If It Die by Andre Gide

Author:Andre Gide [Gide, André]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-91044-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

In describing our apartment, I have not spoken of the library. The fact is that after my father’s death, my mother refused to allow me into it. The room was kept locked up; but though it was at the further end of the apartment, it always seemed to me its centre; my thoughts, my ambitions, my desires gravitated round it. In my mother’s eyes, it was a kind of sanctuary, in which the beloved memory of my father still lingered; she would no doubt have thought it sacrilege if I had taken his place too soon; I also think she did her best to remove out of my way anything likely to increase my importance in my own eyes; and lastly, I may say she did not consider it prudent to put so many books within reach of my devouring appetite. As my sixteenth year approached, however, Albert began to intercede in my favour; I overheard fragments of a discussion between him and mamma.

“But he’ll be ransacking the whole library!” exclaimed she.

Albert replied gently that my taste for reading deserved to be encouraged.

“He has plenty of books in the passage and his own room. We can wait till he has read all those,” rejoined my mother.

“Aren’t you afraid of giving the library books the attraction of forbidden fruit?”

My mother protested that “in that case, one ought never to forbid anything.” She resisted in this way for some time and then ended by giving in, as she almost always did when it was Albert who opposed her, because she had a great deal of affection and esteem for him, and because in the end common sense always prevailed with her.

But no, I can truthfully say that the fact of the room’s being forbidden added nothing to its attraction—or only a touch of mystery. I am not one of those people whose first impulse is to rebel; on the contrary, I have always been glad to obey, to submit to rules, to give way; and moreover, I had a particular horror of doing anything on the sly; if it sometimes happened afterwards—and only too often, alas!—that I found myself obliged to hide the truth, it has never been except for the passing purpose of protecting myself, and always with the constant hope, and indeed, the fixed determination of shortly bringing everything to light. And why else should I be writing these memoirs?… To return to the subject of my reading, I may say that I cannot remember ever to have read a single book behind my mother’s back; I made it a point of honour not to deceive her. What was there so special about the library books then? First of all, their fine appearance. And besides, the books in my room and the passage were almost all works of history, exegesis or criticism, while in my father’s study, I discovered the authors themselves that these works spoke of.

Albert had almost convinced my mother, but nevertheless, she did not give in at once and altogether; she compounded.

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