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By Root 1745 0

spiritualism offer us no more proof than the dogmas of religion that the soul survives death. All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be kind and thoughtful, even to be polite, nor for an atheist artist to consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his worm-eaten body, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much skill and refinement by an artist destined to be for ever unknown and barely identified under the name Vermeer. All these obligations, which have no sanction in our present life, seem to belong to a different world, a world based on kindness, scrupulousness, self-sacrifice, a world entirely different from this one and which we leave in order to be born on this earth, before perhaps returning there to live once again beneath the sway of those unknown laws which we obeyed because we bore their precepts in our hearts, not knowing whose hand had traced them there—those laws to which every profound work of the intellect brings us nearer and which are invisible only—if then!—to fools. So that the idea that Bergotte was not dead for ever is by no means improbable.

They buried him, but all through that night of mourning, in the lighted shop-windows, his books, arranged three by three, kept vigil like angels with outspread wings and seemed, for him who was no more, the symbol of his resurrection.

I learned, as I have said, that Bergotte had died that day. And I was amazed at the inaccuracy of the newspapers which—each of them reproducing the same paragraph—stated that he had died the day before. For Albertine had met him the day before, as she informed me that very evening, and indeed she had been a little late in coming home, for he had chatted to her for some time. She was probably the last person to whom he had spoken. She knew him through me, for although I had long ceased to see him, as she had been anxious to be introduced to him I had written a year earlier to ask the old master whether I might bring her to see him. He had granted my request, though he was a trifle hurt, I fancy, that I should be visiting him only to give pleasure to another person, which was a confirmation of my indifference to him. These cases are frequent: sometimes the man or woman whom we approach not for the pleasure of conversing with them again, but on behalf of a third person, refuses so obstinately that our protégé concludes that we have boasted of an influence which we do not possess; more often the man of genius or the famous beauty consents, but, humiliated in their glory, wounded in their affection, they feel for us afterwards only a diminished, sorrowful, slightly contemptuous regard. It was not until long afterwards that I discovered that I had wrongly accused the newspapers of inaccuracy, since on the day in question Albertine had not in fact met Bergotte. At the time I had never suspected this for a single instant, so artlessly had she described the meeting to me, and it was not until much later that I discovered her charming skill in lying naturally. What she said, what she admitted, had to such a degree the same characteristics as the formal evidence of the case—what we see with our own eyes or learn from irrefutable sources—that she sowed thus in the gaps of her life episodes of another life the falsity of which I did not then suspect. I have added “what she admitted” for the following reason. Sometimes odd coincidences would give me jealous suspicions about her in which another person figured by her side in the past, or alas in the future. In order to appear certain of my facts, I would mention the person’s name, and Albertine would say: “Yes, I met her a week ago, just outside the house. I acknowledged her greeting out of politeness. I walked a little way with her. But there’s never been anything