The Immoralist by André Gide

Author:André Gide [Gide, André]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Tags: French Literature, Fiction
ISBN: 9780804154079
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-12-16T18:30:00+00:00

II

We moved to the rue S—–, near Passy. The apartment, which had been found for us by one of Marceline’s brothers and which we had been able to inspect on our last trip through Paris, was much larger than the one my father had left me, and Marceline was rather worried not only by the higher rent but also by the many expenses such an establishment would involve. I countered all her fears with a factitious horror of anything temporary; I forced myself to believe in this reasoning, and exaggerated it on purpose. Certainly the cost of furnishing the new apartment would exceed our income for the year, but I counted on increasing our already considerable wealth by my lectures, by the publication of my book and even, how foolishly! by the new profits from my farms. I therefore spared no expense, telling myself each time that I was merely forming another tie to control any roving impulse I might feel, or feared to feel.

The first days, from morning to night, our time was spent shopping; and though Marceline’s brother very obligingly volunteered later on to spare us some of the task, Marceline was soon feeling worn out. Then, instead of the rest she should have had once we were settled in, she was obliged to receive visit after visit; the out-of-the-way places we had lived hitherto made such calls all the more frequent now, and Marceline, unaccustomed to society, did not know how to shorten the visits and dared not close her door altogether; I would find her, by evening, utterly exhausted; and if I wasted no anxiety on a weariness whose cause I quite understood, at least I tried to diminish it by receiving in her stead, which I found rather tiresome, and sometimes by returning the calls myself, which I found altogether so.

I have never been a brilliant talker; the wit and frivolity of Parisian salons is something I could not enjoy; yet I had spent a good deal of time in some of them—but how long ago! What had happened since? With other people, I felt dull, sad, inept, both boring and bored. I was singularly unlucky in that none of you, whom I regarded as my only real friends, was in Paris; nor would you be returning for a long time. Could I have talked to you better? Would you have understood me better, perhaps, than I did myself? But what did I know of all that was growing within me, all that I am telling you today? The future looked quite certain, and never had I supposed myself more its master.

And even if I had been wiser, what recourse against myself could I have found in Hubert, Didier, Maurice, in so many others whom you know and judge as I do. I soon realized, unfortunately, the impossibility of making myself understood. From our very first conversations, I was more or less obliged by them to act a part—either to resemble the man they thought

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