The Counterfeiters (53 page)

If for some of them this criminal trade was a means of leading a “high life” beyond that permitted by their family allowance, for others—at least according to them—it was a humanitarian work: “Once in a while I would give a few to poor devils with money troubles who could use them to keep their families alive.… And nobody was harmed, because we were stealing from nobody but the State.”

SUICIDE OF A SCHOOLBOY
: We have noted the dramatic suicide of young Nény, barely fifteen years old,
who, in the middle of a class at the Lycée Blaise-Pascal at Clermont-Ferrand, blew out his brains with a revolver.

The
Journal des Débats
has received from Clermont-Ferrand the following strange details:

“That an unfortunate child, raised in a family where there took place scenes of such violence that often—in fact, on the very eve of his death—he was obliged to go to stay with neighbors, should have been led to the idea of suicide is regrettable, but understandable. That assiduous and uncontrolled reading of pessimistic German philosophers should have led him to an ill-conceived mysticism, ‘his personal religion,’ as he said, is also understandable. But that there should have been, in this large city school, an evil society of youngsters for forcing one another to suicide is monstrous; but unfortunately this must be admitted to be the case.

“It is said that three of these schoolboys drew lots to determine which would kill himself first. It is certain, however, that the unhappy Nény’s two accomplices in a sense forced him to end his days by accusing him of cowardice, and that on the previous day they made him go through a complete rehearsal of this heinous act, marking with a chalk X on the floor the place where he was to blow out his brains the next day. A pupil who entered at this moment saw this rehearsal: he was flung out the door with the threat: ‘You know too much—we’ll have to take care of you’—there was, it seems, a list of those who were to be taken care of.

“It is established moreover that, ten minutes before the final scene, the boy next to Nény borrowed a watch from a pupil and told Nény: ‘You know you are to kill yourself at three twenty; you have only ten—five—two minutes!’ At the time specified, the victim got up, stood at the spot marked with the chalk, took out his revolver, and fired it into his right temple. It is also true that when he fell, one of the conspirators had the horrible presence of mind to leap for the revolver and spirit it
away. It has not yet been recovered. What will be done with it next? The whole thing is an atrocity: the pupils’ parents are emotionally at the breaking-point, as can well be imagined!”

My dear friend:

Forgive me for not having written you sooner; it was impossible.

It isn’t known what made D— kill himself.

 … I had a conversation about suicide with D— at a time when we were both very depressed. I reproached him for his former attempt and told him that I myself would commit suicide only after a joy so great that I could be certain that I was never going to feel another like it. D— agreed, but confessed that for his part he had experienced only disappointments, and that he was completely despondent. Then, I understand, on Friday evening he had a date to meet a young man. He spent the night out and didn’t get back until morning. Saturday he was happier than he had ever been; that night he killed himself.

In spite of all this I had no idea what was going to happen.

On Sunday afternoon at Madame X—’s they said I was “hesitant,” but how can I know, even yet, what to do or say? So there you have it. I should like you to advise me, and tell me what you think of this frightful business.

S
IR:

The striking analogy that exists between the misfortune to which La Pérouse is reduced during the last years of his life and that suffered by Monsieur le Prince, and described for us by Saint-Simon in his
Mémoires
, proves that Saint-Simon has furnished you with the material for Chapter iii of the third part of your book
Les Faux-Monnayeurs
. Not to have said so, at least in your
Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs
, is proof of an utter lack of candor. You mention Saint-Simon in a most ambiguous manner in connection with a dream. You leave your reader, with respect to the aforementioned chapter, under the false impression of an original creation on your part. Does not your sense of fairness compel you to confess your source?

Please believe me, sir, yours sincerely,

S
UZANNE-
P
AUL
H
ERTZ

M
ADAME:

I am grateful that you have called my attention to this astonishing passage in Saint-Simon. I blushingly confess that I did not yet know it, and I have found the greatest pleasure in reading it in a copy lent me by Monsieur Hanotaux, a neighbor of the friends I am staying with here in the country.

Monsieur le Prince’s case indeed offers a striking analogy to that of my old La Pérouse, but my model was taken from life itself. La Pérouse was inspired, even to his attempted suicide, by an old piano professor of whom I speak at length in
Si le grain ne meurt …
where I likewise speak of the Armand B., who served as a rough model for the Armand of
Les Faux Monnayeurs
. I cannot understand how the merit of a work of art can be
diminished through its being based on reality. For this reason I have thought it well to give in the appendix to the
Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs
the various news-items on which my book is based, in particular the story of the Nény boy, which was my primary inspiration. You will allow me to add thereto:

(1) Your letter, such a charming example of graciousness—and of the error into which we can be led by this modern craze for seeing influence (or “imitation”) in every resemblance we discover, a craze that transforms the criticism of certain academic scholars into detective work and that plunges so many artists into absurdity through an enormous fear of being suspected of possibly resembling someone;

(2) my reply, and

(3) the reference from Saint-Simon,
⁴⁰
for the greater profit of the readers.

