case, she had a strange smile which bothered me. It was a constrained smile that I never saw on her before, but that I forced myself to believe was due to her newly found sight. It was a smile that seemed to flow out of her eyes and onto her face like tears and next to which the vulgar joy of the others offended me. She was not feeling joy! One could say that she had discovered a secret that she would have certainly told me about if I had been alone with her. She was saying almost nothing, but that was not surprising, because next to others she is often silent if they are exuberant.

  God, I implore you, permit me to speak to her. I need to know, or otherwise how can I continue to live? However, if she wanted to stop living, is it precisely for having known? Known what? My dear friend, what did you learn that was so terrible? What mortal thing have I hidden from you that you are suddenly able to see?

  I spent more than two hours at her bedside, never taking my eyes off of her forehead, her pale cheeks, her delicate eyelids that are closed on an undescribable chagrin, her hair that is still wet and similar to algae which spreads around on her pillow, listening to her troubled and uneven breath.

  29 May

  Mlle Louise called for me this morning at the time that I was going to go to La Grange. After a night that was more or less calm, Gertrude finely came out of her torpor. She smiled at me when I entered into her bedroom and signaled to me to come and sit next to her bedside. I did not dare to interrogate her, and without a doubt she feared my questions, for as if to prevent any discussion, she quickly said to me,

  “What do you call those pretty little blue flowers that I wanted to pick by the river, the ones that are the color of the sky? Since you are more able than I am, would you make me a bouquet? I will put it there next to my bed.”

  The artificial joy in her voice did not sit well with me and without doubt she understood that, for she added more seriously,

  “I cannot talk with you this morning, I am too weak. Go and pick those flowers for me, would you? You can return soon after that.

  An hour later I returned with a bouquet of forget-me-nots, but Mlle Louise said that Gertrude was resting again and that she would not be able to receive me before this evening.

  This evening I saw her again. The piled up pillows on her bed supported her such that she was almost sitting. Her hair had been redone and braided on her forehead and was mixed with the forget-me-nots that I had brought for her.

  She certainly had a fever and appeared to be very oppressed. In her burning hand she held the hand that I had extended to her. I remained standing next to her.

  “I must make a confession to you, Pastor, because this evening I was afraid of dying,” she said. “I lied to you this morning. This did not happen because of picking flowers. Would you pardon me if I said to you that I wanted to kill myself?”

  I fell to my knees next to her bed while holding her frail hand in my own. But she pulled her hand away and began to caress my forehead, while I sunk my face into the sheets to hide my tears from her and to smother my sobs.

  “Do you find that to be very bad?” she tenderly said. Then, since I did not respond,

  “My friend, my friend, you know very well that I take up too much room in your heart and your life. When I returned next to you, this was apparent to me right away, or at least that the place that I was occupying was that of another who was saddened by it. My crime is to not have felt this sooner, or at least to let you love me in any case, for I knew it already. But when I suddenly saw her face, when I saw her poor face that was so sad, I could no longer support the idea that this sadness was my fault. No, no don’t reproach yourself, but let me leave and give her back her joy.

  Her hand stopped caressing my forehead. I took it and covered it with kisses and tears. But she pulled it away impatiently, and a new anguish began to come over her.

  “That is not what I wanted to say, no that is not what I meant,” she repeated, and I saw beads of sweat moisten her forehead. Then she closed her eyelids and kept her eyes closed for some time, as if to concentrate on her thought or find her initial state of blindness once again. And with a voice that was dragging and sorrowful at first but that soon became louder when she reopened her eyes such that she became fiercely excited,

  “When you gave me vision, my eyes opened to a world that was more beautiful than I had dreamed it could be. Yes, really, I never imagined the day to be so clear, the air so brilliant, the sky so vast. But I also did not imagine how bony the foreheads of man were. And when I entered into your house, do you know what was apparent to me right away? Ah! I must tell you this. What I first saw was our mistake, our sin. No, do not protest. Do you remember the words of Christ, ’If you were blind, you would not know sin.’ But now, I see it. Stand up, Pastor. Sit over here next to me. Listen to me without interrupting. In the time that I spent at the clinic, I read, or rather, someone read to me, some passages of the Bible that I was not aware of yet, that you had never read to me. I remember a verse of St. Paul that I repeated for a whole day, ’When I was without laws, I lived. But when the Commandment came, sin regained life, and I died.’

  She was speaking in a state of extreme exultation with a very loud voice, and she almost cried out those last words such that I was bothered at the thought that someone would be able to hear her from outside. Then she closed her eyes again and murmured those last words, as if for herself,

  “Sin regained life, and I died.”

  I shivered, my heart icey with a sort of terror. I wanted to make her think of something else.

  “Who read those verses to you?” I asked.

  “It was Jacques,” she said, while opening her eyes again and staring at me. Did you know that he has converted?

  This was too much. I was going to beg her to be quiet, but she had already continued,

  “My friend, I am going to cause you a lot of pain, but t
here must be no lies between us. When I saw Jacques, I suddenly understood that it was not you that I loved, it was him. He had exactly your face. I mean the face that I imagined that you would have. Ah! Why did you push me away from him? I could have married him.”

  “But Gertrude, you can still do that,” I cried out with despair.

  “He has entered into the orders,” she said impetuously. Then she was solaced by sobs, “Ah! I would like to confess to him,” she moaned with a kind of ecstasy. “You see very well that there is nothing left for me but to die. I am thirsty. Call someone, I beg you. I’m suffocating. Leave me alone. Ah! In speaking to you like this I had hoped to be more relieved. Leave me. Leave us. I cannot stand to see you anymore.”

  I left her. I called Mlle de la M… to replace me next to her. Her extreme agitation made me fearful, but I had to convince myself that my presence aggravated her state. I asked to be alerted if she got worse.

  30 May

  Alas! I will never see her alive again. She died this morning at dawn after a night of delirium and deep despondency. Jacques arrived several hours after the end, having been alerted by Mlle de la M… at the final request of Gertrude. He cruelly reproached me for not having called a priest while there was still time. But how was I to know that during her stay at Lausanne, and evidently pressured by him, Gertrude had converted? He told me about both his conversion and that of Gertrude. And so these two beings both left me at the same time. It seemed that, separated by me during life, the two of them planned to escape me and unite under God. But I am convinced that in the conversion of Jacques there was more logic and reasoning than love.

  “My father,” he said to me, “it is not fitting that I accuse you, but it is the example of your error that guided me.”

  After Jacques had left, I kneeled down next to Amélie and asked her to pray for me, because I needed help. She simply recited “Our Father…” but left long silences between the verses that were filled by our plea.

  I wanted to cry, but my heart felt more arid than the desert.