Believe me, madame, yours very truly,

“Opinions,” Édouard told me when I showed him these preliminary notes. “Opinions.… I have no interest in their opinions so long as I don’t know them themselves. Persuade yourself, Lafcadio, that opinions do not exist outside of individuals and interest the novelist only in relation to those who hold them. They imagine they are speaking as prophets from the Absolute, but these opinions they profess, which they believe freely accepted, or chosen, or even invented, are as predetermined and ordained as the color of their hair or the odor of their breath! Z.’s mistake in pronunciation, which you did quite right to note down, is more important to me than what he thinks—or at least they’ll have to come in that order. Have you known him very long?”

I told him that I had met him for the first time. I did not conceal that I felt an extreme antipathy for him.

“It’s all the more important for you to frequent him,” he replied. “Everything we like is really only what resembles us and what we can easily imagine. What differs the most from us must take precedence in our study. Have you let Z. see that you don’t like him?”

“No, I didn’t reveal anything.”

“Good. Try to become his friend.” And, as I made a face: “Ah, you still have personal tastes,” he exclaimed in a tone that made me think only of disavowing them immediately. “Perhaps you also have scruples, aversions?”

“I’ll try to get rid of them, if you say so,” I said, laughing. “If I were perfect before I started, I wouldn’t need your advice.”

“Now, Lafcadio, my friend, listen to me.” (His face clouded slightly.) “What I expect from you is cynicism, not callousness. There are those who will tell you that you can’t have one without the other; don’t believe them. But, all the same, beware. Emotion is generally accompanied by awkwardness; there is a certain emotional virtuosity, so to speak, which ordinarily is acquired only at the expense of the finest qualities and, like all other virtuosities, leads to a certain frigidity of execution. Emotion hampers us, yet as soon as we escape it, or whenever it decreases, everything is lost. For it, after all, is the final goal and the real reason for playing. Am I boring you?”

“As if you could!… That explains the sort of fear I feel, a fear that up to now I haven’t been able to explain very well.”

“What fear?” he asked with a charming and touching expression of solicitude.

“The fear,” I replied, “of being a little stale when I act—slightly inert, or, if you wish, unfit for action, as soon as my emotions are touched.”

“I’m afraid you’re confusing emotion with the sort of emotionalism that leads to tears. This emotionalism has nothing to do with what I call sensibility, which, usually, is nothing more than a joyous tremor of life. On the contrary, you must convince yourself that it is in the very midst of action that you will feel the most intensely; at least that’s the way it should be.… Ah, while I think of it: do you have a mistress?”

I told him that since I had got out of the service I was less interested in attachments than in freedom.

He smiled. Then:

“I ask you that because someone promised to come to see me this morning.” (He drew out his watch.) “And
she ought to be arriving just about now. Stay a little while longer; you have nothing better to do. While you are waiting, take a glass of port; or, better, let me make you a cocktail.”

He opened a little low sideboard, but he had no sooner taken out the cocktail glasses and a variety of bottles than the doorbell rang.…

I met Édouard only a short time ago, but since I’ve known him, my life has taken a new turn; it has finally found its purpose. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to tire of living egotistically; I’m not that much in love with myself. Howbeit, I am not sure I can meet the demands Édouard makes of me; I feel there is in me something mobile,
desultory
,
⁴¹
which leaves me with the fear of not being worthy. Also, he has no idea whatsoever how lacking I am in schooling. I have read hardly anything and don’t feel like reading anything. Possibly I have a certain taste for words and short sentences, but I know too many languages to speak any one of them perfectly, and I write carelessly. I believe I have too little patience ever to succeed in anything.

Basically Édouard doesn’t know me any better than I know him. When he asked me if I had a mistress, I almost told him that I dread nothing so much as that kind of an attachment; but it’s better not to be too revealing. I have a horror of speaking of myself; this comes not only from my lack of interest in myself, but mainly because, as soon as I make any statement about myself, the opposite immediately appears much more true. Thus I was about to write that I have a taste for sensual pleasure, but at the same time I have to admit that love bores me. And immediately the thought strikes me that what I find boring in love is the sentiment, the
pleasure long deferred, the petty attentions, the simpering ways, the declarations, the sworn oaths.… Amorous, though, I am at all times, and of everyone and everything. To be amorous of only one—that I shouldn’t like.

This need I have to be on the move, to offer myself, the need that supplies the most abundant springs of my happiness and continually causes me to prefer someone else to myself, is, after all, possibly only a necessity for escaping myself, for losing myself, for butting in and sampling the lives of others. Enough talk of myself. Without Édouard I should never have said so much.

“But now that we are alone, tell me, I beg you, where did you get this odd need to imagine there is peril or sin in everything you start out to do?”

“What’s the difference? The important thing is that it doesn’t hold me back.”

“For a long time I thought it was only a vestige of your puritan upbringing; but now I am beginning to think we must look for the reason in some sort of Byronism.

 … Oh, no objections: I know you have a horror of romanticism—at least so you say—but you have a love for the dramatic.… ”

“I have a love for life. If I seek out peril, it is with the conviction, the certainty, that I shall overcome it. As for sin—what attracts me there—oh, don’t think it’s the sort of overrefinement that made the Italian lady say of the sherbet she was testing:
‘Peccato che non sia un peccato.’
No, to begin with, it’s possibly scorn, hatred, horror of everything I called virtue in my youth; but also—how can I explain it?—I haven’t understood it very long myself—it’s just that I have the Devil on my side.”